A few questions from an open-minded agnostic.

[John Doe Smith]

Hello. I'm somebody who has never been religious, but is curious about the beliefs and mentality of believers. I appreciate Christianity for its cultural importance and the great works of art it inspired, but for various reasons never became a believer myself. There's a few questions which have kept at nagging me, so I want to actually hear what answers Christians have for them instead of making assumptions. I apologize if these questions are inappropriate or if I phrase them in an offensive way. I plan on reading the bible cover to cover after this.

What is the correct canonicity and how do you know? : The book of Enoch is one example of a book with debatable canonicity. In it, an angel named Sariel teaches men about the moon cycles and sleeps with women against god's wishes(I'm just going off of what little I know from reading articles). Jewish rabbis at some point deemed this book non-canonical because according to Jewish belief, angels cannot willfully disobey god. They aren't capable of it. They can only make mistakes and be punished for it. Now, obviously Christians do not agree with this belief(Satan). So, why not go back and reconsider the Book of Enoch? Why should I believe Jewish rabbis who dismissed the book on false grounds(according to Christianity)? On top of that, what about texts that were burned or lost? I've seen one answer that said "God would have orchestrated events so that his word would stay perfect", but why then do different denominations have slightly different canonicity? How am I supposed to know which one is true? There isn't an angel coming down and setting things straight for some reason. Why has Christianity been confounded? Why believe in the perfect word of god if it's clearly been mangled by humans?

One response might be that slight differences in canonicity don't matter. As long as Jesus is in your heart, you will go to heaven. What about the way i'm supposed to live in life though? The bible should give me all the answers, but how can I be sure that some mistranslation, or specific choice didn't warp the meaning of the text? If a translator decides to write the same word congregation in positive contexts, and synagogue in negative ones, wouldn't that change the message a bit? Why am I denied a perfect truth?

How do you know the current consensus on "Christian morality" is correct? : One of the main pillars of Christianity is the idea of objective morality as far as I understand. Even if a person has never heard of Jesus before, they innately have a sense for God's morality, so their sins are not excused. However, the "common morality" of Christians has not remained constant. What was considered a few hundreds of years ago to be morally acceptable by typical Christians: colonialism, marrying people far younger that what is now considered acceptable, etc, is not anymore. How do you know our "modern morality" is the correct one? How do you know secular society and its "common morality" hasn't influenced and poisoned "Christian morality"? What if people from the past were right and we're wrong, even if it's only in a few ways?

Why did God create man to be so weak and dependent? : God created man to bring glory to him, but god does not need glory because he is complete. Man needs to give god glory to elevate himself. Why though? Why did god create human beings so that they need to give him glory? Even if Adam and Eve didn't need to do so, why did God create Adam and Eve to be weak enough to succumb to temptation? In fact, why did God give humans free will at all? I looked for answers to this before, and what I found amounted to " well of course he did because you cannot love if you do not have free will". Except God isn't limited by human logic. He created logic. If he wanted to, he could make it so beings without free will can love. He can do anything what so ever with no limitations if he is all-powerful.

Those are the big three. I'm not looking for a debate and I'll accept any answers given to me.

 

[GodsGrace]

wondering,

You have left out a number of steps in your statements above, in my understanding of Scripture.

Who is responsible for all sin in the universe?

Back in 2012, I wrote this article, Did God create evil?

I've done further thinking since then and am working on teaching for high school students in Religious Instruction (one period a week in State schools), 'Why does God allow suffering and evil?' The study is not complete yet.

Why didn't God make human beings without free will?

What would happen if God wiped out ALL evil NOW?

Oz

Hi Oz, I'm so short on time lately.
I also taught our faith and one does have to teach about evil and satan and everything.

However, if we want to go back far enough, we find that there is no real answer to evil.

Go back to the Garden. The tree of good and evil. Where did the evil come from?

Go back to Lucifer falling from grace. Due to pride. Where did this sin of pride come from?

How is it that A and E ate of the fruit if they were still innocent and had not eaten from the tree yet? WHAT made them eat?

I still haven't found the answer and most believe we cannot really know this.

 

[GodsGrace]

wondering,

You stated:

I jumped in too quickly with my response. Please forgive me. When you stated 'there is no answer' to the problem of why evil exists, I'd like to know your reasoning behind that statement.

