/lit/ - Literature

>>21659514
>God's infinite mercy
>story about God nuking a fucking city

I'd rather discuss Genesis 19:
[30] And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters.
[31] And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth:
[32] Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
[33] And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
[34] And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our Father.
[35] And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
[36] Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.
So...according to the Bible, daughters can choose to have sex with their fathers???
What in the actual fuck.

>>21659514
It also shows the power of intercession on part of the believer. He who has faith in God, who by that faith and the sanctifying power of Christ's blood holds the favor of God, has powerful intercessory abilities. We may freely take the sins of the people to God in Christ, our eternal High Priest, who intercedes continuously on behalf of the saints - rather than once yearly as in the time of the Temple, who in turn intercede continuously on behalf of one another and those whom the LORD knows are His. Great is the LORD and infinite in mercy. He is worthy of all praise!

>>21659526
God is holy. He punishes sin. You do not know what havoc might have been born into the world had the inhabitants of those cities lived. God does, and He weighs us all fairly.

>>21660378
What they did was sin. You should pay attention to Scripture. Read and study before playing trying to play the judge. The Moabites and the Ammonites, the nations born of those two unions were troublesome for Israel many times after. There is yet one more thing you ought to have realized, rather than to feign indignation in the shallowness of your own human purity: if the family of Lot, was such as to commit this disgraceful sin, how much worse must the inhabitants of the cities of Shinar been? Surely, they deserved the judgement which fell upon them, yet in our age, we all likely deserve as much and worse. The mercy of God is upon us all through the blood of Jesus upon his church, and the power of the Holy Spirit.

>>21660440
*Siddim, not Shinar. I had my place names mixed.

>>21660440
Wasn't Ruth a Moabite?
And wasn't she one of Jesus' ancestors?
Seems like the opposite of "troublesome".

>>21660508
Yes, she was. Ruth is an example of God's mercy and love, but make no mistake Moab and Ruth have little in common throughout the history of the OT. Rahab, a harlot of Jericho (making her Canaanite, I presume), was also brought into Israel, and is in Christ's lineage (and by implication that includes both of them in the lineage of King David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and so on).

>>21660378
yeah, some stories are good and some are just shallow. Same with the gospels, matthew is amazing while John is gay fanfic.

>>21660440
So God is infinitely merciful
unless you do something he dislikes in which cases he drops a tactical nuke on your town and saltifies anyone who's looking to avoid witnesses

>>21659514
I found the part where Abraham is bargaining with God to spare the city a bit humorous.
>But what if I find 50 good people, will you spare it?
>All right, all right
>Actually, can we make that 40?
>Whatever
>Maybe 30?
>Abraham...
>Twenty? Please?
>Abraham, I-
>Let's make it TEN good people and you'll spare the city
>Yeah sure, now go (there are none)

>>21661506
the point is that Abraham could have gone even lower than 10 but he was to afraid and thought God would be angry with him for asking for more. So Abraham just went, if he had more faith in the mercy of God maybe he could have saved Sodom. God does not exist, it is always the people who bring destruction upon themselves.

>>21661508
Yeah, God already made up his mind and maybe he is just toying with Abraham? But Abraham needs to ask, much like Job needs to suffer, God's will has to manifest in the world by humans. God can't just banish Even and Adam from Eden, Adam and Eve have to eat from the tree first and then God can banish them, even though God knew that they would eat from the tree before they did so.

>>21659526
>>story about God nuking a fucking city
mortally killing*

>>21659514
I think this is correct. I think Roman Catholic doctrine and Job, when read together, we must challenge God to save all. It is my contention that God loves to be tested not with temptation or doubt but challenged to how much grace we can receive, how much charity we can do, and how much love we can give. I think what you expressed, OP, is the final Christian position. If ten men redeem a city then surely God redeems a planet.

