“One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?’
But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is
formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ”
(Romans 9:19, 20 NIV)
The source of God’s hostility toward man is that which is called sin:
Sin is a term used in religious context to describe an act that violates a moral rule or code, or the state of mind of one committing a violation. The moral code is set by a divine entity (i.e the Abrahamic God).
[b]Sin is often used to mean an action that is prohibited or considered wrong; in some religions (notably some sects of Christianity), sin can refer to a state of mind rather than a specific action. Colloquially, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, shameful, harmful, or alienating might be termed “sinful”.
Common ideas surrounding sin in various religions include:
• Punishment for sins, from other people, from God either in life or in afterlife, or from the Universe in general.
• The question of whether or not an act must be intentional to be sinful.
• The idea that one’s conscience should produce guilt for a conscious act of sin.
• A scheme for determining the seriousness of the sin.
• Repentance from (expressing regret for and determining not to commit) sin, and atonement (repayment) for past deeds.
• The possibility of forgiveness of sins, often through communication with a deity or intermediary; in Christianity often referred to as salvation.
Crime and justice are related secular concepts.
[/b]
(Wikipedia: Sin, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin)
[b]The existence of a capricious or malicious God aside, one can argue that God is hostile to and punishes states of mind and behavior that humans uncontrollably feel and desire to perform.
But there are verses in the Bible stating that God is invulnerable to and unmoved by human behavior, good or bad:[/b]
Look up at the heavens and see;
gaze at the clouds so high above you.
If you sin, how does that affect him?
If your sins are many, what does that do to him?
If you are righteous, what do you give to him,
or what does he receive from your hand?
Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself,
and your righteousness only the sons of men.
(Job 35:5-8 NIV)
The verse above states that God is not emotionally affected by human sin, but Fundamentalist Christianity preaches that God is “broken up” or “torn apart” by sin. What are we to believe? The aforementioned view (of God’s emotional upheaval at the sight of sin) contradicts the verse above. But it is a dire necessity for even the Bible to obey the law of non-contradiction[b], as the presence of contradiction between two or more statements (believed to be true) questions their logic.
For example, a logical concept is that God wishes for all men to be saved (from their slavery to sinful and predatory nature as well as “hell”) and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4), but God is emotionally impervious to sin due to his omniscient foreknowledge and comprehension of the nature of reality.
If God is emotional unaffected by sin, is the very notion of God’s hostility and “wrath” toward sin a logical contradiction?
Perhaps things depend upon the meaning of the terms “hostility” or “hate”. Usually, “hostility” or “hate” evokes images of rage, anger: the clenched fist; the gritted teeth.[/b]
[b]Reading of God’s wrath in the Bible may evoke images of these mannerisms in God (who may be imagined to “clench His fist” or to “grit His teeth” or to “wince” at the thought or sight of sin). But the law of non-contradiction is satisfied if one asserts that God felt true anger and rage as an unconditional Pavlovian response to the imaginary sin of imaginary beings within God’s (pre-universe) prevision of the past, present, and future of a possible world (a logical expression of his omniscience).
Job’s observation of God’s emotional invulnerability to human sin, then, would apply to God’s reaction to sin after his previous reaction to the “original sin” within his pre-universe imagination.[/b]
There are situations in the world that arouse strong emotions in us. Some of these arouse the emotion unconditionally, or from our very first encounter with them: a loud clap of thunder startles us the very first time that we hear it. Pavlovian conditioning provides a powerful account of how objects take on emotional significance. According to the behavioral account, the basic mechanism for all acquired emotional states is the pairing of a neutral object with an unconditioned emotional state.
(Seligman, Martin E.P. and Rosenhan, David L: Abnormal Psychology (pg. 107), Second Edition, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, London, 1984, 1989)
This dissertation questions the rationality and fairness of God’s experience of wrath (rage and anger) toward sin that is not motivated by predatory malice, and the rationality and fairness of his wrath toward uncontrollable desires, feelings, and thoughts that considered ‘sinful’ that continuously rage in the subconscious of the human mind.