Could you please help me to understand how you reached that conclusion?

Maybe this isn't the thread to do that and we ought to start another thread with a title like, 'From God's perspective, is there any solution to the problem of evil?' Would you and others be interested in pursuing such a topic?

Oz

Hi Oz...
No alert for the above...saw it by accident.

Yes...please start another thread.
Please tag me in.....Looks like JLB is interested too, and maybe others.

I answered this question, however, in my post to you just above.

 

[Serving Zion]

As far as judgment concerning families...I believe that the curses that fall on a family, for 3, 4 generations as is stated in the O.T., is a product of that family not adhering to God's laws more than actual curses given by God. He DOES, instead, have actual curses proclaimed for those that do not follow covenants that are bi-lateral in nature. Blessings if the covenant is adhered to and curses if it is not. Deuteronomy 28:15......

It is really important to understand God's justice in doing this, because it is easy to slip into the wrong spirit by thinking it to mean that God is punishing the children for the father's sin. It isn't meant that way though, because that would be injustice. God's justice says "what is this parable you say in Jerusalem: "the fathers ate sour grapes and the sons teeth were blunted"? As I live, says Adonai, you shall no longer speak this parable, but the soul who sins shall die" .. and it goes on to describe how the one turning from wickedness to righteousness will be saved but the one turning from righteousness to wickedness will perish.

So look carefully at the verses that speak of the punishment: https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=Iniquity+fathers+children&qs_version=TLV

First notice the payment isn't necessary. If they are one who loves God, who repents, then He is rich in mercy, wanting to forgive them. It is always said that the payment of the iniquity goes upon the offspring of those who hate Him. That is to say that the father's grumble and resist Him when He convicts them. They become obstinate, refusing to repent and be formed to a thing that pleases Him. To them, He does not threaten instant death - why?

His method is to turn His face away from them, for "who can look upon the face of God and live?" (Again, it isn't rhetorical, for we declare in the Aaronic benediction of Numbers 6:24-26 "Adonai turn His face toward thee and grant thee peace").

So God does not bless the fathers for their wrongness, but they see the wrath of God in their children. That is to say that the children become instruments to punish the father's - and while the father's may not turn back and in their torment turn their distress upon the children, it is a burden the children are cursed with so long as the father lives. As it goes with curses, the wrath comes against us from the world around us, so therefore when we are eliminated the spirit does not manifest through the world - rather the world is released from it's obligation to serve the purposes of divine justice upon us.

So the real thrust of the message is to say to the father's "you will have no escape from my wrath so long as you live, but you will be cursed by the spirit of your own sons and daughters, and by their sons and daughters. Even the sons and daughters of them and of them again. For surely I will not let the guilty go unpunished".

The point being that the behavioural problems in the children, which are demonic on account of the curse to the father, do not count against the child's own blessing. They are of good conscience in God's sight because they have not hated Him. But then, as we know "bad associations corrupt good character", they are at risk by being around the cursed one, that they might be lured into sin and rebellion in their distress. Then comes the justice against them, for "the soul that sinneth, it shall die".

This is the correct way to speak about generational curses, in order to maintain a right knowledge of God's justice by allowing the wicked to perish of their own accord, for their refusal to turn from their sin and having cut themselves off from God's saving grace, thereby He remains blameless for their death according to His own Torah "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life".

 

[PeterJens]

wondering,

You have left out a number of steps in your statements above, in my understanding of Scripture.

Who is responsible for all sin in the universe?

Back in 2012, I wrote this article, Did God create evil?

I've done further thinking since then and am working on teaching for high school students in Religious Instruction (one period a week in State schools), 'Why does God allow suffering and evil?' The study is not complete yet.

Why didn't God make human beings without free will?

What would happen if God wiped out ALL evil NOW?

Oz

This is an eternal question, "Who is responsible for all sin in the universe?"

The answer lies in this phrase, can you have love without pain?

If you prize choice, free will, giving and withholding gifts and blessing, one must embrace evil, denial, hurt, damage and destruction. Without the choice to do harm, how can there be choice at all, but the inevitable response in a predictable way.

