Imagine you were to come home from work one day and discover an inch of standing water in your living room — soaking your carpeting and staining all your furniture. Would you calmly stand there sifting through your mail, or would you stop whatever you were doing and try to stop the flood in your house? I suspect you would do the latter.
Likewise, imagine you were at home one day and your child came running into the house with blood gushing from a large cut in her head. Would you continue baking cookies, or would you immediately call 9-1-1? Again, I bet you would do the latter.
Serious problems demand urgent actions, right?
Well, not according to the Bible. According to the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve fell from grace by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, thereby corrupting their relationship with the god-of-the-Bible, not only for themselves, but for every one of their descendants: the entire human race. And what did the god-of-the-Bible do in response to this terrible event? Did He drop whatever He was doing and rush to find a solution? No, the god-of-the-Bible hummed and hawed for THOUSANDS OF YEARS before finally sending his son to fix the problem.
Excuse me, but why didn’t the god-of-the-Bible fix this awful problem sooner? Why didn’t the god-of-the-Bible send his son to EDEN, where the problem first began, to have a chat with ADAM and EVE? Why did the god-of-the-Bible delay for dozens of generations, waste time with the Ten Commandments (which He knew were doomed to fail), make the Jews wander in the desert for four decades, etc.? Why didn’t the god-of-the-Bible take urgent action to fix the urgent problem, right then and there in the garden of Eden? Why didn’t EVE mother the Son of God? If it was so critically important for the god-of-the-Bible to heal the rift that Adam and Eve had created, then why didn’t the god-of-the-Bible take more urgent action?
Apparently, the god-of-the-Bible so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son…he just wasn’t in any hurry to get around to doing it.
Oh, c'mon; what's a measly 4000 years?
"Oh, c’mon; what’s a measly 4000 years?"
A valid question, assuming the god-of-the-Bible is an eternal being and would, presumably, consider four millenia an insignificant epoch. Still, all those humans who died during those millenia might have appreciated having a messiah to forgive them for their sins and save them from eternal damnation. Also, and more importantly, most humans respond better when correction is proximate to the infraction, not if it appears several millenia after the fact. Unfortunately, the god-of-the-Bible apparently slept through that lecture in psych class, the result being that sin is (according to all the evangelists I've heard) widespread throughout human society. Had the god-of-the-Bible been more prompt in addressing the sin problem — for example, right there in Eden — maybe the human race wouldn't have all the sin it reportedly has today.
I agree with you, grumpy. If we interpret the bible literally, as many believers in it do, God comes across as a moody, petty, selfish simpleton. When we consider this god's supposed all-knowing-ness, exercises such as the Tree of Knowledge, the Flood, the Ten Commandments, and even the Apocalypse seem like useless theatrics.
Why doesn't the god-of-the-bible fast-forward us to Christ's reign on earth? Why can't he make the lion lie down with the lamb now? If God has the power and the knowledge that Christianity claims he does, and if he also loves us dearly, why must we jump through so many of His hoops?
Erika nicely summarizes my trouble with so many of the world's religions: why must we jump through so many of His hoops? I just don't get why so many religious believers point to atheism and call it an empty, meaningless belief system, while at the same time declaring their allegiance to a religion in which humans are nothing more than characters in some invisible deity's Nintendo game, as if that somehow infuses their existence with profound worth. I just shake my head.
There is a God. He created everything. He created humans because he could. He made them with the intention of putting them on earth, but their first test was in heaven, which they failed.
God could always come to Earth with the angels, which would make atheist rallies very unpopular.
God doesn't want to force you to believe in Him, because this will defeat the whole purpose of creating you.
God gave humans free will, and many beautiful ways of sensing things. God wants humans to use their senses to realize God's existence, and then choose the believe in Him. This is the beautiful phenomena that God wants to see. It is a matchless manifestation of His greatness.
But God is too kind to leave humans on their own. Instead, He made the task of finding Him easier for humans by sending them prophets.
The idea of a great God having a son is so stupid, so fictional, that I don't blame anybody for not believing in it.
I want to believe in a God who is perfect, who is always with me, who doesn't get tired, and who doesn't have a son. Christians plagiarized the idea of gods having sons from Greek mythology.
Where does Satan come in? It is simple. If you are good, God will help you. If you are bad, Satan will.
Satan is not some uncontrollable monster as the Bible depicts it. He is just the bad type of Jinns, a different type of life form who, like humans, have free will.
Ikram. Your comment constitutes preaching and thereby violates the DI comment policy. Further submissions of this type will be rejected at DI, though there are certainly many other websites out there that would welcome your comments, which are not based on any evidence. What you "want" to believe and what old sacred books tell you do not necessarily have anything to do with reality.
We so rarely get Quranic preaching here.