The libertarian free will dilemma

The first point we must make, is from our limited vantage point we feel it necessary to know, and even demand it from God—and it is fundamental that we be able to accept it without knowing, because this is honoring to God. We say, "Even when I can't see it, I'm still willing to trust and honor God enough to put him above my intellectual abilities and emotional feelings—and say God only does what is loving, just and right, and it is my feelings and intellect that are insufficient." See, this is the reverse of the Original Sin of Adam and Eve—it's like going in reverse. Eve knew in herself, "God has given me every reason to trust him—Adam and I have never observed a single element of the problem of evil, we have never known suffering, we have not see one logical problem where it looked like God was the bad guy—and yet, we are still going to believe God is a liar, God is holding out on us, God doesn't want what's best for us, and God is evil." And think of Job—Job had to endure some of the most significant sufferings and loss with no explanation whatsoever, as we read his words we see him cry out several times "Why did this evil happen? Why?! I don't get it, I don't feel like it makes sense, I don't think it's justified, I don't understand it." And that feeling of offense prompted Job to started accusing and blaspheming God.

The second point is, my best understanding of what must be behind it. The one thing fallen creatures just do not do, and even the sin nature of Christian believers, is we do not naturally value God above all others. Oh, sometimes we think we do, we say we do, we try to, but underneath all of that, without a direct miracle and intervention and process of grace, we just do not naturally value God. We don't think God is very important and we naturally devalue him. And my best answer would be, that I believe something about the principle of delegation, one person having responsibility and power to affect others, and something about the principle of free will, being able to freely choose to honor God instead of being forced to, brings more glory and honor and pleasure to God, thereby valuing God. And that value—that value that God put on that principle, is more valuable than all the suffering of billions of people this world has ever known. See, I think the Calvinists are half right—God does have the justified right to be evil if he wanted, he could deliberately make vessels of wrath and not be culpable, because he owns all things. But because God self-reveals and self professes to be maximally loving and just, he has told us that is not who he decided to be.

The heart of the objection, for both the atheist and the Christian, is a rebellion against making God more valuable than suffering. It is making the suffering of the creation an idol that must be worshiped at all cost, and God himself must bow before it. God is culpable, God is a criminal, God is blameworthy, God is evil and cruel, God is a jerk to us, when we insist that God just does not have much value and human well being is the single most important moral objective and goal that God must adhere to. And it is sourced in pride, self-exaltation, the independent valuation of the creation upon itself by the powers invested in it, leading to offense at God, and rebellion, and a necessary involvement with demonic powers who stand for all these things, a union and involvement with the power of Satan and his hordes—who all represent the independence of pride and rebellion. So this manifests in occultic activity of every kind, and a warping of perceptions, and a utilization of logic and the intellect to feed our sense that we are able in and of ourselves to figure it all out and understand the moral problems and resolve God as the true criminal—from a place of limitation and sinfulness.

And all of this can be averted and defeated and subdued by one simple principle: Humility. Admitting the way I intellectually parse the logic, the way I emotionally feel about moral problems, the way something inside of me screams when I see a victimization of terrible proportions and what seems to my natural self, unjustified, unnecessary, uncalled for, harm and suffering upon innocent people, people who did not in and of themselves choose this lot, or choose the nature they were born with, or choose to be born into a situation of horrific and unfathomable abuse, or choose to never know the light of day through no fault of their own decision, born without hope as much as if God had, in fact, been a Calvinistic God who created them only to be destroyed for his glory, but were, in fact, created lost and hopeless because of some man's choice way back somewhere, some Original Sin of our federal head and representative, everything in me screams out "That's not fair! That's not good! That's not just! That's not righteous! That's not loving! That's not holy! That's not caring! That's not justified!" and I cannot see any logical or emotional way past it, but underneath is devaluing God, the idolatry of pride, rebellion, and the occult, trusting in myself.

God is scary. God is different. God is particular and unique in a way a sinful creature just does not naturally understand, accept, praise, and adhere to. God is a force to contend with, and a force none will prevail against. But God is mysterious and strange to our natural logical interactions, he just doesn't naturally make sense to us and his ways seem so foreign and weird and incomprehensible, that there is a lot of room for offense and a failure of faith where we just can't comprehend or feel like we can justify God being good anymore, and we can crash and burn and give up on God, and accuse him of terrible things, because we think he just didn't have a good enough reason or excuse to allow all the suffering he did, it was just reckless, it was careless, it was needless, it was callous indifference, it was thoughtless endangerment, for him to allow one person's choice to open the Pandora's Box for untold misery and suffering and torment, as if God had a fetish for pain, as if God just loved the idea of hurting and destroying things he made, as if God were some cosmic masochist who just doesn't care when a person goes to hell without the Gospel or some little child suffers horrible molestation or when some young woman dies of Ebola and cancer and tumors and intestinal parasites, why is all this necessary just to give some value to measly old God who could avoid the whole thing altogether?

