|
I was wrong earlier about the deaths in the Flood being a mystery. It's clear in the Bible why the people were killed. God judged them and found them wanting. This answer raises heated objections amongst some of us here, as in, "What right did God have to judge them and find them wanting, and then go and kill them? Wasn't the whole thing a set-up anyway? Isn't God to blame for the Fall in the first place, since He knew what was going to happen the whole time?"
God's foreknowledge is not a rational reason to blame him. Foreknowledge leads one to a choice whether to halt the direction something is going, or not. In this case he would have had to halt the free choices of Adam. To do so would have turned Adam into slaves to God, which is not what God wanted. I've outlined this in a previous post.
So God judges humans based on our choices, and our deeds. Adam chose their own way rather than obedience. Each of us chooses whether to believe God or disbelieve God. We mustn't be misled about this. Belief or unbelief are choices. To say "I cannot bring myself to believe in God because: (fill in the blank)", is to say "I'm making a choice based on this set of standards or principles." We're setting up standards by which we are judging the veracity of God's claims. This is to place our understanding in a superior position vis-a-vis God. And this is precisely the same choice Adam made.
Belief is a choice.
|