Life for itself

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Life is for itself and God is for life because Life is for itself.

For, a Creation created to elevate its Creator on the praises of a willing damned who lie outside of it cannot be bartered for even a painted picture of a noble heaven. Hell, not heaven, is contructed out of favours granted to The Lost in return for their embrace with eternal suffering, that its demon be raised higher again. No life moves joyfully in the vale of blood and thorns.
 
But sin is the necessary price of free will as it is deviance, otherwise there is nothing people can do but obey - no alternative. Though sin is regarded as bad! So love of God is based on the non-existence of a viable alternative.

Likewise, if someone said they would ‘make you an offer you can’t refuse’ (in a positive way!) do you still have free will? How can life be for itself when it lacks a direction that is independent and permissible?
 
Jonesboy said:
Life is for itself and God is for life because Life is for itself.

For, a Creation created to elevate its Creator on the praises of a willing damned who lie outside of it cannot be bartered for even a painted picture of a noble heaven. Hell, not heaven, is contructed out of favours granted to The Lost in return for their embrace with eternal suffering, that its demon be raised higher again. No life moves joyfully in the vale of blood and thorns.
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Baltimore Catechism:
Why did God make us?
God made us to show forth His goodness and to share with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.
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Based on this, life cannot be its own purpose. Life’s purpose is the show God’s goodness and to enter into eternal happiness.

I am presuming the that by “life” you mean human life.
 
Jonesboy said:
Life is for itself and God is for life because Life is for itself.

For, a Creation created to elevate its Creator on the praises of a willing damned who lie outside of it cannot be bartered for even a painted picture of a noble heaven. Hell, not heaven, is contructed out of favours granted to The Lost in return for their embrace with eternal suffering, that its demon be raised higher again. No life moves joyfully in the vale of blood and thorns.
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Again, do you have any specific question that can be addressed?
 
Shike said:
Again, do you have any specific question that can be addressed?
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I think if we waited for the question we would be waiting all day!
Think of it as Junk mail, or as a whimsey to be pondered over a tea-break, with jam and scones, of course.
 
davidv said:
Based on this, life cannot be its own purpose. Life’s purpose is the show God’s goodness and to enter into eternal happiness.

I am presuming the that by “life” you mean human life.
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I think this is a good topic to discuss, even if it is very open-ended and has no actual question in it. Atheism is commonly thought to have removed the meaning/purpose from life, yet this Christian view seems at first very bleak.

We are all here for the benefit and at the pleasure of a mysterious creator…?

I don’t think there is room for choice if sin really is bad, nor room for the love of God if all we are capable of doing is obeying or suffering. I also don’t think there is a systematic way to understand life where anything can be good or bad depending on whether it has divine approval, where suffering can be good, and where real life experience is meaningless when it is infinitely subordinate to the hereafter.

If this is all there is, what good is not liking it? -I understand what I am doing would be merely complaining, but at least we can be clear on how we describe life, the universe and everything.
 
Life is for Others and God is for Life because Life in God is for Each Other

For Creation is created to increase & glorify the Creator through the good works & praises of the Life Reborn as the Children of God whose “all for all” solidarity is beyond the wildest imaginings of Life on Earth. Heaven, not Hell, is constructed of Grace poured forth from the Creator to his Children whose good works and perfect harmony in turn expand forever the goodness of the Creator by magnifying and glorifying His Grace. Life on Earth is intended as free will offering and disciplined exercise in self sacrifice to come out of self into solidarity under God.
 
…Yes but is it really free will? God is effectively ‘offering’ us this choice:

A. You can win the lottery
B. If you reject my generous offer, you’ll be punished forever

I can accept there is an identity between going with God and it being morally right. However, is it not a choice but instead fortuitous obedience? It can only appear to be free will to those deviant, blighted individuals who think that a sin is good, but when knowledge of God increases, choice decreases. Yet we are judged after our time spent under the most limited conditions of knowledge, and based on our love (if we believe it is love by free will) that is the most mistaken it will ever be!
 
I don’t view Heaven as winning the lottery. I view Heaven as being free from our animal nature which is all about self preservation. I view Heaven as being free to serve others and to be served by others with law & order perfectly attuned to God’s will. In short, I view Heaven as becoming the fulfillment of God’s design for me in His Plan and forsaking all Plans for myself. It is a really great job with a really great product and really great benefits - all for all under God.