>>21661621
>God already made up his mind and maybe he is just toying with Abraham?
I think this is wrong. God gives whatever you ask of Him. If I beg God to save all souls for Him - could He deny such a thing? Could other people truly thwart their maker?

>>21661683
>mortally killing
There is a way to kill someone in a way that doesn't end with their death?

>>21661702
>There is a way to kill someone in a way that doesn't end with their death?
And there is a way to be born again without coming out of your mother's womb.

According to the Holy Quran, christians are deviated. It means that they come from the truth, the Bible, but they deviated creating doctrines such us trinity and crucifixion, all started from Paul. Jesus preached to the children of Israel but Paul wanted it more and started to preach to the genitles, the Romans, who were pagans. They eventually come with a compromise witch was christianity, a monotheistic belief but relaxed, and now you have Christendom witch the more time passes the worse becomes. According to rabbi yeron the name of Esau, the brother of Jacob and ancestor of Jesus, means Caos

...Huuhu christbros?

>>21661879
All religion is man made. The reason christian countries overcame the age of darkness while muslim countries are still in it is because christianity is flexible, because christianity is founded on a cool dude jesus while Islam is founded on an asshole Mohammad

>>21661921
Actually mankind is degenerating, from Adam. There is no such thing like scientific progression. Adam and Eve lived in the middle of the Garden, nude, comfortable. Now we live in apartments waging 8 hours a day.

Before Noah we were only one nation one lenguage. Now we are a mess with all the complicances

So you are a gaytheist? How do you cope with the fact that you are slaving for people who believe in God?

>>21661879
> they deviated creating doctrines such us trinity and crucifixion
>a monotheistic belief but relaxed
Considering trinitarians polytheists is such a funny aspect in the formation of islam, simply incorporating your inablity to grasp the concept of the trinity into your theology is just a hilarious development

>>21659514
Look at what Abraham says
>Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
Genesis 18:24-26 ESV
Abraham knows that it is not in God's nature to destroy the righteous. It IS his nature to destroy the unrighteous however

It's a story about how people deserve what they get. Abraham is asking God to save Lot and Lot's family. God confirms to Abraham that no one who is innocent will be damned. However, Sodom has filled their chalice of iniquity, and so although God had spared them for the sake of the just until that time, he finally removes the just from their midst and brings judgment upon them. This is also a sign for the end of the world. Some day, the iniquity of the whole earth will reach its final term, and the number of the just will be so few, and their hope so dire, that in order to spare them, God will end the world. If you are unjust, do not think that God has forgotten your iniquity simply because you have not yet received your recompense.

>>21661879
>Paul
Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
>1 John 2:22

>>21661879
> Jesus preached to the children of Israel but Paul wanted it more and started to preach to the genitles, the Romans, who were pagans.
Is that why St Paul wrote Hebrews? Also if you actually looked at the OT you’d find prophecies of gentiles worshipping the God of Israel and that has come to pass.

>>21661506
Sometimes death is a mercy. It comes to all of us anyways, so I dunno.

>>21661506
He is infinitely merciful, but that is not His only quality. God is infinitely just as well, but your depiction isn't accurate either, nor realistic. For instance, what King David did to Uriah the Hittite was guilty of death according to Exodus 20:14, yet God spared His life. If God torched you the minute you transgressed, Israel would have perished in the desert, or Moses might have been condemned for arguing with the Lord at the moment of His calling before the burning bush. So why does God show mercy, and to whom? We can make reasonable speculation based on Scripture. The Lord shows mercy to those who worship Him, and whose hearts are contrite in their sinful state. He loves those who repent in earnest, and who love Him. God, who weighs the hearts of man, and who sees not only the man, but his whole lineage - past and future - more intimately than we see anyone, is able to weigh fairly each man. King David was sincerely contrite and repentant, yet sin still required death, so the child born of the sin died, this too is fair. God knows what would have become of that child's line, and in death, the child goes to God.

