@thearcaneaxiom
Active 2 days, 10 hours ago- Rank: Eccentric Mentor
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Well, people who choose to live apart from God on earth are kind of living a personal hell, right?
Right, it’s self-inflicted. It’s choosing to be something lesser than you could be, which leads to sorrow.
How can someone get to the point where having the ultimate good would be worse for them than hell?
Because of who they chose to be. Heaven won’t be heaven to those who do not choose to be heavenly. To put it into perspective, there’s a story Brad Wilcox talked about: A young man made bad choices throughout his life, and only continued to choose wrong. Brad talked with the boy’s father about getting him into a youth camp, knowing the good it does. Once they put him into the program, however, he called the first day saying “get me out of here.” The camp was nothing but good, yet the young man hated every moment of it. Similarly, the unrepentant sinner if forced into the gates of heaven will scream “get me out of here” despite Christ begging them to use his atonement and change.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
That is true, he did have that point in between after the betrayal and before his death to repent. I guess we’ll never really know for sure why God allows us to go to hell. After all, as Judith said in her book, not even humans can a know for sure what is on other humans hearts, let alone the God of the Universes’ mind. Maybe people that die and face God at the end are given one last chance to choose, or maybe not. It’s a little frustrating not knowing these things sometimes.
Well if you ask me it’s not so much that hell is a punishment for sin as much as the state you choose to exist in. If God forced you into His presence, it would be worse than hell, and so He loves you enough to let you live outside of His presence, despite knowing you’d be happier if you chose Him instead. He’s letting you decide who you want to ultimately be, and therefore where you’ll be the happiest.
You’re absolutely right though, we simply don’t know all things, and shouldn’t act like we do, we can only trust in Him.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
Love this movement, protect Adolin! I’m on the final stretch of Rhythm, and I’m not worried about it, but you really never know with Sanderson, he’s really good at things like that. He’s killed favorite characters before, but it’s generally still fulfilling when he does, like with LightSong.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
It doesn’t make sense really, after all these people are the ones facing hardships daily, wouldn’t it make the most sense to turn on whatever religion and god they believe in?
Very true, this is something we see repeatedly. Those who go through the worst in life often end up being the most drawn towards God. Part of it is because they have nothing else to turn to. Christ is the way, and there is no other way that we might find the Father. When they see plainly that there is nothing else, and they are sufficiently brought low to the depths of humility, they can be changed by Him, and they begin to be the most grateful for life, instead of those who can indulge in worldly pleasures without being forced to grow.
You mentioned that Jesus said it would be better for Judas never to have been born, so that leads to another question. Why does God create people that He knows will end up rejecting Him and going to hell? Won’t that cause Himself unnecessary pain and pain for the person created?
This is one of the problems I have with classical theism. If this is the reality, then I personally feel that it would be both more just and more merciful for God to annihilate souls, instead of tormenting them. This can work from a Nicene perspective, but it’s a less popular take. I think the best answer here from a Nicene perspective that believes in an eternal hell, is essentially just that God’s ways are not our ways, and He favors cosmic justice over individual justice. So while it would have been better for Judas not to be born on an individual level, his betrayal is necessary for the greater cosmic good, and because of his betrayal, it is also a greater cosmic good that he faces eternal torment.
Personally, I can’t accept this view of God, because it feels too heartless to me, but perhaps it’s true. It may not be the only explanation outside of annihilationism within classical theism, but it’s the best one I’ve heard, I should clarify that point that I’m not claiming that these are the only options, though they are the only ones I see right now.
So for my own real take, I don’t support annihilationism, instead, I go clear to the opposite side of the spectrum to resolve the issue. I believe in a pre-mortal existence, where we all choose to come to this earth to be tried and tested. God loves us all, and provides a way for us to come to this earth to learn and grow and draw closer to Him, and we all of our own free will agreed to that plan to come to this earth. Judas in this case was not sent to earth for the purpose of being the betrayer, that’s just what he ultimately chose, and Christ knew his heart. It would have been a greater good for Judas to have never been born because of what he chose, but that doesn’t mean he lacked the potential to be faithful to the end.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
Why not just let us live in communion with Him in ignorance? I’m probably 100% wrong about this, but I think living in ignorance would be better than many actively rejecting God and being separated from Him.