I view Hell as the extrapolation of our animal nature of unscrupulous self-serving consumption that feeds of itself & others. No purpose, no plan - just ultimate chaos forever. It is the ultimate free choice without a plan.
 
All the elements I stated are there, but there’s no resolution in my opinion. The lottery is a rough way of saying ‘something very good’, not a literal equivalent of Heaven.

You have elaborated on how going with God is good, while the alternative is not, but this does not provide for free will as what choice does anyone with any knowledge have but to go with God? Going with God is good and diverging is bad, so how can the choice to side with God be a choice when the only other option is totally false, illusory and condemned? It’s like (hypothetically) acquiescing while one son mixes with bad people, takes drugs and drops out of school just to convince another son that he made the right choice in not doing this.

Why not provide two good options so that a choice to side with one is a meaningful decision done purely out of free will?
 
No one really knows what Hell is, just as we don’t know what Heaven is.

We do know that many religious traditions hold that Hell is some place where sentient beings experience a punishment for their crimes on earth. There is a notion the Hell is also an eternal place. I’m not sure that punishment is eternal or, that punishment is eternally administered on sentient beings. That is, your being may remain in Hell forever, but your pain may not. Maybe you are left sentient for eternity with one simple fact - you can never go to heaven. I suspect that an individual’s punishment is very much like the concept of throwing anything into a fire - it only exists until it consumes itself. Afterwards, its just a charred memory.

Most people who want to live their life on earth anyway they choose would hope that the end of this life is simply the end of being. I believe you pay your crimes commensurate with their severity, then you cease to exist other than a charred memory. Life in the universe goes on and, the need for a Hell is eternal.

Let me ask. Is your idea of a real “free will” alternative choice that of eternal non-existence?
 
That’s an interesting conception of Hell! Like anti-purgatory, where once sins are expended you just shrivel up, spiritually speaking.

My thoughts are that the kind of free will Christianity incorporates is actually not possible. Exactly because no-one would choose punishment and death over whatever Heaven is, no-one has a choice. We only have a choice when there are several viable options, and if it’s true that deviance on earth is a sin, we’re being fools if we think we have any options to choose between! Then what does God make of our love for Him? We have no other choice…
 
In this life, one achieves through free will sacrifice. An Olympic Gold Medalist achieves through the free will sacrifice of all the other choices that contemporary compatriots choose. Christianity on earth entails the practice of self-discipline to offer our choice of a free will sacrifice in order to achieve the next level in heaven. You are right in that no sane man would make any other choice. We are designed to a purpose which we must be willing to fulfill.

I liken the concept to a robot wanting to be a man, but we are a animal man wanting to be one of God’s children. With great power comes great responsibility (Spiderman movie). Responsibility means responding properly to the rules of the house. Our life on earth is an an apprenticeship or engagement period with pre-requisites in self discipline & sacrifice in order to be totally and exclusively committed for all perpetuity to the one true God. Are you willing to marry into the family of God? Commit, or go your own way, is the choice.
 
If the Bible is right and God equals all possible good, it is framed like this: either we are with God or we are sinning.
wynnejj said:
An Olympic Gold Medalist achieves through the free will sacrifice of all the other choices that contemporary compatriots choose. Christianity on earth entails the practice of self-discipline to offer our choice of a free will sacrifice in order to achieve the next level in heaven. You are right in that no sane man would make any other choice. We are designed to a purpose which we must be willing to fulfill.
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But the athlete is sacrificing a job as a teacher, a priest, an insurance seller, or whatever. Theirs is a sacrifice only by the measure of what they give up. They give up viable alternative ways of life, but humans have no comparable choices. All we can give up is sin, which was never good. Only a deluded person could think they were making a genuine sacrifice of something worth having. The more sane you are, the less you say it is a sacrifice, and the less it becomes a matter of choice or free will. Therefore, in the most logical and unimpeded analysis of Christianity, free will and sin are both an illusion. …?

The consequences are that our ‘apprenticeship’ is one without creativity in the sense that all our actions can only be aimed at obedience. We cannot learn to think for ourselves as this is superfluous and actually dangerous - heresy!
 
The concept of sin is not primarily about what is bad for us.
The concept of sin is primarily about what disrespects the will of God.

Original Sin was all about questioning God’s love for us.
Does He love us so much if He would withhold giving us POWER?

Now the question is reversed.
Do you love Him so much that you would be willing to give up your POWER?
Do you love Him so much that you would be willing to withhold use of your POWER?
 