[size=150]Severity Of Sins[/size]
Judaism, it turns out, divides sin into three levels—with the more severe sins motivated by malice and defiance:
[size=150]The Three Levels Of Sin[/size]
[b]The generic Hebrew word for any kind of sin is avera (literally: “transgression”). Based on verses in the Hebrew Bible, Judaism describes three levels of sin. There are three categories of a person who commits an avera.
• Pesha (deliberate sin; in modern Hebrew: crime) or Mered (lit.: rebellion) - An intentional sin; an action committed in deliberate defiance of God; (Strong’s Concordance :H6588 (פשע pesha’, peh’shah). According to Strong it comes from the root (:H6586); rebellion, transgression, trespass.
• Avon (lit.: iniquity) - This is a sin of lust or uncontrollable emotion. It is a sin done knowingly, but not done to defy God; (Strong’s Concordance :H5771 (avon, aw-vone). According to Strong it comes from the root (:H5753); meaning perversity, moral evil:–fault, iniquity, mischief.
• Cheit - This is an unintentional sin, crime or fault. (Strong’s Concordance :H2399 (חַטָּא chate). According to Strong it comes from the root khaw-taw (:H2398, H2403) meaning “to miss, to err from the mark (speaking of an archer), to sin, to stumble.”
Judaism holds that no human being is perfect, and all people have sinned many times. However, certain states of sin (i.e. avon or cheit) do not condemn a person to damnation; only one or two truly grievous sins lead to anything approaching the standard conception of hell. The scriptural and rabbinic conception of God is that of a creator who tempers justice with mercy.[/b]
(Wikipedia: Sin, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin)
[size=150]I. What Is Required In Order For God To Be “Fair” To Human Beings?[/size]
[b]God’s fairness or sense of “fair play”, or God being “just” (Romans 3:26) in his treatment of human beings will ultimately depend upon God’s wisdom, in terms of:
- His knowledge of the mental and moral difference between himself and human beings, in terms of:
a. His natural inability to be tempted by sin—despite his knowledge of the nature of evil
b. His knowledge of human sensual pleasure, natural aggression, and other uncontrollable states of the conscious and subconscious mind
Human nature can be argued to have first began existence in the mind of God independent God’s will—through the uncontrollable mechanism of God’s omniscient mind. If God is omniscient and knew past, present, and future before the creation of the universe, the law of non-contradiction demands that the nature of man is an accident in the mind of God.
(If one doubts this, then one should ask oneself: if God can know the nature of his future thoughts, and can control whether or not a thought will come to mind, then given the existence of evil in the content of God’s foreknowledge—why did God not prevent his mind from sustaining future imagination of evil, thus removing the phenomenon from even imaginary existence?)
The omniscience of God, if it means pre-universe foreknowledge of the actualization of an imaginary world, begs an equity of God toward created subordinates, who are merely actors performing the “play” of God’s actualization of a possible world. This fairness (which would exist if God is good) demands the existence of mercy, with God’s actions toward humans tempered by mercy (a side-effect of God’s kindness)[/b]
“The problem of sin be solved if I show them……mercy!”
“De Lawd” (God), portrayed by Rex Ingram in the film: Green Pastures, 1936
As Paul observed:
“God has bound all men over to disobedience [in re-enacting the accidental nature of man discovered within the mind of God during his omniscient computation of all possible worlds] so that he may have mercy on them all [by later evolving that mind into one that shares the transcendency and absence of sin of the mind of Jesus Christ, with the formerly sinful coming to accept the evolutionary passage as an aspect of the mechanics behind existence].”
(Romans 11:32 NIV)
[size=150]The Helplessness In The Experience Of Desire[/size]
[b]“…but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do
not do, but what I hate I do. I know that nothing good
lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
For I have the desire to do what is good,
but I cannot carry it out.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good,
evil is right there with me. For in my inner being
I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work
in the members of my body, waging war against the
law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law
of sin at work within my members.
What a wretched man I am!”
[/b]
(Romans 7: 14, 18, 19, 21-24 NIV)
[size=150]NEWS REPORT: DALLAS[/size]
[size=145]MINISTER RESIGNS AFTER SEX STING[/size]
[b]A minister who was arrested in an Internet sex sting has resigned his position at a Dallas-area megachurch, a pastor said Saturday.