These are deep waters and deep issues of the heart, and to come out on the other side, to hold on despite all the possibilities of our faith failing us and the raging of offense at God within, is to reverse the Original Sin, it's to eat from a tree exactly opposite and inverse to Eve's tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it is to wake up in what sometimes seems and feels like hell, just as Eve woke up in heaven, and say I trust God anyway, I trust God when I don't understand, I trust God when I don't even feel capable of believing he is good and loving, I trust God even when I see no real evidence that convinces me, just as Eve only knew evidence of God's goodness, I trust God when the lights are out and the blood is on God's hands, and everything in my mind and heart points to God as the real criminal, I trust and honor and glorify God that somewhere, somehow, there's just something I'm not processing right, there's just something I don't understand and think I do, there's just something is too sinful in me to properly evaluate and weigh the morals, there's just something wrong in me and not God, and I am the criminal and not God, and I have insufficient moral purity and intellectual understand to properly understand what God is doing—behold I am vile, I put my hand over my mouth and say no more. And those monsters that only God can draw near with his sword, the monsters of pride and self-righteousness, were defeated in Job's life.

and worth it." This is why removing free will makes me feel safer about God and less offended by his actions—I would rather sacrifice God's universal love, than embrace a logical problem that puts me in personal danger for my own safety and my own glory.

, that represents hours of anguish and struggle and prayer and cries to God. And I hope something I wrote and help someone in some way.

Humility.
I agree with a core principal here that we can't fully understand evil and we must humbly trust God. I appreciate the obvious searching you are willing to do and grapple with your faith.

With that said, I do think this issue is distinguished from the POE in general.

The POE is partially muted for those
God loves in Calvisim.

while we can't fully explain why
God allows rape and murder (or even paper cuts and hang nails, which seem unecessary to an all powerful God).
When the dust settles, we can say all that suffering was somehow used for our good. There is at least a happy ending for those God loves. Yes it doesn't answer the problem, but most definitely mutes it.


Not so for the freewill advocate, the end for most that God "loves" is eternal torment. That makes today's suffering look like Disneyland. No happy ending to mute the problem.

Love keeps no record of wrongs......
 
I did not forget anything and you addressed nothing I wrote.
To the contrary you forgot the two things mentioned

Your doctrine of unconditional election to salvation/reprobation

and

Your doctrine of divine determination of all things

further you did nothing to make God's stated love of all mankind consistent with those two aspects of your theology

BTW given your belief in determination and unconditional election

how would God be perfectly just in all of going lost seeing as he determined it all?
 
To the contrary you forgot the two things mentioned

Your doctrine of unconditional election to salvation/reprobation

and

Your doctrine of divine determination of all things

further you did nothing to make God's stated love of all mankind consistent with those two aspects of your theology

BTW given your belief in determination and unconditional election


how would God be perfectly just in all of going lost seeing as he determined it all?
Sure did. Watch. God can discriminate with His love as we do. I don't love my neighbor with the same sort of love that I love my wife. Answered.

Second question. Because He is God He is under no obligation to show love or mercy to anyone. We allow God to be God
 
Sure did. Watch. God can discriminate with His love as we do. I don't love my neighbor with the same sort of love that I love my wife. Answered.

Second question. Because He is God He is under no obligation to show love or mercy to anyone. We allow God to be God
Pretty weak reply

as your theology holds God determined their rejection of him and their sin
 
Sure did. Watch. God can discriminate with His love as we do. I don't love my neighbor with the same sort of love that I love my wife. Answered.

Second question. Because He is God He is under no obligation to show love or mercy to anyone. We allow God to be God
You ignored the fact your theology makes God the cause of all their disobedience
 
My answer is explained by a video I saw on a Doug Batchelor Seventh Day Adventist show. The video showed a house on fire; the parents were safe outside, but the children were trapped upstairs. The children were begging to be saved; but the parents said the children were on Restriction and had to stay in their room...

Of course the video points out how unloving this is, and Conflates the example with the punishment of Hell; SDA's don't believe in Hell. Obviously it's unloving to leave your children to burn in a fire. But many people are children of their father Satan. I think the Fact (fact since we're Evangelicals) that people go to a torturous Hell without salvation from it, shows that God does not love everyone. Batchelor has an faulty premise; that we're All God's children, and he has to Love everyone...
The problem here lies in what seems clear teaching from scripture that God does indeed love all men.
One example of many:
Matthew 5 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[i] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect
 
Pretty weak reply

as your theology holds God determined their rejection of him and their sin
You are correct, He did.

He does have love them with the same sort of love as He does His church. Its weak because you have no answer.
 
You are correct, He did.

He does have love them with the same sort of love as He does His church. Its weak because you have no answer.
So he loves them but unconditionally determined their destruction

Oh what a confused theology
 
Depends on the sort of love. God loves them but they hate Him.

Their destruction is not against their will right?
Again you ignore your theology

unconditional election to salvation/reprobation and divine determination of all things

They hate God because God determined them to hate him

Hello
 
Again you ignore your theology

unconditional election to salvation/reprobation and divine determination of all things

They hate God because God determined them to hate him

Hello
I agree with you 100%. He determined they hate Him because He does not love them with the same sort of love as His church. Yet they hate God of their own free will.
 
I agree with you 100%. He determined they hate Him because He does not love them with the same sort of love as His church. Yet they hate God of their own free will.
Still confused theology

He loves them but determines their destruction apart from anything they might do

mighty strange definition of love
 
Still confused theology

He loves them but determines their destruction apart from anything they might do

mighty strange definition of love
Depends on the sort of love your talking about. What is that? The third time now?

There is nothing confusing about it unless your not all that bright
 
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