The Lord created a universe with this choice. And the choice is real, hidden, but real to every individual. We are called to choose love or evil and hurt, and based on this choice we will either respond favourably to the Lord or not. At a truly fundamental level each of us choose to find a path through to being consistent or we get eaten up by bitterness and hatred.

Jesus encompasses these problems and calls His people to walk His road of pain and suffering through love, where love drives everything despite the problems. This is for us the hardest path because it speaks against our rights above others, and giving up the battle of dominance for the road to giving and service, because we have met the King.

 

[WIP]

This thread is going off track. Please address the original poster's questions and avoid side debates/discussions. Thanks.

 

[John Doe Smith]

That's how the Koran came to be. An angel claiming to be the Gabriel, came to Mohammed and Mohammed believed him when he said he was speaking for God. That angel brought very serious slander against Jesus Christ and His followers, and some way-out changes to longstanding records of history. It has inspired followers ever since to be at war with Christians as they accuse them of having falsified the bible and blaspheming God.

Thank you for your very thorough response. There's two specific points that really caught my attention. Children being innocent at birth before being corrupted by the world. I remember many things from my childhood. The impression I got, was that all kids, including myself, were selfish and voracious liars. I remember making things up and hearing other kids making stuff up just to impress one another. We argued about the pettiest things like "who the sun follows" or "whose mom is smarter". We made fun of each other and killed insects for fun. Maybe we were already poisoned or something.

It's only later in life that we began to develop more empathy and consideration for other's needs. Many people think empathy is something which develops in the brain with age and children are so selfish to up their chances of survival. There would have to be a very elaborate and unethical experiment to test whether kids are born "innocent" and just corrupted by the world.

With Islam, you could say Muhammad made everything up, or hallucinated. I don't assume he was deceived by an angel.

The other really interesting thing to me is this idea of carnal vs spiritual reality and spiritual awareness. Somebody could spend decades studying Buddhism and be convinced they've achieved enlightenment, but they would actually be wrong. They'd have no way of knowing because they haven't actually achieved spiritual awareness. The only way to do that, is to first assume Christianity is true, while still thinking in carnal terms and lacking spiritual awareness, and then following that path. Only after being able to say it's correct. If you try learning about both and after a long time you're still unsure, it might be because God doesn't like that, so you were doing it wrong. This is a very clean solution. I don't know if I prefer it to the "we just don't know everything" approach.

where did you get your knowledge of Christianity from? It sounds as though you've been schooled at a Christian school, or you've been otherwise influenced in a big way by people who have a particular type (ie: Westminster Confession) of Christian view.

Reading articles. Watching videos.

 

[Berserk]

1) I would want to know as much as I value being alive. I would be willing to abstain from things and change my routine. I don't actually know whether I could change my character. I never really actively tried to shape my personality.
2)I don't connect my philosophy towards life with the explanation for the universe and origin of man I think is most probable. The explanations I "believe in" could be changed by scientific inquiry, but it's largely irrelevant to how I live my life currently. My philosophy isn't something I see as falsifiable unless there really is an objective mindset. I don't see philosophy as being testable. This connection is unavoidable in Christianity and other religions however.
3)I'm not really sure what counts as a "spiritual" experience. If an angel came to me, it could be in any form, but something more spectacular and inhuman would be more convincing, and gave me a prediction of something very specific with no obliqueness involved, like the deaths of specific people on a specific dates, or a planet at specific coordinates will be discovered in a week or something, and these predictions come true exactly as told, I would be convinced there's some kind of deity. If this prediction came with a message saying the Christian God is real, I would take that at face value just in case.
4)I don't see that as probable. I wont lie to you, even though I know lying would make it more probable that you'll answer my questions. I'm mainly interested in answers for curiosity's sake. Maybe it could help other people's conversions though.
I apologize if this response is unsatisfactory.

My initial reaction to this reply was to not engage you in any extended dialogue due to how closed-minded you admit to being. Recently, I have reconsidered this decision because you were honest about areas where you are not truly open-minded and I have decided to start a new thread devoted to your questions and issues. So stay tuned for this thread, which seems needed for 3 reasons: (1) My approach will differ greatly from most of your respondents on this thread. (2) I don't wish to in effect highjack this thread or excessively dominate it. (3) I want you to coordinate my responses in this new thread with my evolving testimony in the forum section above this one, entitled "Prayer Requests, Praises and Testimonies."

