By The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow, which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin, then?
If He is the Source of Morals He does — certainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit. Surely the Source of law cannot violate law and stand unsmirched; surely the judge upon the bench cannot forbid crime and then revel in it himself unreproached.
—Mark Twain, “Thoughts of God” in The Portable Atheist, p. 118
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One night I watched with horror as a young woman bled to death because she was a Jehovahs Witness. We could have saved her with blood transfusions but we respected her wishes and watched her die. All due to some meaningless blurb somewhere in the bible about cannibalism. When will we stop following the ramblings of Bronze Age men in their attempt to understand/control their world?
Funny I should read a post about some thoughts I had just the other night. Can God sin? And by extension could Jesus have sinned? (he WAS considered the only man who had commited no sin)
No, my friend, the divine cannot possibly sin by the very definition of the word. The word “sin” is a translation of the greek word “amartia” which was the word used when an archer missed the target. A man sins when he loses his path to theosis (or so modern theology claims). It’s reasonable to claim that since God has no such goal, it cannot sin by default (Jesus too since he was/is supposedly God incarnate). The divine may do as well as it pleases.
It still buffles me to see Christians consider Jesus as sinless with the several instances in the New Testament where Jesus curses, calls people names and loses his temper (the same people that consider doing the same things as sins). I see them as perfect examples that their version of the divine is free to break its own rules (I won’t even get into the Old Testament). Of course, in this case, your previous blog-post comes into play. (Does Might make right?)
God killed newborns, destroyed tribe after tribe, promoted violence and division. This legacy continues today in the religious tradition. Is this not sin? Christians will say that it is “just” – god cannot tolerate our sin, so he has to kill us. Wow. Next time some driver cuts me off, he better watch it. This is so frustrating – my own parents say this. That god can do no wrong, and the very fact that god did it makes it ok. Our brains are just to small to fathom the greatness and justice of god, I guess. I’m so grateful that I escaped this belief, but it’s discouraging to me when so many people are still so brainwashed and refuse to think critically about the description of god in the bible.
‘Sin’ is a completely subjective term. There are those who consider someone who disagrees with them as a sinner, but not a murderer who agrees with them. This is my main problem with religion, that it can be used so easily to justify murder of innocents.
Of course ‘innocent’ is a subjective term as well. Does that make my argument moot?
Well can God sin. I don’t know never met the guy. But consider omnipotence with being all powerful you would be omniscient and have foreknowledge of everything that is going to happen. Wouldn’t God’s path to theosis actually be our path to theosis so if we fall would he not actually have sinned. Is his goal not the salvation of mankind’s collective soul. So with foreknowledge would he not have been responsible for Lucifer’s sins and in turn the fall of 1/3 of the angels to demons. By our common understanding of sin he is definitely guilty of wrath and pride.
I don’t think an author sins when he or she writes that her characters are suffering or dying. It’s their universe, not the characters’.
Of course, the argument gets much more complicated than that. For starters, wouldn’t God coming down and fixing everything (at least, fixing it according to your standards) be a violation of our right to choose? And isn’t choosing Him the reason Christ died on the cross in the first place? Isn’t making the wrong choice what messed up the world in the first place?
Seems like it’s God’s fault for not stopping us then, isn’t it? But then again, why should he? Even babies have basic comprehension of their environment (and they’re racist little liars, too; not kidding). Adam and Eve he made as adults. Fully grown, competent-minded adults. They spoke a language. You can’t tell me that they didn’t have the experience necessary to not screw up. They knew better. They had no reason to not trust God. He made them, brought them together, gave them something to do (take care of the garden and spread over the earth), and I bet He spent time with them too (it does say later that He was walking in the garden).
But if he hadn’t told them to not eat the fruit of a single tree (which would have been harmless otherwise), then that wouldn’t have changed, right? Wrong. The fault lies with us. God gave us a choice to go with our free will. He allowed us to choose to go against Him. It’s true freedom. I know you like your freedom, so unless you think we’d be better off as mindless robots put in a cage for God’s amusement, you cannot blame God for our problems.
Ultimately, the fault lies with Adam. If he had stopped Eve from eating the fruit (he was standing right there, after all), then there wouldn’t be earthquakes left and right, we’d have competent leaders, and we’d probably be a good few millennia ahead of where we are now.
So, yeah. God’s universe. He calls the shots. But unlike most authors, The Author has the power to afford us true freedom of choice.
Adam and Eve he made as adults. Fully grown, competent-minded adults. They spoke a language. You can’t tell me that they didn’t have the experience necessary to not screw up. They knew better.
Um, the whole point of the story, what makes it so tragic, is that they *didn’t* know better. The fruit that they took was the *knowledge of good and evil*, which, prior to consuming they did not possess.
Freedom of choice – yes, based on our intellect, knowledge, self-awareness, emotional baggage (and therefore, capability to make good or bad choices). Freedom of choice is extremely limited. For example, someone who has never known love, was abused by parents, etc., may not be able to ‘choose” to love a partner in the same way that someone couuld if they had been raised by healthy parents. In other words, there is NO real freedom of choice. Do I have a choice to “believe” in jesus, god? No, I don’t. I cannot. Any more than I could believe in the tooth fairy. You can threaten me all you want with eternal damnation, but I simply cannot “choose” to believe. According to the bible, people like me are all going to burn for that, even though we didn’t have “freedom of choice”.
I’m glad the whole thing is made-up. If it were not, it would be a profoundly cruel & unjust system.
It says in the bible that God is a jealous God and that he has wrath. but can you blame him? look at the old testement. He tried to warn us-he is like a good father. “don’t go near that fire, it will hurt.” the child goes towards the fire. God responds by giving us a pop. He brought his wrath on Israel because they didn’t listen. He wasn’t trying to hurt them, he was trying to save them from something more harmful.
Don’t get me wrong: many horrible things happen in the world today. But that doesn’t mean it is God doing it. Like in Job – Satan brought all those horrible things onto Job, and in the end God rewarded Job for Job’s faithfulness. God gave Job way more than he had lost to Satan. No matter what happens God has a plan. He works through things to bring the better because He loves us.
Yeah, Jesus lost his temper a few times but that doesn’t mean that he sinned. I think that it is okay to loose your cool-as long as it is being lost over the right reasons. What would you do if they were turning your temple into Wal-Mart?
Too bad for Job’s family who was killed by God so he could prove a point. But Job got a new family, so hey, what the hell. No harm done, right?