Convince me that God is loving

[sun rise]

Who among us wouldn't prevent their children from making mistakes if we could program them to know what can only be learned through experience and making mistakes?

Would life be worth living if there were no challenges to overcome? Would people appreciate freedom without a knowledge of what slavery can be like? I'm not advocating avoidable suffering, of course, but there's a benefit to struggling to achieve a worthwhile goal.

 

[sun rise]

And if God is loving, God would love me even if I did not believe that.

Yes, I agree.

 

[Truthseeker]

I did not know how many posts I would get, since I don't have foreknowledge, since I am not God....
but I will deal with what I get as I always do.

How many posts did you get when you started threads like this before? It is an easy projection.

 

[sun rise]

I do not mind suffering in the path of service, I have been doing that for many years.

To me, the highest form of service is done without expectation of reward and not counting the cost.

Simply put, I do not believe in God with the expectation of getting love from Him.
I do not believe in God with the expectation of experiencing peace and comfort.

Baba Ram Dass, Richard Alpert, on a CD did a couple of readings. I can't find the quote online, but from memory this was part of one reading: "The lord of the meeting rivers plays tricks on you until your bones stick out. Can there be devotion unless you stand His play?"

 

[Trailblazer]

I fail to see the divine mastery behind the human condition. If I knew there was a God I would not worship anything less than a master who was perfectly just and loving.

This is why I am having a problem worshiping God, but I can believe in God without worshiping God.

 

[Trailblazer]

How many posts did you get when you started threads like this before? It is an easy projection.

It's been so long since i started one that I forgot.

 

[Trailblazer]

To me, the highest form of service is done without expectation of reward and not counting the cost.

That is very true.

 

[Brian2]

It does not matter to me one way or another because I do not need God's love.

We all need God's practical love that He gives and offers us. I'm not talking about a warm fuzzy feeling that from God I'm talking about life and food and etc etc that we have and most important into the future, the offer of forgiveness through Jesus.
(John 3:16)
But if you don't want to know about what God has done for us with an outstretched hand for us, then nobody can convince you by telling you.

 

[samtonga43]

We all need God's practical love that He gives and offers us. I'm not talking about a warm fuzzy feeling that from God I'm talking about life and food and etc etc that we have and most important into the future, the offer of forgiveness through Jesus.
(John 3:16)
But if you don't want to know about what God has done for us with an outstretched hand for us, then nobody can convince you by telling you.

Tb knows this. She is just having fun.

 

[Brian2]

Tb knows this. She is just having fun.

Yes she threw out the challenge and knows that nobody can convince her, it is up to her.

 

[Jimmy]

It Aint Necessarily So said: ↑
I really don't understand what keeps you a believer if you see this god as unloving and indolent, and which belief brings you no peace or comfort.

***WINNER***

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Would life be worth living if there were no challenges to overcome?

Why wouldn't it? I have no challenges now except the ones I create for myself to meet some need (volunteering, learning, stimulation). That's the life we aim for - the one where we feel safe, secure, loved, have leisure and freedom from want, anxiety, fear, loneliness, regret, shame and the like. We don't come to that knowledge except through trial-and-error, which means making mistakes and learning from them, but that's the human condition, since we don't have the powers of a god to give ourselves or our children that wisdom by infusion.

Would people appreciate freedom without a knowledge of what slavery can be like?

Do you think they need to have been a slave or seen a slave to understand that having one's freedom, labor, dignity, and children stolen from him and being beaten is undesirable, and doing it to others immoral? Here would have been a great opportunity for a tri-omni interventionist god to program people to feel instinctively about strangers the way most do about their children. But that didn't happen. This god didn't condemn the practice of owning people, but rather, allegedly gave advice on how to do it properly and to what degree one could beat a slave before it being condemned. And I'm discussing chattel slavery here, not indentured servitude, which is a time-limited, consensual business relationship rather than what I just described above.

there's a benefit to struggling to achieve a worthwhile goal.

That doesn't mean that we're better off making mistakes if it were possible to prevent them as a tri-omni deity ought to be able to help us do by creating us with a mature moral sense where we had no desire to steal, betray, demean, etc.. I was not born with any of those. I have them now. I acquired them by making mistakes, my conscience punishing me, and learning to do better. As I indicated, that's the only way to get to that place given the human condition and the apparent lack of divine intervention. But if this tri-omni deity were to exist, one could be born with that knowledge.

It's pretty hard to make a case for a tri-omni deity ruling our world. One needs to make things that can better explained by there being no such deity seem to be the choices of a benevolent god who could have made them otherwise. That's divine command moral theory. Good becomes defined by what it is believed that the deity says, does, and wants, not his own (endogenous) moral intuitions, and that leads to the kind of comments you made here. This is the inherent risk in substituting somebody else's moral judgments for one's own - received morals. Don't you feel a twinge of cognitive dissonance trying to argue that we're better off having to make mistakes to come by this knowledge? I say that there is no other way to learn these lessons in a godless, naturalistic world, and so yes, challenges and struggles are necessary to acquire this understanding. But the believer in the tri-omni deity has to defend that being the design of a good god who could have made things otherwise.

 

[samtonga43]

Do you have any proof of that, or is it just a belief?

Do you have any proof concerning Bahsismof your proof

It does not matter to me one way or another because I do not need God's love.

You say this because your eyes are closed, Tb. One has to be self-aware to know what one 'needs'. But God loves you anyway.

IMO.

 

[YoursTrue]

So do I, but I am not depressed. If I was that would have been diagnosed by my counselor.

Really? So if you're not depressed, how would you describe your emotional self? As happy? Or in between happy and depressed maybe sad?

 

[YoursTrue]

Tb knows this. She is just having fun.

That could be so. Good point. After all, her counselor says she's not depressed, maybe she's happy "having fun."

 

[samtonga43]

I don't need to deny it because there is nothing to deny. I am not clinically depressed. If I was I would have that diagnosis from my counselor. I have anxiety as my diagnosis but it is well managed.

I eat, sleep, work and exercise and my mind is working fine. These are not signs of a depressed person.
A person can be sad for various reasons but that is not the same as clinical depression. I should know since I have an MA in Psychology.

Really? And you don't know the difference between sadness, subclinical depression, and clinical depression?

 

[YoursTrue]

This is why I am having a problem worshiping God, but I can believe in God without worshiping God.

But you're not depressed. OK. And you apparently feel the need to see a counselor. OK.

 

[YoursTrue]

Really? And you don't know the difference between sadness, subclinical depression, and clinical depression?

OK now we have a little more about TB. Her "anxiety" is being managed...Thanks, TB. @Trailblazer

 

[samtonga43]

So do I, but I am not depressed. If I was that would have been diagnosed by my counselor.

Is your counselor qualified to provide diagnosis?

 

[samtonga43]

People who are depressed have trouble eating and sleeping or doing anything at all and many cannot even work.

Sorry, but no.
People who are clinically depressed have trouble eating and sleeping or doing anything at all and many cannot even work.