The material in that thread (entitled "My Journey through the Lens of My Charismatic and Paranormal Experiences") has been effective in my witness to non-Christian skeptics on a secular conversation board. 2 members were converted, one of whom is an author and a militant agnostic who had posted attacks against historical Christianity. My posts at most opened their minds to the possibility of a divine interaction. Then God brought a Christian witness into their lives, which brought them to church, where they were soundly converted.

I convinced a third, an agnostic HUD executive in the Federal government, that a guardian angel ( a woman in a red dress) had saved his life as a young boy during a murderous assault in the woods when a sexual predator had placed him on the ground in choke hold. The unknown lady in red suddenly appeared, calmly approaching them and asking, "Is there a problem here?" The boy's assailant got spooked into running away. When I asked my agnostic friend what happened to the woman, he suddenly realized that she must have dematerialized when he immediately turned to thank her for her intervention. In retrospect, her vanishing act now convinces him that she must have been an guardian angel. That insight aroused his interest in becoming a Christian, though, sadly, he remains an agnostic. Our online interactions prompted an invitation to visit him at his summer cottage and he took me to the spot in the woods where this miraculous intervention occurred.

I share all this with you here in acknowledgement that none of my apologetic arguments will convert you. But if site members pray for you, our interaction might sufficiently open your mind to the possibility of a self-authenticating connection with God to ignite a new burning spiritual quest. Such a quest might allow God to bring the right nearby Christians into your life who might be instrumental in your conversion.

I too have always been skeptical by nature. What saved me from agnosticism was not an assortment of apologetic arguments, but rather my life experiences that will be summarized in the next few weeks in my "Journey" thread. That is another reason why I hope you will follow both threads. I will get my new more philosophical and theological started tomorrow, which will respond to your questions and replies here.

 

[Serving Zion]

The impression I got, was that all kids, including myself, were selfish and voracious liars.

What makes a person lie? In my experience, it is only through development of a fear of being honest that a person becomes a liar, and children are much more inclined to be honest with me than grown-ups. There is occasionally a child who is untruthful with me, reflecting the culture of their family, but it doesn't take much time for them to become comfortable to be truthful to me. Grown ups are quite a different creature though, because they have no real hesitation to be untruthful - it has become a second nature to them through prolonged experience and skill.

Maybe we were already poisoned or something

No kidding.

It's only later in life that we began to develop more empathy and consideration for other's needs.

Is that a pattern or an observation in some cases? What makes those ones become empathetic?

There would have to be a very elaborate and unethical experiment to test whether kids are born "innocent" and just corrupted by the world.

Or, if you do it as I do, you could just observe for yourself. Only those who can't discern are forced to rely upon establishments.

With Islam, you could say Muhammad made everything up, or hallucinated. I don't assume he was deceived by an angel.

I can't see that it is plausible to believe that he made it up, as we might say of Joseph Smith or Elron Hubbard. I am interested to know what distinction you make between hallucination and perceiving angels. Also, you owe an explanation for why you would not assume that he was deceived by an angel.

Reading articles. Watching videos.

Oh yeah, well it is a very messy world out there. "A student will never be greater than his teacher" and "if the blind leads the blind they will both fall into a pit" - (Jesus Christ). IOW, "you are what you eat".

 

[John Doe Smith]

What makes a person lie? it doesn't take much time for them to become comfortable to be truthful to me. Grown ups are quite a different creature though, because they have no real hesitation to be untruthful - it has become a second nature to them through prolonged experience and skill.

People lie mainly for personal gain or to avoid punishment. I can see a lot of situations where kids would do this. Maybe they're not good liars, but that's besides the point. Kids also probably act differently towards adults than children. Were you in a position of authority, because that probably also affects things.

Is that a pattern or an observation in some cases? What makes those ones become empathetic?

In the simplest terms possible, the amygdala and prefrontal coretex. Normally developing people develop rudimentary empathy early on which matures with age.

