Want to make a contribution to my NaNoWriMo Novel? Here's what I want your thoughts on:
1) Why did God give us free will? I'm looking for an explanation that goes beyond "He wants us to have to choose to love Him", or "He didn't want us to be robots". I understand those two things, I'm looking deeper than that. Why did the sovereign God of the universe want us to have a choice when He knew it would wreck things? Why did it make a difference to him? What do you suppose His thought process was on the matter (assuming God "thinks") ?
2) Why did God create? I've heard that He was lonely or had love to give. Got anything deeper than that?
3) Why did God require sacrifice? I know that it served a purpose for us much more than it served God - hence the word "sacrifice". What else?
Anyone care to chime in? You don't have to stay directly on topic, I'm dancing around all kinds of related stuff. So fire away.
Don't have much time right this minute- a few early thoughts: On free will and sacrifice-- maybe it has a strong element of wanting us to experience growth. Since he was creating eternal creatures, growth would be vital to our health and happiness. This raises the question will we stop growing after we leave here and move on to the other place?
ReplyDeleteon creating- I believe creation is essential to the character of God. the desire to create is the thing in humans that most resembles God. I'd like to go on, but i'm out of time. i'll be back if i get the chance.
cindy
great questions you ask here, here are some thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI think God 'created' to illustrate himself and his character - he created humans to illustrate his love, nature to demonstrate his awesomeness, etc.
will ponder and send more thoughts as they arrive to my brain
Thanks for your thoughts, ladies. I appreciate it. If you'd like to add anything else, please do. I'm trying to pull my thoughts together and am having trouble articulating.
ReplyDeleteCindy - I like what you said about creating. I agree with that.
Trace - Creating to illustrate is a cool concept. Thanks.
well lily you like being dull and requiring no thought in your questions i see LOL great responses from cindy and trace. I think God wanted to see just how much His creation would willingly choose to be like Him on their own. He is Love and love by its very nature is other-centered, so it was a challenge for Him to take the risk of what choices his creation would make.
ReplyDeleteAs far as sacrifice... tough stuff, Absolutely blows my mind all the time i contemplate that the Living Almighty God freely chose, even when we rejected Him every way possible.... to DIE in order to make relationship with Him possible again!!! Sacrifice is the embodiment of selflessness and loving action, He seems to want to have us know this very deeply. A few thoughts there anyway. Enjoying this rain??/ NOT!!!
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteRain, what rain??? One of my best friends called today from Tucson just to tell me it was 85. Talk about cruel. I asked her when she would be sending my plane ticket.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. It is a tough subject. I'm trying to pull togather some cohesive thoughts that would make sense to someone who had never heard about Jesus. I've been so embedded in the church sub-culture for so long that I've totally lost the ability to simplfy these ideas. Not simplfy exacly, but explain them without being churchy.
So I appreciate what you guys have had to say, it's helping me gel my thoughts.