Do not be a pseud - a disingenuous interlocuter. If one wishes to demand of God fair judgement of man (as though we could demand anything), then one must also judge God fairly. The most basic requirement then is to judge Him by His whole revelation of Himself. The entirety of His Holy Word. One cannot pick and choose what you like to judge God and expect to be taken seriously, when such lax scholarship would not even pass for the examination of a single philosophical essay.

>>21664921
Excuse me, 20:14 is relevant, but I actually meant Exodus 21:14, my mistake.

>>21664921
This genuinely brought a tear to my eye. I wish I could share your level of faith. (nta)

>>21659526
>kill bad guys le bad

>>21661941
>How do you cope with the fact that you are slaving for people who believe in God?
Anon, but I thought you were being oppressed by the people in power... are they not Luciferians?

>>21665516
The problem with it is that God decides who is bad, and by God, I mean the sand people who wrote that book. According to sand people, non-Christians are bad. Science is bad. Pointing contradictions in the Bible is bad. Reasoning about God is bad.

>>21664921
God bless you. As the Psalmists says
>He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
>For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
>As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
>Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.

>>21665560
Psalmist*

>>21665548
the bible was written by the greeks and romans, the new testament isn't canon

>>21665516
>t. jesus christ himself
retard

>>21664921
>He is infinitely merciful, but that is not His only quality.
You have it goofed here, if God has multiple actually distinct attributes that can sometimes conflict with each other than He isn't metaphysically simple and not One - God is not a disparate collection of various attributes but rather one unified reality wherein all of these attributes are in perfect harmony

If God is merciful, His mercy must be equivalent to His justice, His justice must be equivalent to His love, His love must be equivalent to His holiness; there is obviously no possibility of God being "sometimes merciful" or "sometimes loving" or "sometimes just", for in Him there is no shadow of turning (James 1:17) and He is always the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8) - if we start to separate the divine qualities from each other we will very quickly run into a lot of theological and philosophical problems where God's attributes are somehow conflicting or opposed to one another (as if, for example, mercy could ever be opposed to justice, or holiness)

>King David was sincerely contrite and repentant, yet sin still required death, so the child born of the sin died, this too is fair. God knows what would have become of that child's line, and in death, the child goes to God.
On a more personal and far less philosophical note, while this example may technically be "fair" in some way, the idea of "justice" or "fairness" ever demanding the painful death of a child downright gives me the heebie-jeebies and I am certain that there must be some alternative explanation for this event that doesn't imply... that

>>21665705
>if God has multiple actually distinct attributes that can sometimes conflict with each other than He isn't metaphysically simple and not One
I haven't goofed, you have. The "gotcha" logic of average men always fails them. You're trying to rationalize God as if you can compartmentalize Him like some silly philosophical abstraction. He is a person, and He is beyond comprehension. I won't even bother reading the rest. If your argument starts off that foolishly, why should I waste the time? You aren't ready for the conversation.

>>21660440
>if the family of Lot, was such as to commit this disgraceful sin,
They believed that the happening of all happenings happened and tried to save mankind

>>21665516
Found the atheist.

>>21665705
Your conception of God is founded upon the notion of Absolute Divine Simplicity which is held dogmatically by Catholics. It says, put simply, that all predications to God are to His essence. And because God's essence is absolutely simple, those predications do not contain real difference. As such, His mercy is identical to His justice and so forth. In other words, everything that God's acts are identical to His essence. All manner of critique can be made about this notion and yours, if fleshed out, could be one such.

However, Eastern Orthodox Christians do not hold to this. They believe in the Essence-Energies distinction. God's essence is wholly unknowable. Instead we come to know and directly and truly experience God through His energies (actions). This distinction between God's essence and His energies is a real distinction and not a conceptual one. Both God's essence and energies are fully God. Importantly, when we predicate things to God, we predicate them to His energies. Therefore, His mercy is distinct from His justice and so forth because they are different energetic operations. The classic example to clarify this point is to consider the Sun. The Sun itself can be taken to be God's essence - it is wholly unknowable, unapproachable etc. Nevertheless, we experience the rays of the Sun. Whilst these rays proceed forth from the Sun they are not the Sun itself but yet also not distinct from the Sun. So when partake in the rays, this is nevertheless a direct experience of the Sun itself and has the capacity to directly affect us. Likewise, we interact with God's infinite and distinct energies/activities without collapsing them into a singular absolutely simple essence.

