A Deist's Take on Christianity

Back in 1997, a gentleman whom I'll just call Robert (he has requested that I not use his full name in this age of personal google searches) posted the following on alt.christnet. This is the first in a series of posts on the problem of theodicy. You can use this table-of-contents post to read each of my response posts, in the appropriate order.

Michael Drake wrote:

In article [elided], [elided] says...

I don't know who wrote the following.. it seems the attributions
are getting a bit mixed up, here.

Dear Dave and Andrew:

You two are having a lot of fun ? Has God ever touched you with the Holy Spirit ? Perhaps you should find out what it is like for yourself. ...continue reading... Sincerely, openly, honestly search for God and God will let you find God. Unless you have been there do you really know what heaven is like? The experience is much greater then everything in this world. So it cannot be compared with anything in this world. You will never know unless you take the challenge and learn for your self.

Al fogelman@vv.cta.com

I wrote this:

Al, I am going to answer this one in as honest a manner as I can.

I sincerely believed that God had, indeed touched me, as the result of entering a 12-step program. I believed that I had undergone the "spiritual awakening" through intervention of the Holy Spirit. But then I began to hear voices. I became the victim of paranoia. I had a near psychotic reaction to my "experience" of God. Fortunately, I got to the doctor just in time. With anti-psychotic medication, therapy, and a deliberate process of "demystification" of the experience, I completely lost all belief.

That was several years ago.

The process of demystification got me to asking some tough questions..

Why is the Christian godhead so capricious?

In View of Romans 13: 1-2

Why allow me to live in relative luxury under democracy and a socially concerned capitalism in the US while children and grandmothers were being murdered in Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda?

It was answered like this by someone..

By God's grace, he chose you to be in relative luxury. That is why you are to thank Him with a humble heart. By his choice, in a second, we could be starving or killed.

I wrote:

Why do we eat while Calcutta starves?

Why does God appoint despots and tyrants as leaders? (That's what Romans 13 says!!)

The response:

God doesn't appoint leaders...we do. Evil exists in this world. We will be living with it until the end of time. I don't understand your interpretation of Roman's 13... I didn't find where it says that God appoints leaders (I'm not trying to be facetious)

First of all, I am a Poli Sci major, and we could have tons of fun with this one..including St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and how they wrote heresies while someone like Machiavelli was actually closer to the Christian paradigm of governance.

But, simply.. Romans 13: 1-2

1. Let every soul be subject to the sovereign authorities. For there is no power which is not from God; and those who are in authority are ordained by God.

2. Whoever therefore resists the civil authority, resists the command of God; and they who resist shall receive judgement to themselves.

Your notion that "we" appoint leaders is actually a relatively recent bit of political philosophy. Under the "Social Contract," theorized about by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Rousseau, and such, the theory is all power to govern is derived from the people.

Hobbes said, if the monarch screws you (or whomever the leader is), you must put up with it for the sake of the social order. But, the leader is bound to treat subjects morally and, especially, not to take their property.

Locke said, "bunk." He said the people both appoint and have a right to fire the sovereign, provided there has been a long and well documented set of wrongs the sovereign has committed. Essentially, the people make a contract with a sovereign to lead them and create safety in society so that each person may own property and, therefore, derive and maintain a sense of person (personality) from that which they own. Locke felt the only justification for govt was that it gave man a method for acquiring and holding onto property. Without govt, it's law of the jungle time.. all people have an equal right of claim to each thing in nature and may only take something for there own if it exists in abundance in nature. If it is not abundant, you cannot take it.. or if
you try, you will place yourself in a state of war with the rest of mankind. In civil society, under the SOcial Contract, if the sovereign acts in any way as to break the contract for a safe and just society, it is the sovereign who has actually rebelled against the people, and, as a result, has taken his society out of the higher state of the Social Contract and back into the state of Nature.. in which the people will make war back, depose him, and re-institute new govt.

You are espousing a rather recent, liberal notion. The time honored one, which is called "absolutism" and was insisted upon by the Russian monarch as late as Czar Nicholas. The notion of the Divine Right of Kings (sovereigns) goes back to Romans 13:1-2, cited above.

Why would God go to such detail in this creation and then tell us not to live in it?

What makes you think this is the case? Where does God tell you not to live in his home?

Romans 12:

1. I beseech you, therefore, brethern, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, by means of reasonable service.

2. Do not imitate the way of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, that you may discern what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

That's just one example.

Why did God fear that,

God doesn't fear anything.

Please do not take my words out of context. Secondly, please say "it is my opinion that God doesn't fear anything."

if man was left in the Garden and would eat from the Tree of Life, as he did the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, man would become like us (God{s})?

Obviously, since Adam ate from the tree, he did not become a god. So you are still believing lies that Satan started since the beginning of time, instead of looking in your heart and trying to find the truth. Satan is subtle...extremely subtle. He'll trick you with a twist of a word and confuse you.

Genesis 3:

22. Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever;

23. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

What of satan do you find in these scriptures from Genesis?

Secondly, be careful, your statement seems a tad judgemental.. and you know what Jesus had to say about being judgemental..

Matthew 7:

1. Judge not, that you may not be judged.

2. For with the same judgement that you judge, you will be judged, and with the same measure with which you measure, it will be measured to you.

3. Why do you see the splinter which is in your brother's eye, and do not feel the beam which is in your own eye?

4. Or how can you say to your brother, Let me take out the splinter from your own eye, and behond there is a beam in your own eye?

5. O hypocrites, first take out the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to get out the splinter from your brother's eye.

But, the bottom line for me is this. Man is a fallen creature, according to this religion. A premise I tend to agree with.. fallen in that we do not yet know how to balance reason and rhyme in living.