The Neurodevelopment of Empathy in Humans

Empathy, which implies a shared interpersonal experience, is implicated in many aspects of social cognition, notably prosocial behavior, morality and the regulation of aggression. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the current knowledge ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

To sum up, regulating emotions is crucial in maintaining a connection with ongoing perceptual processes, having access to a greater number of adaptive responses and enhancing flexible and appropriate responses. Emotion regulation develops throughout early childhood and adolescence and parallels the maturation of executive functions. There is evidence indicating that inhibitory processes recruited for emotion regulation involve different prefrontal circuits and autonomic activity as children mature.

Or, if you do it as I do, you could just observe for yourself. Only those who can't discern are forced to rely upon establishments.

I'm not good with kids, I don't have much opportunity to be around them, and i'm not really interested either.

I am interested to know what distinction you make between hallucination and perceiving angels. Also, you owe an explanation for why you would not assume that he was deceived by an angel.

I don't believe in angels to begin with, so I'm biased in that respect. I don't have any reason to think anything supernatural happened to him. He didn't have knowledge that would be impossible to obtain through other means or really anything else that is verifiably supernatural.

 

[XRose]

Satan is the one responsible for all sin.
If he had been as delighted with Adam as GOD and Jesus were and had not felt jealous enough to start thinking about how to ruin Adam and Eve's perfection the last 6 and next 1 thousand years would be totally different.
However he let his jealousy build until he just had to sneak behind GOD's back, dematerialise his beautiful body into invisibleness, and standing behind the innocent serpent synchronise his words to it's tongue flicks.
Eve may only have been two days old and not known serpents don't speak and she hadn't seen anything dead so had no idea of what death meant. But she ate the forbidden fruit and gave some to Adam who should have remonstrated with her but instead joined her.
GOD cursed Earth, the humans and Satan.
He then gave Satan 6,000 years to try make Earth the perfect happy populous place He intended. Satan totally failed and is now looking at a 1,000 year prison sentence.

 

[PeterJens]

Satan is the one responsible for all sin.
If he had been as delighted with Adam as GOD and Jesus were and had not felt jealous enough to start thinking about how to ruin Adam and Eve's perfection the last 6 and next 1 thousand years would be totally different.
However he let his jealousy build until he just had to sneak behind GOD's back, dematerialise his beautiful body into invisibleness, and standing behind the innocent serpent synchronise his words to it's tongue flicks.
Eve may only have been two days old and not known serpents don't speak and she hadn't seen anything dead so had no idea of what death meant. But she ate the forbidden fruit and gave some to Adam who should have remonstrated with her but instead joined her.
GOD cursed Earth, the humans and Satan.
He then gave Satan 6,000 years to try make Earth the perfect happy populous place He intended. Satan totally failed and is now looking at a 1,000 year prison sentence.

The problem with this view is it denies God foreknew the events. The Lord let it play out, to enable lost man to be found. Once one sees the price is to demonstrate God's heart, and freely turn man from evil, which is what satan believed is impossible.

But God is God of the impossible.

 

[for_his_glory]

Satan is the one responsible for all sin.
If he had been as delighted with Adam as GOD and Jesus were and had not felt jealous enough to start thinking about how to ruin Adam and Eve's perfection the last 6 and next 1 thousand years would be totally different.
However he let his jealousy build until he just had to sneak behind GOD's back, dematerialise his beautiful body into invisibleness, and standing behind the innocent serpent synchronise his words to it's tongue flicks.
Eve may only have been two days old and not known serpents don't speak and she hadn't seen anything dead so had no idea of what death meant. But she ate the forbidden fruit and gave some to Adam who should have remonstrated with her but instead joined her.
GOD cursed Earth, the humans and Satan.
He then gave Satan 6,000 years to try make Earth the perfect happy populous place He intended. Satan totally failed and is now looking at a 1,000 year prison sentence.

Satan wasn't jealous of man, but was found guilty before man was even created as when God set him in the garden, before Adam was created, iniquity was soon found in him as he wanted all that God had vowing he would be greater than God.

BTW, angels do not have bodies of flesh and bone, but are created spirits of God.

 

[HeIsRisen2018]

BTW, angels do not have bodies of flesh and bone, but are created spirits of God.

What about me though? Aren't I a little angel? :halo *Nose grows and cues evil and malicious laughter*

 

[for_his_glory]

What about me though? Aren't I a little angel? :halo *Nose grows and cues evil and malicious laughter*

Umm, you are a special creation in a class all by yourself.