The Rev. Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, said during services Saturday that the church has accepted Joe Barron’s resignation, effective immediately.
Barron was charged Friday with online solicitation of a minor. Undercover officers posing as a 13-year-old girl communicated with the 52-year-old Plano man for about two weeks.
The online conversations were sexual in nature, police said.
On May 6, Barron suggested meeting the girl in person. He eventually made the nearly 200-mile drive to Bryan on Thursday, where he was arrested. Police said they found a Webcam and condoms in Barron’s car.
Barron was released from the Brazos County Jail on Friday on $7,000 bail. Police were unsure if he had an attorney.
Graham said it was a heartbreaking week in which “you need to know that we are appalled and we are disgraced by this terrible action, an unacceptable action, by a minister on our staff.”
Prestonwood Baptist Church is one of the largest churches in the country with 26,000 members and 40 ministers.
(Austin-American Statesman (Metro and State): Minister Resigns After Sex Sting, Monday, May 19, 2008 edition)[/b]
[b]At the bottom level, desire is arguably the psychological and affective “fuel” of sin (save for cheit sins). Aside from accidental violations of God’s law, one violates God’s commands (as it were) because one desires to do so, either because one wishes to defy God (pesha) or because an unwillingness or inability to resist a powerful urge or desire (avon). Extortion or threat notwithstanding, one does what one desires to do.
One can argue, however, that the very experience of desire itself is uncontrollable, in the sense that the experience of an emotional state is beyond the willful control of the individual. If one doubts this, then one can ask if it is possible to arrest a feeling state as one begins to feel it, transforming it instantly into a different feeling leaving no trace of the previous feeling was almost felt.[/b]
[size=150]God’s Commandments v.s. The Genuine Self[/size]
"…I know what you’ve been going through all these years.
The isolation, the Otherness, the hunger that’s never
satisfied. But you’re not alone anymore, Dexter.
You can be yourself with me…
your true, genuine self…"
–Brian Moser (Christian Camargo), serial killer and brother
of the titular protoganist (Michael C. Hall) of SHOWTIME’s: Dexter
Religious and social norms and standards of conduct ultimately fly in the face of one’s true, genuine feelings and desires. It seems as if one is defeated from the start, as the very things that God forbids are just those things that one is dying to do. But one’s desires, whatever they may be, exist. If they did not, then one could effortlessly obey God’s law. Behind the strife between God and man lies the absence of innate purity of forbidden desire. We are trapped between a rock and a hard place: if not for the fact that we constantly desire and feel just those things that are forbidden, there would exist no need for “thou shalt not”.
[size=150] God’s Requirement For True Goodness: Outward, Physical “Good” Behavior Fails To Make The Grade[/size]
The Bible is adamant concerning God’s (implied or explicit) requirement that an absence of sin (independent of the coverage provided by Christ) necessitates not only restraint of harmful behavior or outward, physical altruism—but an inward purity of heart and desire.
Doctrine of Justification. [b]Yet more impelling than any of these factors was Paul’s doctrine of Justification. As a Jew he had sought security through obedience to Moses’ law. Even afterward, he called the law “holy, righteous, and good,” the true revelation of the divine will.
But man does not obey God’s will. In particular, the law says “Thou shalt not covet,” and this demand for purity of inward desire is violated by every one, every day. So the law, divine as it is, cannot make us good, nor can it forgive us when we sin. In a word, the law cannot “justify”. Unless God intervenes and provides some other means to forgiveness and strength, man is doomed. (Romans 7).[/b]
(New Book Of Knowledge Encyclopedia: The Apostle Paul, Scholastic Press, Canada )
Jesus, in (at least) two statements, implied that inward purity of heart is necessary for sinlessness. Sinful desire—independent of physical “acting out”—is itself sinful behavior:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery’. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
(Matthew 5: 27, 28 NIV)
Or:
[b]“Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man
from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go
into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.
What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean’.
For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts,
sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice,
deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.