I’ll give my best classical response, then my personally preferred answer.
Essentially as you’ve already said, there is victory and therefore more good in us choosing good over evil, otherwise, we are simply robots or zombies that follow God’s every whim. What you’re suggesting though is that God doesn’t necessarily take our will away, but rather our knowledge of good and evil gained in the Garden to use our will. So the real question is could we all have been better off in the Garden forever? You’re absolutely right that there are so many souls that misuse their will, only to bring condemnation upon themselves, so obviously at least for them it would be a net positive to never have had the chance, and to simply have the bliss of ignorance. Christ Himself says this about Judas, or more specifically He said that he would be better off having never been born at all.
One solution I’ve heard is essentially that since God is seeking to maximize good, then this universe we’re in is the maximal outcome, where the most people accept Him on an intentional level beyond innocence, and the least are left to suffer for their sins. I think this answer works in theory, but when we look at the world around us, we have to ask ourselves if this really is the most optimal outcome. If this is the path we take though, I don’t think there’s much else we can say, and simply accept that this really is the most optimal timeline.
To give my own take, I would ask what is God’s ultimate goal here anyway? By my understanding, it’s “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man”. God loves us, and what He ultimately wants is for us to find the highest degree of joy, which intrinsically only comes from knowing the good from the evil, and choosing the good. He can let us remain ignorant, and there could be a degree of contentment there, but because we would know no pain we would know no pleasure, happiness, or joy. So it becomes a gamble, the chance for the highest degree of joy, but we have to come to this earth, where we might instead end up choosing the ultimate sorrow.
However, what I think should be noted is that those who don’t choose God get what they want. I love the quote from Brad Wilcox “Heaven won’t be heaven for those who do not choose to be heavenly.” For those who choose another way, God could try to bring them to His presence where the highest joy lies, but they would hate every second of it, screaming “Get me out of here”, and that is the path they choose, to live apart from God. They are the most happy the can be in that state, and God loved them enough to let them take that path, just as the Prodigal loved his son enough to let him leave with his inheritance, even if he never returned. Would they be better off in innocence? Perhaps, but that is the choice we all made by coming here, to learn and grow so that we might let God turn us into something far greater than we can imagine.
if you’ve ever gone through a stage in your faith journey where you start questioning/doubting what you’ve been taught.
I think I’ve occasionally pondered my doubts in the past, but never seriously. There was this one time when some pretty traumatic stuff happened within my family that forced me into a paradigm shift, and I questioned if I should just go all the way with the shift into believing nothing at all, but I held to what I did know ultimately.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
Being forced to be active on KP and make progress on my writing? I can’t tell if I should be mad or grateful, lol!
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
Hi Shadow (and everyone else, I haven’t been on for like a year at this point).
So when it comes to my personal faith, the answer I give would be similar to what other’s have already said here, that it was essentially that God gave Satan free will. If God only gave the capacity to do good, then what is the value of that? In my eyes, the ability to choose evil, yet choosing good anyways makes that choice more meaningful, it makes the triumph more meaningful.
This equates to the problem of evil in general, where we ask the question of if there’s an all good God, then why does there exist any evil in the universe? Evil exists so that those that understand evil can understand the good. If you look at a pure white page, and that’s all you’ve ever known, you don’t really gain much, if you look at an all black page, you don’t learn anything, but if you look at a picture of contrast, making use of both the light and dark, you gain an understanding of contrast and therefore meaning. This is what happened in the Garden when Adam and Eve partook of the fruit, gaining knowledge of good and evil, before that, they knew no good for they knew no sin. They knew no pleasure for they knew no pain.
