The Christian faith is radically different from any other kind of belief or philosophy. A sharp contrast to all other non Judaic doctrines of faith is that the Bible teaches us because of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, we too have become sinful. The impact of falling into sin is so far reaching that we are unable to save ourselves or make ourselves acceptable to God on the basis of our own merits. There is only one way by which God saves us. He does so exclusively through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ who is the way, the path to light. No one can come to God, the Father, except through the Son.The problem I find is that if Adam and Eve’s disobedience was the culprit of man becoming sinful, then wasn’t that God's choosing? Sin can be defined as disobedience towards God’s will. Yet, who created Satan? Who planted the seed for Satan to rebel against God? Who let the serpent roam in the Garden of Eden? Obviously the idea of sin was premeditated from God or else sin would not exist. It’s a perplexing contradiction of God going against his own will to create world of suffering.
Furthermore, the concept of a god taking the form of a man to endure the suffering of a mortal life is also problematic. If God wanted truly to be human, then why didn’t Jesus ever commit a sin? The idea of a human being never to have sinned is like a lion that doesn’t eat meat. Of course, in the bible, it is even admitted that no one can imitate completely the life of Jesus, but the pursuit of it is enough to gain salvation.
Now even more contradictions, so God wants us to be what we should have been but he never intended us to be from the beginning? What does that really equate to? Man was designed to sin, but we ought not to, that is our choice in life.
There is also dogmatic problem of the Ten Commandments given to Moses. One of these commandments states that we humans are not allowed to commit murder. Yet if you look at the many chapters in the Old Testament, there are several cases where God mass murders human beings such as in the great Noah’s flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, God commanding Abraham to commit murder against his only legitimate son, God mass murdering Egyptians… The list can go on for pages. So why is God allowed to murder when we are not? Another example is God commanding us not to covet or be jealous of our neighbors yet God himself is jealous that no human being should worship anything or anyone but him. The Christian response is usually in the manner of: “well is he is God, he can do whatever he wants”. I won’t disagree with that, what I see to be problematic is God setting a double standard. How you may ask? I will explain. Every child looks up to his parents for guidance and discipline. As Jesus said, we are his flock of sheep. If a father tells his children, it’s wrong to steal, yet the father himself steals, do you think that father will gain any respect from his children, particularity in moral behavior?
1 comment:
Since you gave some time to respond to my reflection, I will do in kind.
It seems you are unable to foresee the erroneous logic of sin in Christian theology. Your responses are typical that they avoid the real problems that I reflect upon and rely very much on redundant scripture that itself is the culprit of my assessment.
If God is creator of all, superior to all beings in existence, the introduction of sin can only have come from God. The bible assumes morality is created by God; hence what we do in life, and shouldn't do is engineered by God. Therefore, the concept of disobedience to God's command defined as sin is itself a design of God.
It would be foolish to think there is any autonomous entity or action that has no a direct result of God's design. It’s like an author who writes a about a story. Nothing in the novel is random, as the entire story was written by the author. Can you ever say while reading a book, hey this characters choices where made by his own will? Is it? Or is the author the source of the characters choices? Obviously if you are sane enough, you would say it was the author who made the choices for him and the characters life is an illusion based on the authors design. As he has control over characters behavior, personality, living condition, environmental and biological factors that have direct causes and effects to the choices that he makes in the story.
God created Satan, God allowed the serpent to roam in the Garden of Eden, God hardened the heart of the Pharaoh, and God tempted Abraham to murder his son and so forth. You even mention in your response that it is Satan duty to commit sin. Who gave him that duty?
Moreover, God is assumed to be omnipresent and can see the future. If this is the case, then obviously God sees all the effects of his actions. Hence, knowing that Adam and Eve would sin, knowing Jesus would die on the cross, and knowing that Satan would rebel against God... This brings back to my original assessment that it is all due to God’s design. Sin is not autonomous before God, sin was created by God, and sin exists because of God and God designed us to sin just like an author who designed his character to do certain things in his story.
Thank you for your support.
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