All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean’.”[/b]
(Mark 7: 18-23 NIV)
What are we to do? The “things that come out of a man and make him ‘unclean’” are supervenient, arising beyond the control of conscious will (we have such thoughts and feelings because they happen to exist: if we possessed the power to prevent their arousal before-the-fact, we would truly have the ability to grant ourselves inward purity of heart). Fortunately, God provides a “loophole” that does not require inward purity of heart: forgiveness of sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Just this justification, this forgiveness and moral strength, Paul found in Christ.
(New Book Of Knowledge Encyclopedia: The Apostle Paul, Scholastic Press, Canada)
According to Fundamentalist Christian doctrine (and all other forms of Christianity to a fault), the sacrifice of Jesus Christ settles the debt for the sins (pesha, avon, and cheit) of humanity. Forgiveness, it turns out, compensates for the uncontrollability of sinful desire. Combined with the heartfelt Saving Belief:
“If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,
and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised
him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
(Romans 10:9 NIV)
[b]:Christian salvation is achieved. All that remains is for the Christian to petition for forgiveness when one sins in the future and to “give it the old college try” in refraining from sin for the remainder of life.
But even with such a “remedial program” Christian doctrine is divided and there are gaps in knowledge: there remains the question of the survival of fallible moral nature in heaven and the faith-without-works v.s. faith-through-works debate.[/b]
[size=150]Charles Manson Goes To Heaven?[/size]
A never-ending “civil war” rages between segments of Fundamentalist Christianity, in the division among believers between the doctrines of “salvation through faith alone” and “salvation through faith and works”. The English translation of the bible contains both.
[size=150]The “Faith Alone” Doctrine[/size]
[b]"Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.
Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. But to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.”[/b]
(Romans 3: 27, 28; Romans 4: 4, 5 NIV)
[b]The “Faith Alone” doctrine is encouraging to those who suffer from uncontrollable habits, lusts, and addictions inhibiting “normal” moral behavior, but it carries an inadvertent loophole that many find reprehensible. The “faith alone” doctrine seems to imply that no moral change or moral striving is necessary: one needs only faith that Christ died upon the cross and rose again. All sins are forgiven and the individual is granted a one-way ticket to heaven regardless of the potential to commit future sin in heaven or the individual’s possession of even the vilest personality.
This moral loophole is a complaint of the Protestant Fundamentalism of Jack Chick. “Chick Tracts” (cartoons with situational dramas stressing the necessity to “get saved now”) propose that moral change is not as important as accepting Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior:[/b]
Jack Chick critics warn of the inherent moral bankruptcy of the “faith alone” doctrine in parody:
If “faith alone” is the name of the game, does this mean that even Charles Manson unquestionably achieves heaven, if he simply “believes in his heart that Jesus rose from the dead”? What is God to do with a psychopath who makes it into heaven based upon his or her “faith alone” in the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ? The Bible is silent concerning the pre-afterlife to afterlife morality of heavenly inhabitants, but if scripture in Revelation is an indication (“God will wipe every tear from their eyes”, “Behold, all things are made new!”), a pre-heavenly lobotomy may be imposed upon those whose moral natures are “less than stellar”.
[size=150]The “Faith Through Works” Doctrine[/size]
[b]“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such a faith save him?..faith by itself, if it is not accomplished by action, is dead.
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.”[/b]
(James 2: 14, 17, 18, 20-22, 24 NIV)
[b] The “Faith Through Works” doctrine holds that faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and even God’s forgiveness of sins through this faith alone does not suffice for salvation. “Works” are required (good deeds, preaching of the gospel, the performance of miracles (?), etc.). However, a common staple of Fundamentalist teaching stresses the importance of human effort in the performance of these “works”–such that one must not rely solely upon God for one’s salvation but also upon oneself.
The apostle Paul, in his writings, decries this “giving God a helping hand” salvation through self-propelled human effort:[/b]
“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?”
(Galatians 3:1-3 NIV)
Proponents of self-empowered “faith through works”, however, will ignore Paul’s statement. But perhaps the issue is settled by Jesus himself. This statement of Christ, if placed in the proper context, seems to halt the notion of salvation through self-propelled human effort in its tracks:
“I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
(John 15:5 NIV)
Still, some will intrepret John 15:5 to mean only that one must depend on Christ to “help out” with one’s salvation through intercession with God for present and future sins and by provision of example for the human to follow. An opponent, however, can argue that such stubborn insistence upon “one’s own effort” is nothing more than a narcissistic denial of a truly theonomous (God-governed and controlled) reality. “Faith through works” adherents rely upon their own power of righteousness, even going so far as to create a “morality of self-reliance”—when scripture implies otherwise:
[b]Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and
earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he
himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole
earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places
where they should live.
