Is God selfish and a bad parent?

[SonOfMan]

No, we’re talking philosophically. If you want to start by assuming everything the church teaches is true then you are already assuming that God is good.

Im not assuming that God is good. I am accepting that is what the RCC teaches though, but I am questioning why that is, in the face of what seems like the opposite.

 

[porthos11]

As an example, we CAFers often disagree with the idea of gay parenting because the needs of the child are not put first. Rather, the gay parents’ happiness is what comes first because they are willing to give a child a less than optimal environment to grow up in for the sake of their fulfillment.

Doesn’t God do just this very thing, though? God created us for the purpose of us to love him and to serve him. However, he knew our environment would become corrupt and that we would all have to endure earthly suffering. As if that werent enough of a negative, he also knew that many would endure eternal spiritual suffering (Hell). Yet, with all this in mind, he created us anyway for us to serve him and for the sake of his own enjoyment and satisfaction.

Doesn’t that make him selfish and a bad parent, since he values his satisfaction even at the cost of our misery and suffering by putting his needs above the needs of his children?

God has no needs.

He created us to love and serve him for OUR enjoyment, not his. Part of that gift is the gift of free will, because only by loving him freely can we have complete joy. But free will also came with the radical possibility that we could reject him.

This world is not the end purpose of our existence. This world is our chance to choose him. This life, plus eternity still equals eternity, so choose God while you can, not for his sake, but for yours.

 

[Cake_or_Death]

Im not assuming that God is good. I am accepting that is what the RCC teaches though, but I am questioning why that is, in the face of what seems like the opposite.

It seems like the opposite if you draw your moral basis from another source. If we take…I don’t know, the ancient Greek pantheon as the pinnacle of what is good then clearly anyone who tells us rape is always unacceptable is an evil blasphemous monster who hates the Gods and is destined for Tartarus.

Consider the alternative, what if God was acknowledged as being malevolent? Seems illogical at first but one does get those children who play God simulator video games like the Sims and enjoy burning entire neighborhoods of virtual humanoids to death. Somehow I can’t see that being half as popular as a benevolent deity.

God has no needs.

He created us to love and serve him for OUR enjoyment, not his. Part of that gift is the gift of free will, because only by loving him freely can we have complete joy. But free will also came with the radical possibility that we could reject him.

This world is not the end purpose of our existence. This world is our chance to choose him. This life, plus eternity still equals eternity, so choose God while you can, not for his sake, but for yours.

Lets use this logic in another context…

Suppose I point a gun at you right now porthos11 and tell you to give me your wallet. You decline, and I shoot you straight between the eyes. Am I murderer?

By this logic I can’t be, you committed suicide and I am blameless. How so you ask? You had a choice, you had the free will to give me your wallet and all the money inside. Sure you might have starved to death afterwards because you had nothing to buy food but I gave you the option; you can give me all your assets you have to hand or I would kill you. I respected your choice to free will and you chose to die and invite my wrath. You had fair warning of my threat but you chose to ignore it and go against my wishes.

Now replace “I’ll kill you” with “eternal damnation”, “suicide” with “sin”, “murderer” with “evil” and “me” with “God”. It doesn’t make any sense, but it is the logical conclusion and you’re really not selling this idea.

 

[SonOfMan]

Anybody have any new perspectives on this?

 

[laircy]

You don’t understand. To love and serve God is OUR joy. Having created us, he knows what truly will ultimately make us happy, which is Himself, because he is infinite goodness, beauty, love, truth. This world is where we can get a taste of that, but not quite yet be satisfied. You say God is selfish. On the contrary, he is supremely self-giving in being the source of all goodness and blessings, even becoming one of us and enduring torture and death at our hands to fix our brokenness, bring salvation, and demonstrate his tremendous love for us. He continues to transform lives today. The suffering in the world is due to our sin, the refusal of that love. (And one person’s sin can cause the suffering of others who perhaps did not ‘deserve’ it.) For our love to be true, it has to be a choice. Either we choose sin, which leads to nothing but destruction, or God who is goodness beyond understanding, and we live with that choice forever.

 

[porthos11]

Suppose I point a gun at you right now porthos11 and tell you to give me your wallet. You decline, and I shoot you straight between the eyes. Am I murderer?

By this logic I can’t be, you committed suicide and I am blameless. How so you ask? You had a choice, you had the free will to give me your wallet and all the money inside. Sure you might have starved to death afterwards because you had nothing to buy food but I gave you the option; you can give me all your assets you have to hand or I would kill you. I respected your choice to free will and you chose to die and invite my wrath. You had fair warning of my threat but you chose to ignore it and go against my wishes.

Now replace “I’ll kill you” with “eternal damnation”, “suicide” with “sin”, “murderer” with “evil” and “me” with “God”. It doesn’t make any sense, but it is the logical conclusion and you’re really not selling this idea.

Well, this poster has been banned but I’ll address it anyway.

The answer is still yes, you are a murderer because you have neither the right to take my money nor the right to kill me.

God, on the other hand, does not threaten or coerce us to be with him. He freely offers us eternal life with him but he did not create us to be robots. He wanted this life and joy to be full, and for this, he enabled free will in us for us to choose to love him. That free will carries with it the possibility that we can choose against God.

This is not the same scenario at all as “money or life” as the ridiculous analogy proposes. In the robbery scenario, the killer is not freely offering me something I do not yet have, but is threatening to deprive me of two things I already have a right to: my money and my life. If he kills me, he violates my right to life.

God, on the other hand is sovereign. He knows we are sinners and graciously invites us, in his mercy to choose him, because he offers us everlasting joy which we do not deserve. This is to save us from hell, which we DO deserve because of our sin. And yes, while Scripture is clear that it is God who condemns people to hell, it is because of the choices they freely made that made them deserving of hell, so really, the only reason God throws people into hell is because they already sent themselves there.

The difference between that and the robbery analogy is that God has the sovereign right to throw people into hell. A robber does not have the right to take my life. So the robber is still guilty (and hellbound, unless he repents).