It would be a dedication to God to give up power, yes. But we don’t have power!

All we can do is effectively give up on self-flagellation; we can give up on the negatives like disrespecting God which are intuitively bad and which lead to Hell and which are self-defeating. This cannot be seen as relinquishing power because it never enabled us to do anything. We have no free will or power.

Perhaps the answer is that love of God is not an act of free will but instead obedience, although in the creaturely, lowly land of the living we feel as if we have to make a choice to go with God because our bodies tell us that good lies in pleasure - if good lay in pleasure there would be a viable alternative to God therefore a choice to be made.
 
We have great power. We have the power to procreate, probably the greatest of our constructive powers. We have the power to kill, probably the greatest of our destructive powers. These powers are executed with very little effort. Just because you have the power to do something, doesn’t mean you should do it. With great power is great responsibility.

So let’s discuss talk about a real lack of choice.

If God does not exist, then laws are established to force a code of behavior, and religions are established to coerce a code of behavior. The concept of morality & sin is simply a set of man-made rules. Our animal brothers do not have this concept of morality & sin. They don’t articulate or codify rules. Yet our animal brothers are imbued with a set of hard-wired & codified DNA rules that have been naturally selected over the eons.

Take a wolf pack, for instance. What a family model! The family that preys together, stays together. Overpopulation due to limited food supply is a real problem. Competing dominant personalities in a hunting breed is a real problem. Concepts of morality & sin do not enter into their social behaviors. Natural selection, not free will choice, has actually given wolves some very noble social behaviors. For example, the overpopulation problem is resolved by the fact that only the alpha male & female couple have sexual relations and produce offspring. Lower ranking males & females tend to pair off & bond into lifelong monogamous platonic partnerships, protecting and caring for each other. Hard-wired dominant & submissive genetic variety among pack members has solved the issue of competing dominant personality conflicts. There are instinctive body language behaviors that communicate willingness to submit & comply. Hard-wired Omega dogs, no matter how big and capable they are, can be brow-beated into submission by a hard-wired Alpha pup with an attitude. Thus, there is hardly ever serious damage between pack members. Sex and eating privileges are enforced with imperious prejudice, but very little physical injury, through deterrent intimidation in a hierarchical manner enforced by the alpha male. Good behavior seems to be hard-wired into wolf packs, because prosperity follows ways and behaviors that simply work well toward prosperity.

The wolf pack ideal is the extrapolation of human society with or without the concept of morality & sin, because natural selection will rule in the development of human society. Would this be a viable free choice alternative in your opinion?
 
Life is the gift God gives us to choose our eternity. If we use our life to love God and neighbor - and by love I mean the Catholic definition: to do things for others without expecting anything in return, then we are choosing to be with God for eternity. If we choose to love only ourselves, then we are condemned to hell, without the love of God that we shunned.

Lots of people, quite probably a majority in modern society, love themselves first and foremost. They don’t recognize God and so they can’t fully understand the purpose of their lives… Without a spiritual goal, they try desperately to find happiness, but find it elusive because true happiness is only achieved when we do the will of God, which is to love…
 
James1215 said:
But the athlete is sacrificing a job as a teacher, a priest, an insurance seller, or whatever. Theirs is a sacrifice only by the measure of what they give up. They give up viable alternative ways of life, but humans have no comparable choices. All we can give up is sin, which was never good. Only a deluded person could think they were making a genuine sacrifice of something worth having. The more sane you are, the less you say it is a sacrifice, and the less it becomes a matter of choice or free will. Therefore, in the most logical and unimpeded analysis of Christianity, free will and sin are both an illusion. …?
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The idea of an athlete sacrificing a job to pursue his sport full time refers to professional athletes. In Christianity, this might be a priest or minister. Aspiring Olympic contestants are more like lay people who maintain their lay jobs, but sacrifice free time activities to focus on devotion to their true love. They gear their life to focused goals in self-sacrifice. They freely choose to focus by sacrificing that which distracts from their true love. They even mix true love activities into their lay job activities. Maybe they run up the stairs, instead of taking the elevator. They watch what they eat, their sleep habits. They do everything that purifies & cultivates the means to the end. The apprenticeship or training program is not one of creativity, but obedience & self-discipline to the training program. It is a free will choice to except limitations and regulation in order to achieve a very worthwhile goal.
 
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