It obviously gets more complicated and an analogy can only go so far but I hope that I showed that what you state is not necessarily accurate for all Christians.

If anyone finds that I have erred in this exposition or have misspoken please correct me.

>>21665485
Thank you friend, and may God bless you. His love is freely available to us in Christ Jesus! Let's partake without stopping or shame! Praise God! Exalt His Name!

To build faith takes diligence and patience. Spend time in the Word and serving God in the world (God often moves in us and our lives when we obey Him and go out in faith to glorify Him among men; BE READY, He will often surprise you!). The Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. It is the weapon of our warfare. God's Word is divinely powerful for the demolishing of enemy strongholds. This is not mere metaphor or hyperbole. Hebrews 4 tells us His Word pierces even unto the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and nothing is hidden from His sight! 1 Corinthians echoes similar sentiments (2:10-16). This is fully corroborated within the Tanakh, which tells us in Proverbs 15 "even Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD, how much more the hearts of the sons of men!" Ephesians 6 (I strongly suggest studying all of Ephesians with care) tells us we war not with flesh and blood, but with spiritual forces of darkness in the heavenlies. Colossians 2 (such a powerful book, despite brevity) goes on to tell us through Messiah God has disarmed those rulers and powers, putting them to open shame upon the cross, and returning to Ephesians 6 we are reminded that faith is our shield and the Word is our sword, thus logically, when we speak the Word of God in faith, we not only please and honor Almighty God, our blessed Father, by giving His Word the faith it is due, but we are simultaneously attacking and defending against our spiritual foes. THIS IS NOT METAPHORICAL. Fast (as in fasting - going without food and drink, typically) as a consecrated and highly spiritual affair. I recommend it when you feel the Lord prompt you, when you desire to draw closer to God, or when you're facing great difficulty as Israel did many times in the Word. If I recall properly, Israel even fasted as a sign of renewed consecration and repentance, and what a wonderful way to show God we love Him and remind ourselves of the deep holiness of His ways! Christ tells us (I will paraphrase it) some demonic forces in this world must be removed by those who have gone through this sanctifying preparation - it is always best to prepare. There are moments you do not know are coming, opportunities for which the LORD can put you to use, if you keep yourself at the ready. I am not a pastor or a priest, just a Christian - blessed of the Almighty Living God, may we praise Him always! I encourage any and everyone to scrutinize my thoughts by the Word of God (the only meaningful arbitrator of Truth), so as to feel assured of their wholesomeness, and that I may never inadvertently lead anyone astray by error. Spend time in worship and stay part of a good church. I hope this helps!

May we meet in the Kingdom of God, for the LORD has revealed Himself to you in His love. Glory to His Name!

>>21665560
AMEN! God bless you friend. I love you in the love of Christ Jesus!

>>21666205
No, not actually. God spared a small town in (perhaps near) that valley at Lot's request remember? Yet, shortly thereafter, Lot fled to the mountains anyway, and it was then, in what I infer (from the conversation of his daughters) as the isolation of the mountain life that this occurred.

>>21665705
I felt mean for blowing you off - forgive me, so I've read what you wrote in full, and now realize you simply misunderstood me entirely. I do not disagree with your logic, nor was I implying anything contrary to it, but we should be very clear in realizing - God is a person. It is God's character to be merciful, certainly, yet the Word says He "shows mercy," thus the trait is exercisable at His discretion, and no surprise there - He is a person. We are all capable of the same. David could have slain Saul a number of times. He chose to exercise mercy, yet we would say this makes Him merciful, yes? The Word shows us the same is true of God, the difference being men have the capacity for inconsistency, while God is unfailingly true to Himself. Hopefully this clears up your confusion.

