DanLMP
Well-Known Member
God did not create a world that would remain broken
Explanation:
If you have not noticed it's fairly clear that our world is broken. Even a casual look at all of our wars, economic strife, racial strife, personal strife, etc, will reveal that to you. So how or why did a perfect God create an imperfect world?
He didn't.
God created a perfect world but into it He put beings who had the ability to make choices. He wanted us to have the ability to make choices so that we could freely choose to have a loving relationship with Him. God is a relational Being. He already exists in a perfect loving relationship within the Trinity that is mentioned in the Bible. God decided to create the universe and placed mankind into His creation to live together with Him in a loving relationship. Now I figure you know mankind as well as I do so, what are the odds that over several thousand years and several billion people that no one was ever going to reject or choose not to rely on God? In fact, I would go so far as to say that the odds of every single person not rejecting God in some way was incredibly small. And that's, of course, what happened with the first man.
Don't even worry so much about the details of the circumstances around the time when mankind’s first rejection of God occurred, it's more important to understand what that first rejection was.
The first man, Adam, made a choice not to rely on God's own understanding and knowledge of the consequences of the action of eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It wasn't the eating of a piece of fruit that was the problem so much as it was deciding not to rely on God. That is what the first sin was. And that choice was made permanent within mankind and additionally caused all of creation to fall under a curse. That break between God and Man is now in-built into every human being.
Judicially speaking, according to God’s Justice System, mankind had sinned against God. Mankind could not fix this himself because mankind fixing it himself would necessitate mankind relying on his own efforts instead of God’s efforts, which is what caused the problem in the first place. And God doesn’t give Mulligans.
In fact, the ability for Mankind to choose implies that more than one choice is available and that there is a high probability that those choices don't have equal best outcomes, meaning that one choice is better than the others. This is the very nature of our sin. Making choices that don't have the best outcomes because we have chosen not to rely on God.
Explanation:
If you have not noticed it's fairly clear that our world is broken. Even a casual look at all of our wars, economic strife, racial strife, personal strife, etc, will reveal that to you. So how or why did a perfect God create an imperfect world?
He didn't.
God created a perfect world but into it He put beings who had the ability to make choices. He wanted us to have the ability to make choices so that we could freely choose to have a loving relationship with Him. God is a relational Being. He already exists in a perfect loving relationship within the Trinity that is mentioned in the Bible. God decided to create the universe and placed mankind into His creation to live together with Him in a loving relationship. Now I figure you know mankind as well as I do so, what are the odds that over several thousand years and several billion people that no one was ever going to reject or choose not to rely on God? In fact, I would go so far as to say that the odds of every single person not rejecting God in some way was incredibly small. And that's, of course, what happened with the first man.
Don't even worry so much about the details of the circumstances around the time when mankind’s first rejection of God occurred, it's more important to understand what that first rejection was.
The first man, Adam, made a choice not to rely on God's own understanding and knowledge of the consequences of the action of eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It wasn't the eating of a piece of fruit that was the problem so much as it was deciding not to rely on God. That is what the first sin was. And that choice was made permanent within mankind and additionally caused all of creation to fall under a curse. That break between God and Man is now in-built into every human being.
Judicially speaking, according to God’s Justice System, mankind had sinned against God. Mankind could not fix this himself because mankind fixing it himself would necessitate mankind relying on his own efforts instead of God’s efforts, which is what caused the problem in the first place. And God doesn’t give Mulligans.
In fact, the ability for Mankind to choose implies that more than one choice is available and that there is a high probability that those choices don't have equal best outcomes, meaning that one choice is better than the others. This is the very nature of our sin. Making choices that don't have the best outcomes because we have chosen not to rely on God.