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and
find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
…For in him we live and move and have our being.[/b]
(Acts 17:23-28 NIV)
[size=150]A Truce Between The “Faith Alone” And “Faith Through Works” Doctrines: The Proposition Of A “Faith Through Works” That Is Accomplished Not Through Human Effort And That Arises Only Through “Faith Alone”[/size]
The civil war between the “Faith Alone” and “Faith Through Works” doctines is resolved through the abandonment of self-propelled human effort in righteousness, replacing human effort with Christ-effort—in the proposition of a “righteousness from God” (Romans 3:21, 22) that has nothing to do with human goodness, but that nevertheless is re-enacted by a human through the power of God:
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
(Romans 3:21 NIV)
Thus there may exist a new “faith through works” in which Christ performs the “works” within the individual (through replication of the mind of Christ within the human as opposed to an actual “possession” of the human by the original being). The notion of human effort and self-reliance is thrown out and Jesus’ statement that:
"…apart from me you can do nothing.”
—implies the true process of salvation: “Faith through works”—with Christ doing all the work—comes through “Faith alone”!
This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
(Romans 3:22 NIV)
“Faith alone” is supported by the verse:
Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.
(Romans 3:27, 28 NIV)
A man is “justified by faith apart from observing the law” through Christ’s observance of the law for the man through the man! And Christ performs the “works” for the individual once the person sustains the Saving Faith: faith in the experiential relation and connection between Christ and the mind of one who has this type of “faith in Jesus”.
If one has “faith in Jesus” one is now “apart from law”—free from the grind of “Do not touch! Do not taste! Do not say this or do that!” observance of religious moral code, as one now obeys a “righteousness from God” that is so much more than adherence to physical, verbal, and psychological standards of conduct.
[b]Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why,
as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules:
“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”?
These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on
human commands and teachings.[/b]
(Colossians 2:20-23 NIV)
[size=150]CONCLUSION: God Assuages His Own Wrath BEFORE He Creates The World! A “Spin” Of Biblical Interpretation Proposing The Existence Of A Rational And Meta-Biblical Judeo-Christian God[/size]
[b]In conclusion, one can analyze scripture that implicitly or explicitly expresses God’s wrath to derive a rationality to God’s post-Creation response to sin and sinners—by observance of God’s wrath in the context of omniscience. It is also prudent to mind the logical inconsistencies and contradictions in English translation of scripture, which may cause one to forget verses in the Bible stressing God’s knowledge predetermination of past, present, and future.
With this in mind, one can methodically construct a Theory of Rational Wrath Of God combined with a Theory Of Rational Appeasement Of God by applying a “spin” in the interpretation of English scripture commenting on God’s wrath toward sin. This opens the door to the appeal that there probably exists a rational[/b] meta-biblical [b]God, a “God of the Bible” that nevertheless exists beyond and transcends in objective truth biblical inconsistency and contradiction.
The truth behind this God, despite the fact that this is the God of whom the Bible speaks, is captured only partially in the scriptures, with the charge that the English translation of the Bible probably contains accidental (or even deliberate!) errors and logical (and moral) contradictions. This article thus concludes with a rational construct of God’s wrath toward humans and a rational entailment of the appeasement of that wrath, with support for the thesis garnered by interpretative “spin” of the English translation of key scriptures:[/b]
[size=150]Statement Of A Theory Of Rational Wrath[/size]
1. God does not experience a posteriori (after the fact) wrath against the wicked. God’s vengeful wrath is experienced only as an unconditional Pavlovian response to the predatory evils (pesha sins) previsioned in God’s mental calculations of possible worlds before the creation of the universe.
(a) This vengeful wrath is the result of a suspension of disbelief analogous to the suspension of disbelief during the viewing of gripping works of fiction.
(b) God experiences unconditional Pavlovian “judgmental” consternation mixed with intellectual pity, but not vengeful wrath, toward avon and cheit sins.