Perhaps a controversial belief, but I see the Fall as a good thing, because it was for our ultimate good. It was God’s plan to give Adam and Eve a way to transgress and bring sin into the world so that they could know the good from the evil. This meant a Savior must be provided, and Adam and Eve would be able to progress to an even higher state of joy than they ever could have in the Garden. To put this into perspective, Christ was plan A, not plan B. To say the Fall wasn’t what God wanted would mean that the Savior was a plan B.
Going back to Satan, he was given that ability to choose, and he chose wrong, but without that choice, what’s the point?
Happy Thanksgiving btw!
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
I can go into a lot of depth on this topic, but since I’m busy, I’ll just say this. More often than not, the best answer to this exact question is another question: Is it good? If it’s good, do it, who cares if it’s from the Holy Spirit. All good things come from God don’t they? Also, as Christ says, by their fruits you shall know them. Simply test it in small degrees, and see what fruit it bears, if they are good, let that bolster your confidence.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
As a professional human male, I would be happy to offer some of my thoughts. What I think should be realized is that when it comes to gender, not every man is the same, and not every woman is the same. Men and women will have general differences, but a man can still be masculine while still showing off what might be considered feminine tendencies, like how open he is with his emotions.
For example:As a girl, I would be sobbing my heart out, looking for someone to talk to, hold me, comfort me, and just sympathies. now, I know this is not how guys react.
A man can totally be like this. Now, a man acting this way can still look very different from a woman acting this way. An analogy I really like is that it’s two instruments playing the same note. A man would likely feel resentful and angry, but also be desiring help to save them from despair. I think a good case example would be Simon from The Chosen season 3. Spoiler warning kinda. He is really angry, feeling betrayed and devastated, but he didn’t want to talk about it with anyone, which only made him more resentful. There’s a few moments when he simply cries to himself, or broods. In the end though, after letting out his anger at Jesus, he breaks down crying “don’t let me go Lord” over and over.
Now was Simon sobbing his heart out, looking for someone to talk to, hold him, comfort him, and just sympathies? He wasn’t seeking for those things, but those were the things he ultimately needed and deep down wanted, and what ultimately came about. So are men all just more internal then? Well hold on. I would say that’s a reasonable examination, and is generally true, but let’s take a feminine case, Simon’s wife, Eden. She acting in a very similar way actually. She stayed quiet and portended nothing was wrong, but that only made her more resentful. Eventually she lashed out at Simon, both in anger and grief, breaking down in tears.
So not all women will express their emotions plainly, and seek refuge from others, even when that’s what they need. Everyone handles grief a little differently, and while gender is a factor, it does not determine behavior. The thing is though when we look at Simon and Eden, we see gender play heavily in how these behaviors come out, distinctly coming out as masculine and feminine interpretations respectively.
In the case of Aaron, it seems that he’s well experienced with grief. He likely will have grown emotional callouses through all of that. If he is still actively seeking God in all of that though, yet has not yet felt any closeness to God, then that would suggest that despite his wounds, he’s an idealist who stubbornly holds on to hope. So when we come to the point he breaks, he would likely be resentful and angry towards God, or resentful and angry at life, if at the point of breaking he loses all faith. I would picture a Simon type moment, where he exclaims in a big outburst of all that he’s gone through and done, and yet God has done nothing but spat on him.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
You tagged me, but this never came up in my email, so sorry for the late response😕
I’m pretty much on the same vain as Whale. Rivals is a pretty general term, but usually you’ll see some parallels between them.
There can be the kind of rival where they are simply trying to one up each other, simply prove that they are superior in some sense. In this case, it’s usually something they are both skilled at, like how Whale mentioned chess. If they are still friends/collogues who are simply competitive, then something like this would make sense. This doesn’t need to be the case though. If they are friends or collogues, then they might be trying to prove that they are superior in every respect, where every silly little task given, they both charge at it trying to show how much better they are at it. It can be fun if they believe that they are different in every respect, but other characters point out that the are essentially the same.
There can also be a moral imbalance though. In which case it usually plays out as the protagonist and the bully/villain.
