Deep Thoughts

[basildestiny]

When I'm thinking about God, it's like there should be something else outside of God and Satan (and his minions). And I wonder, in the beginning, other than God what else was there? And I start thinking in terms of God's creation. As though God's existence is bound by the rules his creations are bound by. As though God is finite or God has a "roommate."

Mundane thoughts like that. And then there's that question of why is God so perfect? What keeps him that way? And again, I start to get bogged down by the "rules" of this world. As though God couldn't simply be good. As though he has to have a reason to be good.

But then these are good questions. I look forward to the answers.

If God hadn't created us, there wouldn't be any My Little Ponies!
~Bas

Comments

[bloominglotus.livejournal.com]

We try to put things we don't understand into terms that we do understand so we can relate. Humans can't fathom the notion of something that always has been and always will be since we are short-lived finite creatures. So, yeah, your questions are really good questions and totally natural questions at that. You want to understand, so you will try to apply the rules of this world because it's all you know. We aren't solitary creatures as a rule, so the notion of a point and time where there was nothing and no one but God is unfathomable. It's the nothingness part that flumoxes me every time. I just don't understand how there can be nothing, nothing at all.


Whooo-weee, I'm feeling deep tonight.

[basildestiny]

Hooray for deepness! Sometimes it just can't be helped. The nothingness gets me too. It's just so... huge. Just a big black nothing if He hadn't decided to create, if He hadn't felt lonely.

Interestingly and unrelated to the nothingness deepness, I was reading how God isn't male or female. The article I was reading went into how some languages have nouns with gender. And how it doesn't translate very well. The point wasn't whether or not God should be referred to as "him" or "her," but rather a look at how marriage is the closest to seeing God as we can get. A functioning marriage anyway.

I was just like "whoa! Deep!" And then my head imploded. ;)

[froggymcgee.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what, exactly, you're looking for with this, but my concept has always been that if God created us, then obviously his view of what's "good" and what's "bad" were imposed upon us. In the first place, God was the one who set the universal standards of good and evil, and so it is our rules that conform to those standards rather than the other way around.

Or something.

Basically, God created the world so that he was good and perfect, and that is why he is.

[basildestiny]

So He created the world to become good and perfect or He is good and perfect and creating the world is just an example? I think I'm following you though. God is perfect and good because He just is that way. It's his nature. Just like some people are chatty or more sensitive. Hmmm, am I close?

[froggymcgee.livejournal.com]

Argh. Okay, so I had a freaking essay written here and my computer decided to reboot approximately one minute before I hit post.

So I'll try to reconstruct it.

I think what you've said in this comment is true to some extent, although what I meant in the original comment might be just a touch more blasphemous.

The basic idea is that...say you were to create something, to share life with another group, you would most likely use your own concepts of what is good, pleasurable, and acceptable, as well as your own standards of what is bad, painful, and unacceptable, right? So, going from this, one would assume that God, being as the Bible says directly that he made us in his image, used his own standards for those things.

So, perhaps, that might be why we see God as our ultimate standard for what is good and perfect. Because we were created to see it so, to value the same things he does, and strive for the same things he has.

This is where the blasphemy comes in - if someone else had created us, it's entirely possible that what we would see different things as standards of good and evil entirely. I guess what I'm saying is that, since God created the universe, the "universal" standards of good and perfect are his, rather than something he lives up to.

[basildestiny]

Urgh! Sorry you lost your post! :(

I don't see how that's blasphemous other than the fact that you don't like the fact that He was the creator and not someone else.

I think I was thinking of a few people when I posed the question about God always being good. I think of the common logic I've heard, which I used myself, to discount God's existence. "If God exists, why is there suffering?" And that's constantly in the back of my mind. One particular conversation in which a friend and I congratulate ourselves for being so smart as to prove God doesn't exist by our philosophical "logic" sticks out in my mind and I relive it over and over and over.

But I like the twist you put on it. It pointed me in another direction to ponder.

And just to add depth to it as a hypothetical, if Satan had the ability and desire to create. And say he created humanity instead of helping it to stumble and fall. How different would we be? We'd be self centered and that would be a good thing. Whereas self sacrifice would be an evil thing.

And since you mentioned the created in his own image, I was reading an interesting article which examined the structure of that sentence and the meaning based on the time it was written. To quote from the article: What does it mean to be created in the image of God? As we transport ourselves in our imaginations back to the time when Genesis was first written and ask ourselves what the word image meant, we get help in our understanding. Ancient kings of the Near East, who ruled vast territories, knew that they could not be physically present everywhere in their kingdoms, so they commissioned statues of themselves to be placed in all the major cities of their realms. When people looked at these statues, they were reminded of the authority of the king who ruled them. The statue was not the same as the king, but it represented the king and was due the same glory and honor. To dishonor the statue of the king was sacrilege, treason. I thought that was interesting about the statues. I'd never considered it that way and that was the way it was meant to be taken.