That is because we rely on ourselves to try and figure it out instead of relying on God. Mans purpose in like, the only purpose now, is to establish a relationship with God. And we can only do that through the belief in his Son Jesus Christ. God will balance your life if you would get to know Him and let Him in your life. He'll get rid of all the trash.

Why would a loving God create a creature who would fall? Why would God give man free will if, by exercising it according to our own conscience, we go to Hell? Why does God allow man to harm his fellow? Why does God allow war? Why does God allow profound suffering? Why did God allow 6 million of his Chosen People die in the Nazi death camps... where was God?

You need to get involved with God in a relationship before any of these questions can be answered. You can't do it by yourself.

That, sir, is the very answer that gets you nowhere with a seeker, or an agnostic, or an athiest. It is ignorant.
I have asked the question of many, including ministers. The answer you give is the chump's answer.

The best answer I have had yet is from a minister... do you know what the answer was? A very simple, "I don't know." That's honest. Your answer is programmed, not honest, involves
no thought or reflection, and is abhorrent to me after spilling my guts out about my "experience of God."

Admit it, "you don't know." That's OK. It's honest. It does not exclude God.

But since you are imbued with the Holy Spirit, why don't you tell me specifically how Hitler benefitted God in God's plan by destroying 6 million of his Chosen People?

And yet I do believe in God. I look at the complexity of this universe, to the extent that I can claim any understanding of it, and I see order in it everywhere. I believe that prayer can make a difference.

But, I believe in God as Creator and Prime Mover, a Deistic notion. I believe the Creator made it, and created certain facilities by which we can live on earth as a self-contained biosphere.. including prayer. I don't think God answers it directly, but indirectly through some faculty he built into this universe. And it only acts on the small stuff.. never on the stuff that can have a profound effect on the future. I believe the Creator is not omniscient. I have no idea where the mind of the Creator is at this moment.

I understand that "omniscience" is all-knowing. So you are saying that God does not know it all. How can He be God if He doesn't know it all?

How could God or anyone or anything know what has not yet happened? To say otherwise is to say the future is set in stone, immutible, planned. If that is the case, then every sin anyone will commit
in that future has been pre-planned by God. That means, logically, God is the originator of sin. I'm sure you don't believe that, and yet, if all has been determined by God in advance, and is a
self-fulfilling plan, then God is logically the originator of all that is to happen, including my thoughts being typed on this keyboard for this group and your response, and any sins or non-sins committed forevermore.

I wouldn't want to put my faith in someone that doesn't know whats going on, would you?

I do everyday, man. So do you. You just won't admit it.

BTW.. faith means "trust".

Need an example of how you place trust...

When you fill the car up with gas, and it says "X" amount of gallons has been pumped into your tank, how do you know it has? You place your trust in the State Board of Weights and Measures, probably.. you have faith that they knew what they were doing when they tested the meters in the gas pump. But, how do you know? They're just imperfect humans like you an me. And yet, as imperfect and unable as they are to be perfect, you place your faith in the job they've done. Same with the dairy farmer who supposedly pasteurized that milk you drink. Same with the guys who built your car. You place alot of faith in imperfect, non-omniscient, non-omnipotent man. Every day. If you didn't, you couldn't live in this world.

That's why no one should put their faith in man and in God alone. God is omniscient and you have to believe it through faith. Read the psalms.

I know this is a really hard concept for a Christian to grasp, but it is the only way I know how to make the notion of god work.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND THIS! I don't want to offend you, just make you aware. The above statement (starting with "it is the only way") is the ultimate root, core, center of sin/Satanism.

Which version of Satan... the ill-defined entity of the Old Testament? The very well-defined one from the New? Or how about the Persian version of Zoroastrianism which the Christians borrowed.. his name was Ahriman. Or was it Seth.. the Egyptian version?

Sorry, my friend. As I said, I had to demystify this whole thing. I know way too much of the history behind your religion and its theorized evolution. Your religion appears very much borrowed from the Persians...baptisms, communions, escatology, son of God, virgin birth, etc.. I don't discount its mythical lessons. I do question its literality.

You believe He is the Creator but you are trying to "make God work" for yourself. That is the essence of Satan. You cannot possibly make God work in your own mind and God doesn't want you to try.

Now, wasn't it you who said, above, that I should "look to my own heart?" I did. This is what I found.

This is where faith comes in. But Satan tricks millions into doing this. Meanwhile, life goes by....and by our own choosing we are separated from our Creator. That is hell.

And what kind of a God could sit back and let it happen? What kind of God could, before the beginning of time, decide who would and would not be saved, and yet make them anyway, having condemned them to hell before the beginning of the world?

Ephesians 1

4. Just as from the beginning he has chosen us thorough him before the foundation of the world, that we may become holy and without blemish before him.

5. And he marked us with his love to be his from the beginning, and adopt us to be sons through Jesus Christ, as it pleased his will,

6. To the praise of the glory of his grace that he has poured upon us by his beloved one.

7. In him we have salvation, and in his blood, forgiveness of sins, according to the richness of his grace,

8. That the grace which has abounded in us, in all wisdom and spiritual undeerstanding,

9. And made known to us the mystery of his will that he has ordained from the very beginning, to work through it...

etc... You can look up the rest.

Absent my sense of wonderment at the universe, I see no evidence of God.

Here is some evidence: you are breathing.

And????? Was God in Adolph Hitler's breaths? What is God responsible for?

You say you believe in God but you believe there exists God, there is a difference. Have a relationship with him and believed in Him and in his Son Jesus. Your life will truly change. It has for millions of us.

And it has not for billions of others.

The purpose of this was not a pissing contest. I expressed a very difficult period of my life in the previous article. My "experience" of "God" was rather negative. I basically let all reason go.. and as Goya once said, "When reason is gone, the monster comes out."