On the note of the child, do not think yourself kinder or more merciful than God. It is a mistake anyone can make almost as a knee-jerk reaction out of being caught up in our human perspective. God is kind, just, and so forth - all His judgements are true, they are righteous altogether (Psalm 19), yet this same God prophesies over a nation that the mothers will eat their own young of starvation, that those who dash a particular nation's children will be dashed upon rocks will be blessed, afflicted Israel - even His chosen - with plague, permits Elisha to curse 42 young men, Elisha to destroy 400 priests of Baal, repeatedly hardens the heart of Pharoah and rains plagues upon the Egyptians to glorify Himself among them (and certainly there were many many children among them), He who drowned nearly the entire world - children and all we can safely assume, who let His servant Paul be flogged, beaten, jailed, stricken blind, and shipwrecked three times, who let James fall to the sword, Thomas martyred in Northern India, Peter crucified upside down, and many other things. This is the same God who says, "I will bring them back from Bashan. I will bring them back from the depths of the sea; that your foot may shatter them in blood, the tongue of your dogs may have its portion from your enemies." (Psalm 68) Even in the final book of the Word, Revelation, Messiah Jesus speaks strict warning to the Church, and the judgements which fall upon the Earth are great. God does not look at bodily death or pain in the manner of men, yet neither does He take it for granted. Both are very clear in the Word. We cannot look upon what we like and hide our eyes from the side of God which is difficult to apprehend. Here is a favorite verse of mine. A WONDERFUL, blessed verse which I have cherished many years. It is Exodus 20:21:

"So the people stood at a distance, while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was."

Some translations even read, "deep darkness." It is powerful revelatory symbolism. Anyway, my two cents, such as it is.

>>21666415
I made several typos, and even forgot to mention a few things I meant to, but these are just the difficulties of typing in a tiny box, please overlook them.

>>21665548
Did you not read the story?

>>21661183
So there's no indication (at the point where it was written) that Lot's daughters have sinned, but God takes it out on their descendants anyway?
I'm not a big fan of punishing people for the sins of their ancestors. Sounds like something North Korea would do.

>>21666616
First of all, not what I said. Reread. Second, they most certainly have sinned, both in deception and in depravity. Third, the descendants bear their own sins. Stop assuming, read. Forth, and most important, what you are or are not a fan of, as well as the vagaries of your reminiscences, neither matter even slightly in the equation of right and wrong, good and evil.

>>21666640
Sorry, but that was little more than a bunch of cope.

>>21666678
Not even slightly actually, but since you clearly don't know what you're talking about and don't care that you don't, I don't care either. Enjoy Hell. I hear it's warm.

>>21663567
I don't think death is a good thing for sinners, according to Christianity.
I think there are some contradictions between God's supposed nature and what we read in the Bible but I don't understand why Christians care so much. So maybe, by some definitions, God is not omnipotent, if he can not create a square circle. Maybe by some definitions he is not omni-benevolent, if he created hell. Why do Christians care so much about those autistic, theoretical definitions? The God of the Bible is a very powerful and impressive being anyways, if his nature is different than what Plato or Aquinas or whatever expected, that's not a huge deal.

>>21666858
There is no Hell.
We all come back and live another life.
Your pining for the End Times is little more than a suicidal urge.
Make a better world now...because you'll have to live in it again.

>>21666332
Thanks anon. I’ll try.

>>21666348
First of all, it wasn't Lot who decided that they hop on his dick but the daughters did while he was asleep drunk. Second, their rational was that there are no men left. Also remember when Lot was host to an angel and then townspeople wanted Lot to hand over his guest but he offered them his virgin daughters instead which they declined. Lot literally didn't do nothing except getting drunk after his hometown was nuked to dust and he barley managed to escape

>>21666640
Well, incest was the only way the pre Noah humans could off procreated and it was forbidden in times of Moses. So there is no problem here

>>21665516
In his own image...

