GodsGrace
CF Ambassador
Okay, We agree on the interpretive meaning of vanity. Many take God for granted -not undersatanding what He did for us.Good question. Vanity is difficult to articulate in it's implications because of semantics. But I will try to elaborate. I call vanity taking God for granted in unthankfulness. That would look like, questioning what God has made me or given me in comparison to others.
I'd say we're a sinful bunch. I know beauty is only sin deep, but I'd rather be pretty than not pretty. Even though I don't think I'm worth anything more. The worth is something internal. Are we worth anything at all beyond the purpose God might have for us? Maybe accepting our worth in HIS purpose is what could keep us joyful and satisfied. I'm the least satisified when I'm trying to achieve my own goals - far from what God wants me to do at any given point. For instance if I leave my family to go to bible study instead of staying home and being with them because of some need. So staying home is the right choice sometimes even if I love bible study. It's God's purpose we should follow, not our own.You mention pride in what we do. But do we thank God Who made us able to do the work? Do we thank Him for our being useful? Or do we congratulate ourselves while we expect the same from others? External beauty is also given and also taken away. Thus the beauty given should not be applied to one's value as a person. Beauty puffs up our carnal self esteem, while ugliness brings us low self esteem, but only if we are vain. Do we thank God for learning this? Do we realize why we experience both? Do we treat the beautiful and the ugly without prejudice? Romans 8:20.
Of course, dragging myself down could be vanity too. "Look how lowly I am - I must be worth more in God's eyes".Good word, envy. What is the opposite of envy? I think it's being thankful for what one has instead of focusing on what one does not have.
It works two ways: Things are imagined to be worse or to be better, than they really are.
The grass is greener is an illusion. Where I'm presently at, appears worse than over there, which is imagined to be better than where I'm at here.
To think more highly of myself than I ought to, is pride and vanity.That's easy to understand. But to think less of myself than I ought to, is also pride and vanity. How is that? Because I think I should be better than what I am. See Satan, wanting to be as high as God. Both take God for granted in un-thankfulness. This is a battle in the mind hidden in semantics. Because if I think more of myself than I ought to, then I should think lesser of myself, yet it is not vanity.
Yes. Persons like this have bothered me. God demands that I be joyful - it's also a method of combating the evil one who wants us to be lowly or feel lowly. A healthy "keeping the head high" is, I think, what God would want.
To be thankful is to be happy for what you have and to show that happiness. And, when circumstances make it difficult to show happiness, at least we could show joy in knowing the Lord.
The no-fault scenario. We're here. Thrown into this place - we don't really know why. One man's bread is another man's poison. Of course we're to accept everything and we're to have all those qualities you list above.The main point is that, there exists a no fault scenario, wherein what is fair to one person is not fair to another, and visa versa, and yet it is no one's fault. This unfair relationship must depend upon faith, mercy and understanding. Patience and empathy also comes to mind.
Freewill doctrine exists so as to not blame God for sin. But it also exists to blame sin on man, who is made in God's Image. So either way, God gets blamed and the lie questions what is Holy either in the Maker or in what the Maker has created. This is part of the cunning of the serpents lie who sows enmity between man and God from a manufactured and imagined fault. Vanity finds fault where there is none, in unthankfulness to God. This is why freewill doctrine is vanity, when used to condemn. There was a saint who was a hermit, who upon meeting any other person, greeted them by falling on his face before them in tribute to God.
But are we to depend on God at all then? Is this an open theocracy, a closed theocracy? Is God following us? Does He care for us? Or did He just put us here and leave? We're taught that God is a personal God. Life would seem unbearable were it not so. I feel like you're saying He left us... If you believe there's a grand scheme, as you said you do, then everything must have a reason, leading to some goal.
As far as free will. I've always said I have difficulty reconciling God's Providence or Sovereignty with our free will. I make no secret about it. You can't, though, change the meaning of free will - otherwise how is a conversation to continue? Free will. Will is a noun. Free is an adjective, The Will is Free. A free will offering. I make the offering of my own free will - no one is forcing me. Some offerings can be forced. As in paying for something so a profit could be made, but no taxes can be paid, so it's called an offering but payment is expected.
So we have this Will. Is it Free? I think it is, it certainly seems so. it seems to me that I'm making my choice of my own free will with no intervention by God. But is this true? If He has a grand scheme, don't I have to adhere to it? Let me ask you this: Did Mary have free will in saying "YES" to bearing the Son of God? Could she have said "no"? I think it's a lot more complicated than we care to imagine.
Romans 2:1 Whether we do the same things or not is irrelevant - we do SOME things and to God it's all the same. Paul said if we fail to keep all the commandments, we've broken them all.Yes, we are on the same page. The above scripture is showing that mercy and understanding are required, and that we are judged according to what measure we judge. The lie is still at work, for in as much as any person believes that Adam and Eve were not innocently duped by the serpent, and therefore are knowing and deliberate participants in calling God a liar, so also do they reveal their own lack of faith. For in our judgments of others, we project who we are. Romans 2:1.
BTW, I'm not clear on what you call "the lie". I had said that I thought it was when the serpent said "you shall surely not die" but you didn't confirm if this is what you believe to be the lie. IOW, the lie was saying that GOD is the liar.
We have to part ways a bit here. I have to feel hunger to be thankful for food? Isn't this making God small?I would have said that God created flesh beings to reveal unthankfulness inherent in the creation through an ignorance of Who God is. If you're getting what I am saying, then you would understand why God gave men hunger, so that men would be thankful to God for their food.
You could probably also see why this testimony of the Holy Spirit is being played out in a temporal existence.
The glory that God reveals, moves a person to worship so that they cannot help but do so. The thankfulness God gives us, to give to Him is not one that patronizes Him, but is sincere and from the heart without pretense. We are even thankful to be thankful. God's need for glory is the same as our need to see it. Because Whoever Knows His Maker in Truth, knows his self. Whoever glorifies their Maker, glorifies their self whom the Maker has made. Beauty is not beauty if not seen and appreciated. God not only wants us to see so as to appreciate His glory, but also share in it as His children.
Love is simple and yet Eternal and unfathomable. God has created out of an unfair yet no blame scenario, the beginnings of what may be a perpetual epiphany. Such is His Glory.
He, the Almighty Creator of the Universe and all in it, couldn't figure out a better way to make me be thankful? He couldn't put this into my DNA? How do I share in His glory if life is so difficult? No. I think there are other powers at work. I see all a little differently than you do, I think. Maybe you could expound on perpetual epiphany. A manifestation, something we see.
W