Maytoday

Thinking about it for the past few hours its quite a bit simpler than i had thought. God wanted to give us free will, because if you force someone to worship you, that would probably not be a good God, so that was his plan...to give us free will...if that makes sense.

No problem for the delay:) Well in my opinion its not, because it didn't fail. Its essentially his plan which i can explain if you'd like.

I was asking about young earth or day-age theory

Follow up: I believe we are looking at this in different ways...essentially I believe that things are possible that you don't... I now understand the "conundrum" I had (my teacher is brilliant), but I'm not sure how to explain it, so if you'd like to to ill give it a go but otherwise...well I'm watching studio c right now. Best Show Ever. Indeed. Meaning it really all comes down to what you are willing to believe. Out of curiosity @prisonchaplain, which creation idea do you believe in? I don't know about pentecostals.

Not really sure what this means... and as for this: I technically understand what these words mean but I'm having trouble putting them together in my head so I will mull over this until I can figure it out.

I don't understand this. Are our character traits(uniqueness), based on our will? I thought will was like, the amount of self control to resist temptation and such. I feel like we have different definitions of will which is causing confusion. What does will mean to you? This is a fair point. But in that logic, because God knows that someone will murder yet he doesn't stop it, wouldn't that make him a bad God? And well, since he's not a bad God, I don't know what to think of that.

Yes writing that I realized it was flawed. I believe the key difference in our logic is you are saying that the bad choices we make would be part of God's creation and therefore under his responsibility, bad choices would be his responsibility. I would say that evil-bad choices-were not created. Only choices, meaning it wouldn't be under his responsibility. Evil is the lack of good. Cold does not really exist, it is just the absence of heat. In the same way evil is the absence of God. Why should he be responsible for that? If I know that my sister will steal my money does she not still have the choice to steal or not steal it? Same for you. This is pretty interesting for me to hear and explore, hope I'm doing alright. Also, sometimes when I make a quote I accidentally delete the line below and then have to requote...is there a way to add a blank line under a quote?

Your will is only limited by the limitations you set upon it. Just because someone does something does not mean that they were created with less free will to choose good, simply that they choose to sin. God does not create some with better choices, he just created us with free will. The choice is to follow God or follow the world. Is God responsible for the person that chose the wrong thing? Love the person, hate the sin. He is not responsible for the choice. God did not create a person with free will that chose poorly. That would be predestination. God created humans in his image with free will, and we chose poorly.

Yes, I do. But my point was...God could. So are we really waving a magic wand to say he did?

Alright that's probably true...I do think it depends on the motive. A lot of the time people are just wanting to pass judgement on others, and push themselves up. And certainly you can't tell if someone's a Christian, that's between them and God. However, you can tell if a doctrine is Christian. Doctrine doesn't save people, but it expresses their faith. And I'm not saying that it needs the be the same doctrine as mine. For all I care, you could believe the sun is a fireball from giants playing catch and still be Christian. Its not my job to tell you whether you are Christian, I understand that, but here is my motive for asking: Look at the world, it's crumbling. Do you know how often I lie awake at night in sorrow for all my friends, family, the whole world that is going to eternal sin because they aren't Christian? I'm not asking to tell you if you're Christian, or judge you for being or not being Christian. That's between you and God. But if I can convince myself you are, it means that there are 17 million more people that I'm not laying awake for, that my heart doesn't have to break for. I try to lie to myself a lot, make as many people Christian in my mind as I can. In reality, I know From an outside viewpoint, doesn't the entirety of the Gospel sound outrageous? When all the world tells you that the only thing there is is the physical world, wouldn't an omnipotent God sound outrageous? When you give it a chance its clear its real, but we're also too impatient to give it a chance. I knew a kid that isn't Christian today because when his parents gave him a Bible, he said it was boring. As a member of multiple of your outrageous church teachings... But really, I've never met a person who has left the Church because of Pre-Trib. I'm sure some have. I'm sure some have also left because in their minds this guy came back from the dead. It's another way of seeing the afterlife. Most ways sound outrageous. Salvation and choice based ones, like Calvinism would indeed pull people away from the Church. If I was taught Calvinism I probably would have left. But to blame other doctrines and theories for people leaving the church, it seems like a stretch to me. Way more people leave because of controversy and politics, like abortion or homosexuality, wanting to follow the world. He's God. He could. Whether he does or doesn't is the question.

I memorize Pi. I'm not really sure why. I also rollerblade, even in the winter. That's it, and writing that I feel like I spend entirely too much time on youtube.

It does make things clearer thank you!

Well yeah essentially.

In which case the religion gets the blame when they turn out to be monsters.

Oh, so like our Baptism...it's not required to be saved, but we do it because Jesus tells us too?