>>21659514
>God destroys city so hard anybody looking at it transforms into salt snacks.
>For me this shows God's infinite mercy.
Are christbros in an abusive relationship with God?

>>21659514
>God’s judgements are not machines which roll implacably on according to set principles. They are not the blade of a guillotine blindly separating the inseparable with the brutal neutrality of cold steel. God’s judgements are living things which are adaptable, which can be formed and deformed. They are pronounced, but a means of escape is left open: “I do not desire the death of the sinner, I want him to repent and live....” If judgement has been pronounced on the city, it is because it is a power of death for man. Even in this condemnation God is trying to bring about man’s salvation. And if man is condemned with the city, it is because he has become a part of her. But God leaves a way of escape. What he wants is for man to separate himself from the city. Change the judgement? No, never, because it was decided in advance, in terms of the existing situation. But God includes in the fact of his judgement even the decision man is yet to make — a decision made within God’s secret judgement, of which we never see more than the one aspect he announces by the prophets and makes manifest in his acts. Man can, then, choose to include himself in the condemnation of the city, or he can avert the destruction of the city by removing it from the great whole which the cities make up and making it into a community of men on the order of other human groups, acceptably gathered together before God.

>>21666229
>So when partake in the rays, this is nevertheless a direct experience of the Sun itself and has the capacity to directly affect us. Likewise, we interact with God's infinite and distinct energies/activities without collapsing them into a singular absolutely simple essence.
Right, okay, but the energies of God, like the rays of the sun, still ultimately derive from their source, and only their source, so unless there is something within the essence of God that is NOT the divine essence, we would logically have to assume that the energies are expressions of the essence, and it wouldn't really make sense to postulate some kind of "pure justice" totally distinct from love, mercy, etc., so even with the essence/energies distinction (which I'm not sure even totally makes sense as a real actual distinction as opposed to a relative one) all of the divine attributes are ultimately the expression of a single, unified essence, which according to the NT and the doctrine of the Trinity is love (Calvinists are the only group I've seen that actually deny that God is love in His essence, they claim that love is only a single facet of His nature expressed solely to the elect while His actual essence is... who knows what)

>>21666415
>It is a mistake anyone can make almost as a knee-jerk reaction out of being caught up in our human perspective.
So the thing is, if we totally dislocate God's idea of morality from ours, we're essentially left with a being that is "beyond good and evil" and not really "just" in any way rational to human minds, which is to say that God isn't "good" at all in any way that would make sense to humans; saying that God is "good" under a framework where human judgements about that statement are useless is really not saying anything aside from "God does what He does" - which is as true of Satan as it is for God

The early Christians who read about the pretty extreme levels of violence didn't just go, "this is morally correct", because as they understood it the revelation of Jesus superseded all previous revelations of God, including the Jewish law and prophets themselves; from the perspective of their hermeneutic, if the God revealed in Christ who has children sit in his lap and says things like "“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Luke 18:16) is described as slaughtering infants or causing them to be eaten by their mothers, there has clearly been some kind of mistake on our end, either in our interpretation or our understanding

Understanding God as Love itself, it is far more pious to question apparent actions that fly in the face of that revelation than to accept atrocities without question (remember that Job's friends were rebuked for attempting to rationalize God's seeming injustices)

>>21667524
So Cain married his sister?
Does the Bible actually say Adam & Eve begat Cain's wife?

>>21667556
You may find this interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion_of_Sinope
The guy who originally assembled the New Testament (from a bunch of separate books floating around at the time) was a Gnostic who deliberately wanted to portray the Old Testament God as the Demiurge.
So, from the point of view of the person who put together the first Christian Bible...yes, God abuses his creation.