2. Intellectual comprehension of his role in the creation of non-imaginary counterparts of the imaginary characters of his possible-world calculations yields a desire to pass or bestow his knowledge, if only in part, to created subjects—as well as to effect one’s subjective experience of transformation from evil to good in the most painless manner possible. The evolution is a sharing with man of the true nature of God’s mind, through man’s experience of the going’s-on in that mind in the form of the experienced world.
3. God makes the experience of an evil world relatively “painless” for his subjects by creating human experience in the form of a hyper-non-lucid dream or simulated reality from which the subject will awaken (in an “afterlife” which is probably the first “real” life the individual will have or one in which the individual lived–asleep, so to speak—the entire time) to find that one was dreaming the negative aspect of the mind of God.
Except in the case of lucid dreaming, people dream without being aware that they are doing so (“non-lucid” dreaming). Some philosophers have concluded that what we think is the “real world” could be or is an illusion (a Skeptical Hypothesis). The first recorded mention of the idea was by Zhuangzi, and it is also discussed in Hinduism; Buddhism makes extensive use of the argument in its writings. It was formally introduced to western philosophy by Descartes in the 17th century in his Meditations on First Philosophy.
(Wikipedia: Dream, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream)
In John Landis’: An American Werewolf In London (1981), protagonist Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) suffers a groundbreaking nightmare-within-a-nightmare. The first (senselessly violent) dream is incredibly realistic, and Jack “awakens” from this one to discover (after the fact, as the dreams were non-lucid) that he is in another dream. First-time viewers of the film were just as surprised as Jack to discover that Jack’s “awakening” was merely the preclude to another horrific experience.
See it here…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPqa1gTfjFo[/youtube]
[size=150]The Theory Of Rational Appeasement Of God’s Wrath[/size]
Cord: You didn’t hear the soldiers; and you didn’t smell the bag; and you didn’t sense the boy—I want an explanation!
The Blind Man: …I knew……
Cord: How?
The Blind Man does not respond, and the sound of a flute refrain is heard as the Blind Man patiently waits for Cord to tumble to the trick. Suddenly, Cord’s eyes widen at the onset of sudden epiphany, to which he responds (whispering with amazement)…
Cord: You were through here before!
—Climactic conversation between Cord the Seeker (Jeff Cooper) and his protector and mentor The Blind Man (David Carradine) in the martial arts film: Circle Of Iron, 1978
See the scene here:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfUhTwwVUYs[/youtube]
[size=150]Conflict Resolved[/size]
The conflict between the “faith through works” and “faith alone” doctrines is resolved by an appeal to theonomous determinism and a behavioral salvation performed by Christ within a believing human being [b](a Christ-derived “goodness” distinct from human goodness and effort). This Christ-derived “righteousness from God” (Romans 3:21) follows a faith in Jesus Christ altogether distinct from Fundamentalist meaning.
This “new” faith in Jesus is the mode of Appeasement Of God’s Wrath. God appeases his own wrath before the creation of the universe through the institution of an isomorphic experience-relation between Christ and humans—with all human sins made re-enactments of Christ’s “sins” committed in the mind of Christ while dying on the cross.
Given God’s self-imposed appeasement, one can place an apologetic “spin” upon the term: “forgiveness”—stating that while the common meaning of the term applies to God’s forbearance of punishment toward the sinners through faith in Christ, the absolving of sin is due to sins being “fore-given”: sins have been “given beforehand” to Christ to experience, with Christ made “all in all’ by the redefinition and dilution of evil by the infusion of Christ’s mind with the sinful.
A human coming to possess faith in this new “fore-give”ness (a faith granted by God) is considered truly righteous by proxy of Christ’s infusion and free of God’s wrath and hostility.[/b]
Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited to him as righteousness.
(Romans 4: 4, 5 NIV)
Faith activates a “remission of sins” (analogous to the remission of cancer), in which sin “goes into remission”:
Then Peter said unto them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
(Acts 2: 38 KJV)
This remission or “abating in force and intensity” or “moderation” (read: a moderation of the symptoms of a disease) of sins (leading to post-afterlife absence of sin) is a gradual decline in the desire to commit future sin. The decline accompanies an increasing interest in and search for the “knowledge of Christ”, an obsessive desire to comprehend and know Christ.
