Creating God

[cooldude]

It was just your regular all-in-one Sabbath School lesson review. The class was discussing the influence of truth on the life. Once again, much to everyone’s satisfaction, the inevitable cliché popped up: Light and darkness cannot coexist, all agreed. “You walk into a dark room,” one brother stood up and declared as proof, “you need only to flick the light switch and the darkness disappears.” And the congregation said Amen.

What sanctimonious rubbish! The kind of stark, simplistic, fundamentalist absolutism so typical of the way we speak in church—all in the name of truth! Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein and preserved the phenomenal brain for posterity, himself a devout Presbyterian, lost faith as he observed the similar whims and fancies of those who professed, practiced and promoted religion around him. He came to the conclusion that, rather than the other way round, men created God in their own image, i.e., whatever they felt like making him. Read more...

[Gerr]

And your point is?

[Woody]

You bring up some good points that I appreciate hearing.

Yes - we have many clichés that pop up in church. Mostly they are for robots who have not been programmed to think or read.

That being said - we each have our own clichés depending upon how we have created God from our studies and experience.

The good news is - as Alden Thompson taught me so well :

God is big enough to handle and encompass most any cliché or belief. He accepts us as we are and as we understand HIM to be.

He can even take and on the legalist. What I am saying is that knowledge is much over-rated. Yes, it is important. But we don't need to have uniformity or unity in belief for God to love and accept us. I think He sheds a few tears watching us agrue over theology.

[cooldude]

The point is that it is inaccurate to say light and darkness cannot coexist. No one who has looked up at the stars on a dark night can truly be unaware of the coexistence of light and darkness. Indeed, the thicker the darkness, the more brilliant those glittering specks of light appear.

[cooldude]

Wise words, Woody.

[Woody]

Wise words, Woody.

Love the cool alliteration.

[cooldude]

Thank you. It's just that those dumb clichés are particularly irksome when they are spewed by folks who are dogmatic about their handle on truth.

[Gerr]

Do you think Christ and Satan coexist?

[cooldude]

Christ had Judas walking with him for three and a half years. At the last supper they dipped in the dish together (Matthew 26:23, Mark 14:20).

[Gerr]

Yeah, the wheat and the tares can/may coexist for a time. In the end, the wheat is gathered into the barn, and the tares burned. Last I read, Judas went out from the last supper into the night, and subsequently hanged himself. Last I read, Satan was kicked out of heaven, and eventually will be burned to nothing.

[doug yowell]

The point is that it is inaccurate to say light and darkness cannot coexist. No one who has looked up at the stars on a dark night can truly be unaware of the coexistence of light and darkness. Indeed, the thicker the darkness, the more brilliant those glittering specks of light appear.

Hmmmm, that's an unusual rendition of the word coexist.NOt exactly the way the word is intended to be understood particularly in the context of God/light and sin/darkness.How many glittering specks of darkness can you see when you look at the noonday sun? Last I checked light dispels darkness or am I missing something? And darkness only exists when there's no light? So how can darkness and light co-exist(meaning in harmonious cooperation)?

[cooldude]

But they did coexist for a while, didn't they?

[Gerr]

But they did coexist for a while, didn't they?

Only by God's mercy.

[Bravus]

There are degrees of darkness and light in this world... not absolute either, very often.

Metaphors can take us only so far before they break down.

[cooldude]

Amen.