WHAT ARE OUR CHOICES IN THIS LIFE?

[aapatil@cox.net]

God created us in His own image, so that we can share in his life of pure love and experience His peace and joy, as His children. He gives us a free will because to accept pure love is a decision. Every thought, word, and action of our has a choice between expressing pure love or rejecting it. God is always talking to us, as our conscience who persuades us to choose love. The spirit of evil tries to dissuade us from accepting love and makes self-interest look attractive. When we choose self-interest, we make money, power, and greed our God. This creates evil in the world. We often fall and choose self-interest. God, however, picks us up and never gives up on us. He even died on the cross to show us the beauty of love. All He needs is contrition, a small faith and humility. He can then pilot our life and save us from sin.

[2timothy316]

[Replying to aapatil@cox.net in post #1]

In the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon wrote under inspiration about many things that are futile to pursue. Wealth, 'following your dreams', gaining a bunch of knowledge, trying to be popular, seeking fame, as he put it, 'everything under the sun' is futile accept one thing. "The conclusion of the matter, everything having been heard, is: Fear the true God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole obligation of man." - Ecc 12:13

We have many choices. Not that anything Solomon wrote about are bad things to have. But to make them our life's pursuit is an effort in futility, because not a single one of those things can last forever if we don't seek a life serving the True God first.

[otseng]

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[Diagoras]

The spirit of evil tries to dissuade us from accepting love and makes self-interest look attractive.

What does this ‘spirit of evil’ get out of going around promoting self-interest? Sounds like a lot of work that’s just likely to get a spirit on the wrong side of God. Is there just one spirit, or several (or even one each for everyone on Earth)?

Does it make a difference if the person decides to follow a different religion, and accepts the love of Kamadeva (for example)? Would the spirit care?

And how does the spirit accomplish all this? When I invest in shares hoping for a material gain, is that only because an evil spirit somehow manipulated my brainwaves, or blocked a ‘love signal’ that would have told me to instead accept love over money? Wouldn’t an omnipotent god have a much stronger signal?

When trying to make sense of such ‘good versus evil’ battles for people’s souls, I find the alternate explanation (that such spirits and gods simply don’t exist) doesn’t have any of these problems, and indeed fits the facts very nicely.

[Miles]

God created us in His own image, so that we can share in his life of pure love and experience His peace and joy, as His children. He gives us a free will because to accept pure love is a decision. Every thought, word, and action of our has a choice between expressing pure love or rejecting it. God is always talking to us, as our conscience who persuades us to choose love. The spirit of evil tries to dissuade us from accepting love and makes self-interest look attractive. When we choose self-interest, we make money, power, and greed our God. This creates evil in the world. We often fall and choose self-interest. God, however, picks us up and never gives up on us. He even died on the cross to show us the beauty of love. All He needs is contrition, a small faith and humility. He can then pilot our life and save us from sin.

Hold on a minute, god said he's responsible for evil, not us.

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things

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[Diagoras]

God created us in His own image, so that we can share in his life of pure love and experience His peace and joy, as His children.

Didn’t work out too well for Adam and Eve, or Abel - or indeed anyone pre-Noah in fact.

‘Pure love’ from ‘God the parent’ would have had some measure of forgiveness and less of the favouritism, I would have thought. Not wiping everything off the face of the earth apart from one family and their live-aboard menagerie.