 

[HeIsRisen2018]

Umm, you are a special creation in a class all by yourself.

Well that's a good thing isn't it? I make this forum interesting. :wink Anyways I apologize, I'll quit clowning around now. :clown I hate clowns anyways and it isn't even April Fools' Day yet.

 

[WIP]

Please remember, in this forum we should concentrate on answering the OP's questions and avoid debating issues. Thanks.

 

[Serving Zion]

People lie mainly for personal gain or to avoid punishment.

Yes, ultimately a lie is done in order to achieve a thing that would not be available when the truth prevails .. and my contention is precisely "why should that be necessary?" - why would a little child be afraid of the truth? .. always it comes down to the fact that the grown-up is not leading the child to agree with them. That is to say that the grown up is exercising judgment that is not fair to the child, and that is what infects the child with demonic spirit as you have been describing. They aren't born that way of course.

I can see a lot of situations where kids would do this. Maybe they're not good liars, but that's besides the point. Kids also probably act differently towards adults than children. Were you in a position of authority, because that probably also affects things.

I don't ever take a position of authority, even in my demeanour. I am literally a real person in the way I speak to children, and they respond accordingly. When children are not afraid of the tyranny of authority, they are quite comfortable to trust, and I prefer to see people comfortable and trusting rather than getting all defensive and devilish based on the fear they have of wicked authorities. But how many grown-ups do you see behaving that way toward children? No, because they all have a way of thinking that despises children, thinking that children need to be taught everything and that the grown-ups have it all. But Jesus was telling us that the real problem is that the people who despise children are not giving honour to the kingdom of heaven.

In the simplest terms possible, the amygdala and prefrontal coretex. Normally developing people develop rudimentary empathy early on which matures with age.

The Neurodevelopment of Empathy in Humans

Empathy, which implies a shared interpersonal experience, is implicated in many aspects of social cognition, notably prosocial behavior, morality and the regulation of aggression. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the current knowledge ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Children are very impressionable, that's for sure, and the patterns of brain development to behaviour are quite interesting .. but what isn't so clearly understood is the psychology of how the brain can be exercised to perform more effectively in one way or another. For instance, children can easily be led to think of bugs as things for amusement, and they can easily be led to recognise that they are things with a point of view in life to be respected. The children don't really have much control over their way of thinking while they are so subjective to the influences of their role models .. but the spirit (because that is what it is) that is influencing them is able to expand their mind's comprehension to form very powerful empathetic cues that will remain with them and shape them as they continue to develop. Obviously, the more opportunity a child has to be exposed to one spirit or another will provide more familiarity with that spirit, for that nature to be formed in them (Matthew 12:33).

I'm not good with kids, I don't have much opportunity to be around them, and i'm not really interested either.

I don't believe in angels to begin with, so I'm biased in that respect. I don't have any reason to think anything supernatural happened to him. He didn't have knowledge that would be impossible to obtain through other means or really anything else that is verifiably supernatural.

 

[Serving Zion]

I remember many things from my childhood. The impression I got, was that all kids, including myself, were selfish and voracious liars. I remember making things up and hearing other kids making stuff up just to impress one another. We argued about the pettiest things like "who the sun follows" or "whose mom is smarter". We made fun of each other and killed insects for fun. Maybe we were already poisoned or something.

John, I hope you are doing OK these days, I can't help worrying that you've been dissuaded since you stopped posting months back, but you have still logged in recently, so I am seeing that this point of the doctrine is the piece that really underpins the nonsense of the image of an unjust God, so prevalently turning people away from pursuing Christ. It would be much better to get it straightened out.

See the fact is that a baby is neither born with goodness or badness in them, but simply crying from the trauma of having their whole world torn apart and gasping for breath. Then as they begin to open their eyes, they recognise shapes and sounds, then the patterns of recurring themes are teaching them that "this person is mommy" because she always makes the hunger go away, and "look, she has fingers like me", and "look there is a man always with her who helps her sometimes", and "look there is a little child with fingers like me and he is always with mommy".. so that's how life begins. No sin in them at all.

