03-20-2007, 10:41 PM | #11 | ||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
Posts: 6,343
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Quote:
If we self-create our own personalities, then what's the "we" that does the self-creating? And where does it come from? And if you say genetics, environment and family create our personalities without God also creating them, and that after these forces fashion our personalities, we act according to who we are, then our choices are being predestined by humans and nature (though they don't know what they've produced), for we'll act according to the personality they've given us. We don't have freedom from God, but freedom from God is not necessary for real freedom to exist. We have the freedom to be what God made us to be; we have the freedom to be ourselves and do whatever we choose to do in life. Quote:
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Humans do evil with evil intent and evil result. As far as they have any control over what they are doing, evil is all that comes of their actions. Hence they are not responsible for the good God brings from their choices, but only for the evil they planned and accomplished, as it is all they intended and achieved. From them, it is evil. From God, it is good. And as for being forced to do things, we are not forced. It would be the height of absurdity if a character in a book I was writing complained to me, from the book, "why don't you allow me to give that character a present?" I would reply, "don't be silly. Give the character a present." I write the story and the characters' personalities, and I determine their actions, but I don't make them behave in ways that are out of character. So that character who addressed me could easily go and give the other character a present. I wasn't stopping him, because God is a good author and only a poor writer interferes with his characters' personalities and makes them behave in ways that are out of character. God doesn't force people to do anything. He predestines that they do exactly what they want to do, according to their own choices that come from their personalities, who they are. They are individuals with equal freedom to God. God has no more freedom than they do. God can only act according to his personality, and in that sense, his "free will" is limited in that he cannot behave in any way other than according to who he is. And his actions must and always will come from his personality. Just as our actions will come from our personalities. We and he have the freedom to be ourselves- no more, no less, and God's power over us does not deprive us of that freedom in any way. Quote:
Brute force would only have been used if God had made Moses do as God commanded, because it was in Moses' character to refuse to do what God commanded at that time. Quote:
Do you think that a sinner shouldn't be judged if he or she is taught to sin by someone else, and then sins? No, I think you think the person should still be judged because he chose to accept the wrong teaching and act according to it. In the same way, sins that come to a man, which God plans will come and enter the man, only enter him because of his choices that he makes according to who he is and according to his personality. It's not like God forces the entry of sins in any illogical fashion. Man does his own will, and God does his own will, but man sins and God does not, because man purposefully commits evil while God does no evil, but commits the same actions with good motives and results. From God, the actions are not evil, but from man, with man's planning evil and accomplishing only evil as far as he is responsible for the results of his actions, these actions are evil. So man and God both are responsible, for as different entities who have equal freedom, they both committed the same actions according to who they are. But man created evil and God good, so although both are responsible, only man is guilty. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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