There can also be the kind of rival where one is trying to pull the other towards their way of thinking. What comes to my mind is the villain troupe where they tell the hero “where not so different you and I”. This is often kind of cringe when we see this because it’s usually some superficial similarity that doesn’t really speak to their inner character. It plays really well if the similarity comes from some value that the hero and villain share, and the villain is just a little more extreme. It needs to feel like the hero could legitimately could have gone the same path, and for that path to still be visible, making them question themselves. It can also be the case that the hero is trying to turn the villain as well.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
LET’S GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Congratulations Freedom!!!!!
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
This is a hard situation. I’m not going to tell you what to do, because I haven’t dealt with such situations before, and I’m not going to claim any authority on the subject (though I do have family who might be able to help). That being said, the biggest red flag to me is her parents. If she is not only willing, but actively discussing this with her parents, then I’d actually be much more ok with the dark themes she’s going into, because she genuinely is handling it in a mature way. If she’s writing about these things purely for the sake of proving that she’s mature, that’s also a major red flag.
What I would ask is who is she trying to get approval from? If she wants to show that she’s mature, the number one judges in that respect is her parents. Most likely I’m thinking that she’s trying to get approval from friends that also think they are more mature because they know about those things, she could just as much simply be trying to prove it to only herself though, though if that’s the case, why would she share it with you, unless she thinks you’re someone that would congratulate that sort of thing?
Perhaps you can ask her what maturity means to her. Based off of what she tells you, likely something along the lines of “knowing what’s in the dark and/or not being afraid of it”, you can let her know what you believe it means. If she respects you enough, or is wanting your approval, she may be able to take that to heart, as long as you don’t push too much.
If she’s Christian, and respects her faith, perhaps you can remind her that Christ said that we should liken ourselves to children. Not to be childish, but to be childlike. Humility is the true maturity in my eyes. Humility entails being ok with where you’re at right now, but still have a desire to grow, submitting to your parents, and knowing that there is always something else you can learn, even from let’s say a child.
Those things take real maturity and experience to understand though. What seems to be the issue is that she doesn’t have real maturity right now, instead she seems to have had a bunch of garbage thrown into her mind, and she’s trying to figure out how to deal with it.
Concerning the story itself. I’d say that it has potential as a story, though not written by a 14 year old, unless she’s somehow had first hand experience with some of these things, which could be a possibility, though I pray that’s not the case. You ironically can see her innocence shine through in the story, so I find that it’s probably just a lot of stuff she’s just seen and heard elsewhere.
Going into full editor mode right now, I would just say that the parents need more redemptive arcs, where they renew their commitments to each other, knowing each other’s imperfections and their own, but choosing to repent and change their ways humbly. The children can be part of their desire to change, which would make sense. It can’t be the whole reason, but it should be the catalyst. And it shouldn’t be a Parent Trap situation, like what she seems to be going for. The thing is though, it is honestly just so much darkness that no-one will really want to read it, unless again, they are the type that thinks that’s what it means to be mature, amongst other kinds of people she probably doesn’t want to attract.
Hopefully something I’ve said helps. Ultimately just pray for her, and be a good example. Show her the real maturity found in those you respect in that way. Show her love and humility.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
I like to get to know it before starting the book, then I occasionally reference it during reading, but don’t have to.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
Hold your horses now😅 We can do something like Tlavian if you want, it’s just the first thing that came to my head, but does it actually match the Andromedan language we worked out some time back? If not, we can either change the langauge, or change the word.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
I guess some of both? Like what the Andromedans would call Him, as well as new names for what the humans could call Him?
I’m assuming we’re still just thinking about the Andromedans alone, but I mean phonetically in their tongue, vs translated titles. For example, a name for Christ in Andromedan could be Tlavian (I don’t remember any actual Andromedan phonemes, so I’m just making stuff up right now. We’ll need to find the original posts where we worked that stuff out), but we could also get the translated title into English, let’s say that Tlavian actually means Redemptive-one, or something like that. So when writing your story, you could use purely Andromedan phonemes, or you could use English translations of the names, or both depending on what you find appropriate.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.