[b]Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.[/b]
(Psalm 1: 1,2 KJV)
“Moments of inward purity” supervene on humans possessing “faith in Jesus”, with these moments of purity derived from Christ himself. These moments occur in concert with “good works” which are themselves not an as aspects of the human’s desire and motivation, but are pre-programmed Christ-behaviors derived from a secondary world in the mind of Christ (experienced post-crucifixion in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea).
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
(Ephesians 2:10 NIV)
[size=150]Faith Alone Wins![/size]
[b]In the end, only “faith alone” is required for salvation, with faith activating “works” accompanied by moments of purity of mind and desire (a mind independent of predatory and sexual desire restrained by Freudian repression)—with one’s “works” and mental purity ultimately re-enactments of the “works” and mind of Jesus Christ.
Human goodness is nevertheless regarded as an analogy of the goodness of Christ, but is of inferior stock compared to goodness accompanied by complete absence of internal sinful state (“…For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder…”).
According to the doctrine of Universalism, those possessing inferior goodness will evolve to eternally possess the superior goodness, and those possessing “momentary” superior goodness in the “here and now” evolve further to possess invariant superior goodness. God is appeased before the fact of sin by controlling its evolution from the beginning.[/b]
[size=150]EPILOGUE[/size]
In the end, God’s wrath toward sin and sinners is rational only if it is placed in context of God’s omniscience. Unfortunately, omniscience is often forgotten as a vital component of God’s intention toward humans. In light of omniscience, the God’s reaction to sin makes sense only in his unconditional Pavlovian response to imaginary pesha sins committed with unjustified predatory malice by imaginary beings.
[b]Even here, God’s justice is tempered with mercy, as the psychopathic mind is simply another aspect of God’s foreknowledge of what could potentially exist within a possible world. Armed with this understanding, God institutes afterlife punishment forcing the psychopath to make full restitution for its crimes (by wearing the bodily form of and suffering a re-enactment of the traumatic experiences of their pre-afterlife victims, with the punishment imposed by a “bot” or zombie resembling the psychopath in pre-afterlife appearance at the time of the crime).
What is the use of this “turnabout is fair play” punishment? It is obviously (given God’s omniscience) for the “benefit” of the psychopath. The psychopath is introduced to the notion that he or she truly lives in a world they didn’t create, and that there exists an Intelligence forcing them to pay for their crimes and to accept the true nature of reality. This afterlife “reality-check” involves lobotomy—in which God “injects” the psychopath with a growing conscience that invades and eventually overcomes the psychopathic psyche. One can argue that this God-imposed lobotomy (in the form of a conscientious “cancer”) is a more lenient (and rational, given omniscience) response of God toward the psychopath than eternal torment in hellfire.
If one doubts this, then where is the logic in eternal torment and damnation of the wicked given God’s omniscience and its infallibility? If God’s foreknowledge is infallible (what God knows beforehand cannot be frustrated or altered by future action or choice), then why would God (if God is good) go through with the creation of the pre-damned? If the pre-damned are predestined to refuse to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior and are inevitably destined for the Lake of Fire (Revelations 20), why create such beings in the first place?[/b]
In the end, God’s anger toward sin is appeased before the beginning of the world by linking sinful humanity to Jesus Christ in order to achieve Apocatastasis: a restoration of the previous sinless reality before God’s imagination of evil. Despite the problems posed by pre-damnation, one who believes in the doctrine of eternal hell is free to accept it as “God-inspired” scripture, but it is odd that there are scriptures in the bible supporting the universalism of apocatastasis. It is contended that apocatastasis is ultimately the most ethical response of God (if God is good) to the existence of sin, as sin is ultimately an accident arising within the mind of God in his pre-universe computation of possible worlds.
[size=200]END[/size]
Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com
Austin, Texas
or hell 
depending on whether their names had been written in the “Book of Life” from the beginning of time and skip this meaningless middle step. ](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/uploads/default/original/2X/7/7c349bf1053f368a5729d053e1e91215f22ce66c.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
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