What is God's purpose?

[August]

My opinion, flame away....

God created us to glorify Him. Since He is the highest power, He can't glorify Himself, He needs some 'subjects' to glorify Him, and serve in His kingdom. Praise and honor we bestow on Him can only be regarded as sincere when we do it out of our own free will, if He made us without sin it would mean that we had no choice but to glorify Him, and that would really artificial. He wants us to choose to do this. This is where evil enters, some of these subjects are rebellious and refuse to worship Him, and would rather serve darkness. It makes Him sad, but He did understand it would be that way, and says as much.

Our sole purpose for having been created is to glorify God in everything we do, and to try and get others to do it too.

[bizzt]

Kind of like we can never be perfect, but that doesn't give us license to run around the world doing whatever sin seems like fun. We are still to try.

What we don't have a license to do that??

[hermitville101]

<confused>
Perhaps if you rephrase my poor brain will grasp your intent.

Are you trying to say that Christians are saved and therefore do have to right to do whatever we want, sin or otherwise, since we will just be forgiven?

[bizzt]

<confused>
Perhaps if you rephrase my poor brain will grasp your intent.

Are you trying to say that Christians are saved and therefore do have to right to do whatever we want, sin or otherwise, since we will just be forgiven?

Actually it was a Joke

[bizzt]

Rom 6:1
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

Rom 6:2
God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

[hermitville101]

Ahhhh...I hoped it was, but it was hard to tell.
I like to use <ss> to denote sarcastic smiles around my jokes, but then I don't really expect all of you (err..."all ya'll" as is proper around here) to know that. Just something my friends and I use...its quite convenient sometimes since text has a hard time expressing emotion put into speech.

[hermitville101]

Seems we have drifted a bit from the point though, so if we could please drift back that way...

[seedling]

Hermitville, I agree with colors. God's purpose is ultimately to express his Love through his creating power. Through his creation.

I guess I consider myself a Christian, but I don't have traditional "Christian" beliefs. I did for a very long time. Then I started to explore the beliefs that I would just rattle off to people and take for granted and never really, deeply know why I just "believed" certain facts without question. I was lazy. I was hypnotized, lulled into a false security. Holding on to other people's words and not the wordless Word in my heart. I decided I wanted "aha" moments, as Oprah would say. We need to question until we get the "aha" experience that no one can take away from us.

So this is why I think your question is a good one and I think it can be answered if you would just look at yourself and into your heart. He created you. He gave you yourself. He brought you into being. Doesn't that leave you in awe? Is this not Love? That is one way of showing his love. There are millions of others.

You know, it's funny ... I read a couple books by a basically atheist biologist, I don't know if I can mention the name but ... these books he wrote deepened my faith. These books showed me the love of our Creator ... and sent me on a journey of discovery.

He is the initial spark of all creation. I am beginning to believe in evolution, that is why this board attracted me … God & Science.

And I think his purpose is Love. It started billions of years ago and is still going on, up to this very minute.

Hermitville ... what do you think his purpose is in creating you? What does your heart say?

[hermitville101]

Hermitville, I agree with colors. God's purpose is ultimately to express his Love through his creating power. Through his creation.

It appears that some of our more fundamental beliefs are different, which may make this messy, but here goes. Again, I have to state that there are easier ways for God to express love that don't require His son or billions in Hell.

I guess I consider myself a Christian, but I don't have traditional "Christian" beliefs. I did for a very long time. Then I started to explore the beliefs that I would just rattle off to people and take for granted and never really, deeply know why I just "believed" certain facts without question. I was lazy. I was hypnotized, lulled into a false security. Holding on to other people's words and not the wordless Word in my heart. I decided I wanted "aha" moments, as Oprah would say. We need to question until we get the "aha" experience that no one can take away from us.

I certainly agree that we need to question everything and assume nothing until we have proved it to ourselves. However I would caution against emotion. It lies. It can deceive. It is dangerous and volatile, subject to random changes and reversals. I guess I would say that I put emphasis on logic and reason rather than emotion as it is ... more reliable I would say.

So this is why I think your question is a good one and I think it can be answered if you would just look at yourself and into your heart. He created you. He gave you yourself. He brought you into being. Doesn't that leave you in awe? Is this not Love? That is one way of showing his love. There are millions of others.

I'm not really left in awe, but I'm weird about things like that, so I think you just picked what happened to be a poor example. However I would agree that He is showing His love by our existence; He loves us and all that. But again, you are looking at the heart, (emotion) not mind, (logic), which leaves me skeptical.

You know, it's funny ... I read a couple books by a basically atheist biologist, I don't know if I can mention the name but ... these books he wrote deepened my faith. These books showed me the love of our Creator ... and sent me on a journey of discovery.

Cool, though I should point out I disagree with most all points of evolution.

He is the initial spark of all creation. I am beginning to believe in evolution, that is why this board attracted me … God & Science.

I was going to try to keep to the point but, I can't help but say quickly:
Evolution is not scientifically viable. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (physics major:)) states that entropy is always increasing. In other words things go from order to disorder, not the other way around. The universe can not randomly spawn more ordered systems or beings. Someone once said something along the lines of: The odds of evolution are about those of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a 747. Pretty low odds (somewhere around ZERO) if you ask me. Also the idea of one species mutating into another is not viable. Things do not randomly form new genetic material. They may have a deterioration or replication of something they have, but its not gaining order or complexity. (Second Law again. ) Not to mention the fact that the mutations are supposed to be very small which would mean that there would be millions, no, billions more species than exist. The steps required going from a monkey to a man are in the thousands at least, if not millions, so where are are the thousands of species between us two at. and of course this must happen between every two related species. So were a few magnitudes of ten from where we are supposed to be in that area. Also God initiated evolution (resolving the single greatest -in my mind- problem with the theory), right? Why? Why create something that has to evolve and change over time and become something (violating physics in the process) when He can just make it perfect to begin with.
People see the world as getting better over time, but I think it's getting worse. In the classic example: your room is going to get messier over time if you don't do anything, its just the way it works. I can never keep my room clean for long. It falls into disorder. More and more diseases are developing in the world. More and more problems are becoming problems. We're going down, not up.

And I think his purpose is Love. It started billions of years ago and is still going on, up to this very minute.

I think love is certainly part of God, but not the sole reason for His creating us. (note opening argument) (note last argument for "billions")

Hermitville ... what do you think his purpose is in creating you? What does your heart say?

I don't know what His purpose is exactly, hence the reason I asked the question.
<discounts "heart" on account of earlier argument>

[Mastermind]

<i>Also God initiated evolution (resolving the single greatest -in my mind- problem with the theory), right? Why? Why create something that has to evolve and change over time and become something (violating physics in the process) when He can just make it perfect to begin with.</i>

Second Law of Thermodynamics. And before you say God can get around that, yes, He can. However, the universe has its own Laws set by God, and I don't see why God would break them.

[hermitville101]

<confused>

[Mastermind]

Creating something out of nothing would be breaking the first(i think) law, right?

[hermitville101]

Actually I think that's the Law of Conservation of mass/energy. First law is something else that involves way to many incorrectly answered test problems. But yes, the creation of the universe breaks that law.

However, the universe has its own Laws set by God, and I don't see why God would break them.

So now you're saying He does break them? It's almost kind of an exception though since He was kinda laying down the laws when he was creating things, so there weren't any laws until after He had created them...something like that anyway.

Still confused though.

[Mastermind]

The creation of the universe does not since the universe wasn't around to have any laws. However, the creation of life occurs WITHIN the universe AFTER it was created.

[hermitville101]

Right. I think. But I still fail to see the point.