The devil cannot create anything, but he perverts what God already created. Hence the devil will sabotage Christian growth with any chance he gets.
Yet when God acts, there is always parallel positive side effects. That is another reason why God uses simple and settle things to do vast things. (Plus God doesn’t want to allow you to assume his power in your life is by your own accord. So God’s healing and power is under his “jealous” guise.)
I am noticing how the devil has sabotaged my heart. And kept my mind busy during church service. All in order to sabotage my growth. They will know Jesus’ voice for many reasons. If the devil only knew the true grandeur of God…
Complacency is another reason for the state of the world. People keep pointing out times “Christian” rules would worry about the destination and not the journey, and thus do crusades. But the true problem comes from complacency, thus stagnant growth. Thus huge areas of neglect we don’t notice until it becomes big enough to analyze,… and even happens enough to notice a trend. But I assure you when we had enough, God gave gifts to those with the right answer.
So when you recoganize the devils sabatoging your life. Notice this, hating the hate doesn’t work. You got to love the “hell” out of your enemies. You can’t cut them out, and snub them out. I choose to recognize that I don’t love their hate, and then, when there is common ground, stimulate that.
does no one else wonder at the etymology of god and “good”, or devil and “evil”…? even the religious person must acknowledge that these concepts ‘god’ and ‘devil’ derive primarily from a historical linguistic basis.
yes, im sure the highest moral idea of ‘good’ and the highest moral good being ‘god’, and likewise the worst amoral idea of ‘evil’ and the worst amoral being ‘devil’ are in no way related… just a coincidence.
if god created the devil, then god is responsible for what the devil did… furthermore, since the devil exists, and god doesnt get rid of him, god is giving sanction to the most evil entity in reality, an entity that is responsible for countless human innocents going to hell for all of eternity.
so god approves of the devil, and approves of what the devil is and does, since god could choose to get rid of him at any moment, but does not.
God didn’t bother to put a snake proof fence around the garden of eden. Not only that, he basically tempted us and must have known we would eat the forbidden fruit.
God created us knowing all the pain we would endure, the sins we would commit.
He kills us with a great flood and then threatens us with the rapture…
God is at best a a drunk abusive uncle who would sit back and watch us get raped for entertainment.
even IF god gave us “free will” and the ability to choose what we want, independent of his knowledge, which is the christian’s only response to this, that just means that god is fallible and NOT omniscent, which invalidates the very concept of the christian god.
wonderer, i have to say i am surprised, but we agree on something.
Your a smart guy Three times, we have our differences but i can respect your ability to think.
Perhaps it’s ironic or perhaps it’s fitting that organized religion is something that can unify us…
The idea of the devil completely contradicts the Christian notion of God, but in a religion where asking questions just earns frowns from your peers, that’s not suprising…
agreed-- the concept of the devil is so counter to the christian notion of god, especially when they claim that god ‘created’ lucifer.
either god doesnt know what we or angels are going to do in advance, or he does:
if he DOESNT, then hes not perfect, hes not infallible, hes not omniscent, and he created a universe where it might end up that all human life which he “loves” ends up suffering in agony and meaningless death because someone like “lucifer” chooses to become evil, and god cant do anything about it (because apparently hes also impotent). basically under this view god just threw the dice, knowing full well that the universe could end up being cruel and evil. nice one god.
if god DOES know what we are going to do in advance, then we do not have free will, which means that we have no hope of ever changing anything in our lives, and it means that we are not responsible for our actions, hence god’s sending us to an unending eternity of suffering and death is cruel and unjust; it also means that, since god KNEW that lucifer would become the devil and be responsible for countless innocent human suffering and agony, then god himself is responsible for this, since he created lucifer and knew full well what he was doing.
so you see, its an either/or, and either way you look at it, the christian notions of god and the devil are completely counter to each other, and end up presenting christianity with unsurmountable internal contradictions… im glad im not christian, i dont know how my intellectual integrity and rationality would survive such inconsistent and self-contradicting core beliefs… how anything true can stem from such an illogical mental groundwork is completely beyond me.
Because the plot lines would be so weak that no one would get up in the morning. Consider:
Furthermore, without Mephistopheles and his ilk, it would seem we’d possess less need to seek out God, and our dramatic subtexts would be reduced to avoiding fruit and not noticing our genitals.
we need REAL obstacles to overcome in order to grow and evolve, this is true; the devil is not a real object, it is a fiction, a virus-like idea that spreads through child-indoctrination and reinforces itself through fear. if an “obstacle” to the “drama” you speak of is real (like war/death/desease/natural tragedy/idiocy/poverty/etc) then yes, it does serve to motivate and spur human growth, at least in the long run, since we NEED to grow to learn to cope with and overcome such obstacles.
however, when were talking about a made-up obstacle based on irrational fear, this LIMITS our actions, RESTRICTS our knowledge, rather than MOTIVATING our actions and BROADENING our knowledge, as do real obstacles in life.
the devil is tremendously harmful as a concept… that there is some molevolent, god-like being bent on hate rage and terror thats always around me, lurking beyind every unfortunate event or difficult situation in life-- this is paralysing on the psyche. it robs you of joy, of a free uplifted determination to triumph over life’s challenges, for how does one triumph over a challenge that cannot be defeated? at best, we can only hope to be in “constant defense mode” for every little temptation or action or thought which might lead to eternal damnation… this is the opposite of drama, it is hell in every sense of the word.
christianity has created, discovered “hell” in that it implants the concept directly into the human subconscious as a child; a constant fear and terror, someone is always out to get you. in anything other than “religion” this would be called paranoid schizophrenia; in christianity, its called “gods plan”.
OMG!! Don’t I just reek of sarcasm? Mustn’t wash so much next time, I guess…
Ok, how bout the devil with the blue dress. I’ll get up in the morning for her!
3xG:
Actually, Buddhism (of which I’m fond) has some great hell scenarios, too. I agree, hell and the devil are pernicious psychic paralizers; but if we’re gonna speak in terms of a god and heaven (not that I must, but, well, here we are), then I think they serve as a certain counterbalance to the banality of polyannaism…
talking about the devil on a philosophy board is something really odd, since I cannot imagine the mere possibility of a true philosopher really believing in this…creature, concept, idea, ‘being’?
PlatosaysGod may live in the ‘dream-world’ Aidan Mclaren talks about so often in his posts…
