PinSeeker wrote:
Um, you're "understandings." But really, for this help to be effectual, you have to be able to accept the help in the first place; that's on you.
I see. So you understand things and I don't.
I hope you have some rational explanations to back this up.
PinSeeker wrote:
Ah! No, I don't need to convince you of anything.
Oh, but you absolutely do if you claim that there is something I don't understand. It's now on you to make your points understandable.
PinSeeker wrote:
I can tell you, and I can clarify things for you, but it's the Holy Spirit that would truly convince you of the things of God. And He would do so -- or not -- according to the will and purpose of the Father.
Hiding behind an imaginary Holy Spirit or God won't do you any good. Besides are you tying to insinuate that if there is a creator God that I'm not already in complete harmony with God? That would be an extreme judgement on your part would it not?
Have you happened to notice that my position on things says nothing about your relationship with any Gods, real or imagined.
But your argument requires that I am in the doghouse with your God.
This already places your argument on a level of pious arrogance that we shouldn't even need to have to deal with when having intellectual debates.
In short, you have already deluded yourself in thinking that some God is on 'your side' of the debate.
You'd be far better off learning how to avoid that delusion at all cost.
PinSeeker wrote:
For me, it's very freeing; it's not on me to say just the right thing(s). So, yeah, hey, I can give it a go, and am happy to do so. I like talking about the Lord.
If you truly believed that everything was in God's hands then why would you even care what people believe? You just proclaimed that God can take care of all that.
This is the oxymoron of evangelism. Evangelism is actually nothing more than a exhibition of extreme distrust in God to be able to deal with anything on his own.
So far all you have accomplished is to proclaim that your God wants me to be confused and to not understand him. But what kind of a benevolent God would ever do such a nasty things?
If God wants me to understand something that should be a piece of cake for him. And if he doesn't want me to understand, then he can only be evil. Moreover, if there is anything I truly do not understand, then it certainly couldn't be held against me for not understanding it.
PinSeeker wrote:
Ohhhhhhh. No sin is "petty." No. Nope.
Who taught you to believe such an insane thing?
Do you realize that what you are saying here is that if little Suzie take a cookie from the cookie jar that she had been told by her mother not to eat, that she deserve eternal damnation for having eaten a freshly baked cookie her mother told her to eat?
And that even if Suzie confesses that she took the cookie when her mother asks her if she took it, that doesn't matter. The sin has already been committed and demand eternal damnation in hell.
I understand that this is what you have been taught to believe. But why have you accepted this obvious nonsense? That's the real question here.
PinSeeker wrote:
As I have said, you're understanding of Godly fear is extremely limited. I think it's not, now, because I'm sure you have the ability to fully comprehend what I said, but yet you still dismiss at least half of it. And God is not merely "decent." He's holy.
But you have just required that your God is extremely evil. If I am misunderstanding something here, and God has the ability to correct my misunderstanding but doesn't do so, then he is guilty of allowing me to continue to misunderstand things that could have dire consequences on my eternal fate.
That would hardly be a decent or holy God. Heck, even I as a mere mortal man would be more than happy to help someone understand something that could result in their eternal damnation. Yet, you must necessarily argue that your God refuses to do this. This would make your God far less decent and benevolent than me.
PinSeeker wrote:
Perhaps your entire theological premise is that you should be able to achieve anything, and if you fail at anything it can only be your fault.
This is wholly antithetical to the Bible and to what I've been saying. Surely you begin to see what I mean by "refusal to listen."
But this is contrary to what you had previously preached. You had previously preached that we should fear God in the same way that we might fear offending our own loved ones.
If innocent failings don't count as being offensive, then what's to fear?
Do you do things on purpose to offend God?
If not, then what's to fear?
I'm listening to what you say. You just aren't being consistent in your arguments.
What is to fear from a benevolent loving God who wants you to succeed and who won't hold honest failings against you?
If I thought such a God existed I would be thrilled. There would then be nothing to fear unless I purposefully chose to rebel against that God and purposefully offend him. But if I did that, then I would indeed be an evil person.
And then the question would be, "
If God had created me and designed my brain, then how in the world did I even become evil?"
There would also be the question, "
Why is it that this God cannot be trusted to protect me from evil?"
I mean, at that point I would have a whole list of questions for this God.
In fact, this brings us back to your argument. You argue that God and his Holy Spirit are more than capable of conveying to me an understanding of all these things. It that's true, then what is God waiting for? Is he just being mean to me or what? There would be no justification for not clearing up these questions for me.