Starhunter wrote:All the questions are related, but let's start with what we know first.
Why does death have to be the penalty?
Easy answer, if a creep came and groomed your child, tortured and killed the child, what is the likely penalty as far as God is concerned? Or as far as you are concerned? The same treatment and death. It cannot be otherwise or the neighbor's child is next. Life sentence is also just. So long as it is prevented from happening again. Rehabilitation is also an option, rarely works.
The trouble with sin is that it starts off as a small thing, vanity and progresses to mass murder like it has with Satan. So as far as God is concerned, even diluted sin is totally unacceptable. God will never be sarcastic, and never have any secret hate. If He doesn't like something He spells it out loud and clear. Sinners on the other hand pretend to be righteous at all costs.
What about temporary sin? Unfortunately no sin has a temporary effect.
So we are talking about a universe which is consequential on all levels, spiritually - sin eventually affects a whole society,and on the physical level we know that everything has consequence, for example - the butterfly effect.
If we want to have a wholistic experience, to be sensitized as well as influential on whatever we come into contact, then the universe must be designed to be sensitive and effectual, for an enormous interaction of all life and all things.
In this system everything is vital and important, like one harmonious orchestration of creation.
That concept is not only inclusive of intense wisdom but incredibly up there with intelligence.
The interactions designed in the universe are infinitely complex and above all perfectly wise, that's what makes it so mysterious, beautiful and full of wonder.
A wife is an example of this mystery, but if you want a universe without consequence or even one with limited consequences, then you might as well marry a mannequin.
Life is very powerful and eternal, but at the same time vulnerable and fragile. In a perfect world there is perfect love, and there is no risk in it, no pain ever, no death ever, no harm or danger whatsoever, but as soon as we introduce some creep, it turns to hell, no matter how nice they are in the first place.
The world we are looking for where there is no pain and suffering was created by God in the first place, and will be restored again.
Let's say that God created something that does not sin, then it would have to be something that cannot love.
Let's go further and say that God creates a universe which has beings who experience all the good feelings of love, and eternal joy, but makes them believe that they are free and loving, they do not know that they are animated.
Where is the love between God and them? there is no love there and worse He cannot give it.
How much agony do we go through when we lose someone and cannot give our love to them any more?
The only way that God could create an artificial universe, is if He was artificial Himself, which means He could not possibly exist, because artificiality has no life in it and is not eternal.
So God is Life, Love and real, and death to anything which wants to rebel against that.
By the way, in heaven and the new earth, we are not animated, never. Genuine love can only exist with genuine freedom.
What is there to stop sin entering again? There has been an unnecessary battle, because Lucifer claimed that -
all "morally free creatures cannot be free so long as the law of God governs them" "Every creature should be able to do as they please according to their own moral judgement, and are not free until they do."
To find out if this claim has any merit, read the ten commandments and see which one is no good.
The war between Christ and Satan is over the issue of loyalty to God and His commandments.
Satan thinks he is entitled to the same rights as Christ, the same level of authority and worship, and to this end he works to gain allegiance from humankind, therefore he has incubated himself into religions, where we find goodness covering the activity of creeps. The idea of a universal Christ, "one lord over all" is his final move to unite the world into worshiping a false Christ which is indeed himself.
The whole rebellion has been allowed by God, because its true nature was not apparent in its beginnings, and now it is being waged on earth with men, because they joined the rebellion. God gives life to all, regardless of their loyalty and disloyalty, and freedom to all, within the limits of the laws of the land, - which in a good country are based on the last six commandments. But then here, we have another fierce battle going on - corruption in high places...
My question is not WHY does death have to be the penalty, It's WHO made death the penalty? The answer is god, god also said if we only obeyed him we'd live forever, but he also gave us free will to choose, then chose the penalty for not choosing to obey him, then so he didn't have to follow through with that penalty, he comes up with the plan to sacrifice part of himself and that will over ride his initial penalty and somehow allow us to still go on sinning but also still be able to live forever.
If he was going to change his rule anyway, why make the first one to begin with? why go through the unnessesary sacrifice? More importantly why praise this god for doing this?
The trouble with sin is that it starts off as a small thing, vanity and progresses to mass murder like it has with Satan.
Are you saying sin 'always' progresses or has the possibility to? Because i sin and and mine is yet to progress to murder. What do you mean like it has with satan? if you do a body count using the bible to calculate the amount of people satan and god have killed it looks roughly like this. Satan 10, God 2,500,000.
Theres a problem i have in the part where adam and eve disobeyed, adam and eve if they knew the consequences if they were able to make an informed decission then punishment is justified but they were yet to eat from the tree of knowledge so they didn't know good from bad yet, they were the equivilent of a 2 month old baby putting its fist in its mouth even after an authoritative figure told it not to.
Does this baby deserve punishment? Do the children of this baby deserve punishment?
The world we are looking for where there is no pain and suffering was created by God in the first place, and will be restored again.
Well what went wrong? where did the desire to disobey come from if we were created perfect in a perfect place?
Why didn't god hit the reset button straight away? Why wait till he had to flood us?
Earlier you claim that god knows that sin starts as small things and gets worse, so god would of known one day things would get worse and he'd have to do something (like flood the world) why not just nip it in the bud early or not create us with the ability to sin or better still not create anything at all, he didn't have to, we'd never know.
If he was perfect why does a perfect being feel the need to create anything? If you say he did it out of love, was he lacking love?
Let's say that God created something that does not sin, then it would have to be something that cannot love.
So your saying only things that disobey god can love? Why?
God creates the game the rules to the game and the players so im told, so god could of created us any way he wanted.
Is there something stopping this omnipotent omniscient deity from creating something that does not sin and also has the ability to love?
If im not mistaken we will not sin in heaven right? so going by you thinking there's no love in heaven also, if thats so why do you want to go there?
Genuine love can only exist with genuine freedom.
If you perceive something as genuine then to you it's genuine, if you perceive god as real then to you god is real. If your in jail but still feel free then to you your free, im sure there's people that feel more free when some of their choices are taken away from them when some of what you would describe as freedom is taken away from them. Perception is reality.
Whats to stop god creating an artificial world and making humans to perceive it' as real?
You seem to want to have it doth ways, you want to say god is so powerful that humans can't even comprehend his power or understand his mind, but then you want to go and try to impose limits on it when someone presents the problems that come along with saying god is omnipotent.
Christians also like to say things like who are you to judge god while at the same time they judge him as good and just etc. Double standards.