But what you've described is more developed behaviours, behaviours that come even after schooling has begun, having a menacing element to them - behaviours that are precisely opposite to the behaviour of love: when someone is teasing their friend saying "my mom is better than your mom", that's only rooted in an insecurity or a hatred for the friend (probably envy). Either way, babies do not have those behaviours, and furthermore, there is no natural function for those behaviours in a human who has perfect contentment - it is only for the gratification it brings when such a person is suffering and they find that they are less miserable when they can see someone else suffer at their hand (think "punishment", wrath).

I have to somehow make it clear that the mistreatment, injustices of the grown ups who are unfair in their judgments over children, or impatient, condescending etc, it is that very reason that the children become insecure and begin finding ways to subdue envies by hurting those who they see as having a comfort of identity that they covet - the thing they have been robbed of. This is an inevitable present reality for everyone because sin is already in the world and only very few, once having fallen into its clutches, may ever find the path that leads to life - let alone walk on it without stumbling. The way truly is difficult and narrow, because the whole world is enslaved to its sinful spirit, ever opposing us, and indeed because most have not trusted in the power of God but have put trust in the work of their hands, hence "most take the broad road that leads to destruction".

But what you said about killing insects for fun is something I don't remember doing. I do remember there was a time I was by the creek in the back yard, running my finger over the red spider mites under the rock because I was amused by the colour it made, and I vaguely remember that poppa was talking to me about it a bit later and I think it happened a couple of times but I must have been less than four years old so my memory of it is only slight, but what it shows in comparison to the later times when I was saving bees that were drowning on the surface of the swimming pool, is that the awareness of the intrinsic values of life in other species is a thing that needs to be taught - just as the babies need to learn that humans have five fingers and they can walk. But the walking is a thing that comes naturally to them, just as empathy comes naturally with an awareness of the suffering of others (except in circumstances where the opportunity to develop normal empathy is being sabotaged by the bad influence of peers and role models at the time - as of course every sinful experience is encouraged by sinners).

I verify this by observation whenever children of that age have an opportunity to see that insects have life and in my presence they do naturally care for the wellbeing of them, demonstrating that their natural joy is to be benevolent, expressing the character of love as stewards of the earth.

 

[John Doe Smith]

John, I hope you are doing OK these days, I can't help worrying that you've been dissuaded since you stopped posting months back, but you have still logged in recently

Well, I'm actually doing much worse than I was when I first posted this thread. The lack of routine and campus setting has removed the things distracting me from my emotional cravings. You're right that I've lost interest in this if I may be permitted to say so. I just check in out of force of habit.

I'll say this. I don't know if you're right. I don't know enough and i'm not in a postion to evaluate the validity of your statments. From what I have been thinking about religion, the whole heaven thing is probably what I have most issue with actually. I hear a lot that you should do everything for the glory of god, literally everything, but most of those activies people enjoy, even Christians, wont be done in heaven anyway and I doubt most people would say their absolute favorite part of week is going to Church. Maybe i'm wrong about that. There's not even marriage in heaven.

I don't like people. I think they're just biological machines. I don't value my relationships, whatever ones I have, with others. I think I've was always an abnormal person. That about sums up my current feelings.

 

[HeIsRisen2018]

Well, I'm actually doing much worse than I was when I first posted this thread. The lack of routine and campus setting has removed the things distracting me from my emotional cravings. You're right that I've lost interest in this if I may be permitted to say so. I just check in out of force of habit.

I'll say this. I don't know if you're right. I don't know enough and i'm not in a postion to evaluate the validity of your statments. From what I have been thinking about religion, the whole heaven thing is probably what I have most issue with actually. I hear a lot that you should do everything for the glory of god, literally everything, but most of those activies people enjoy, even Christians, wont be done in heaven anyway and I doubt most people would say their absolute favorite part of week is going to Church. Maybe i'm wrong about that. There's not even marriage in heaven.

I don't like people. I think they're just biological machines. I don't value my relationships, whatever ones I have, with others. I think I've was always an abnormal person. That about sums up my current feelings.

I'm really sorry to hear that and although I'm not much a church goer myself,.. I'm still looking forward to being in the Lord's presence. There may not be marriage in Heaven, but in my humble opinion that doesn't mean that we won't recognize our significant other and I also look forward to seeing all of my other loved ones again someday. A bunch of good wishes, Christian love, and prayers headed your way,.. incoming!! And yes you'll find that I say that a lot on here.