Interesting. This might need a whole thread on confession, but it certainly seems to pose an inconsistency. Like a teacher who will let you fix bad homework assignments, but will cut off both your hands if you fail to become a good student by the end of the semester. I’ll have to turn that one over in my silly head a few times.
If I have given up my will and thoughts of my own happiness and derive happiness only from what I do for his sake, how would that preserve my human dignity, exactly? That sounds like some extreme version of Stockholm Syndrome.
This is categorically false. God wanted them to trust Him and obey Him.
Given the misunderstanding above, no figuring out is possible.
I’m sorry but the arrogance with which you reply is too off putting for me today. I have no desire to cast pearls before swine. The highest degree of Sanctity a person can achieve is union with God in this life and it is the ultimate in the spiritual life… If you cannot respect this life time goal that some have cast aside every human consideration to achieve, then I won’t be the one to allow you to scoff. It is an intimacy with Christ few achieve and sharing about it with those who would tear it down and scoff is more than I have patience for today.
God always wanted and continues to want the best for man, as we should for ourselves; He’s never been against us even though we may well perceive Him to be. Enmity and jealousy comes from man, not the other way around. Man’s justice, aka holiness, also called the “righteousness of God” is defined comprehensively by the term “love”. And there’s no limit to the depth and power and beauty and majesty-to the goodness-of this virtue.
“It’s love alone that gives worth to all things”-as Teresa of Avila came to understand. To love God is to choose the ultimate good that one can desire for themselves-and that’s the only reason* He* wants it for us. God is love, and Love is never petty or self-serving, or prideful-only the opposite, in fact. God just wants more for us than we even know enough to want for ourselves…yet.
We’re much greater than that in His eyes, even if we act lower than worms at times; and love compels Him to embrace us even with our inferiority; all of creation is unavoidably inferior to Him in one way or another- but He created us in His own image to begin with, and, to the extent that we choose to love as well we reflect that image and He delights in that choice.
According to the Catechism God placed the desire for happiness in man’s heart-and this is His highest desire for man. Do a search on beatitude and happiness in the Catechism.
The knowledge of good and evil obtained in this life has the purpose, IMO, to drive us to the good, alone-or at least to start that process, putting us firmly on that path. Since God is a God of infinite justice and mercy, we’ll all have that chance in one way or another. But He won’t force us to choose the good or else free will has no purpose or meaning-He really wants us to exercise our ability to choose, for our own good.
Yes, I’m sure so. Our wills, while radically free, aren’t absolute in their freedom to begin with. I’ve had the experience where God aided my will in order to help me overcome an addiction I prayed about-perhaps the first truly sincere prayer in my life incidentally. I had tried everything I knew in my own power over much time to halt this habit-which was greatly compromising my health-but had become even less successful each time I renewed my efforts. But after that prayer I was able to stop for an hour, then a day, then a week and so on, to my complete amazement. And in hindsight I saw that, while overcoming the addiction was good, the greater good that God was aiming at was the increase in faith that resulted from the whole matter.
Our highest good is our infinite capacity for love because it enables us to be united forever to God and all that He has created…Please; I know at least one of you will throw out some variant of, “Because God is awesome and he made it that way, so it must be awesome.” Let’s consider that base covered and look at alternatives.
- What is the good served by free will that can only be accomplished by preserving our free will?
- If our free will is so sacrosanct, why do we only get to have it for 70 years (or 13 or 3) before it is permanently suspended in favor of eternal bliss or damnation?
Same for “Are you saying you know better than God?”
If our function in life is just to end up loving God completely or be condemned to a lake of fire and worm-gnawing forever, why not just create us filled with love and simpler intellects?
Why even both with the option of Hell? Is the love so much better for him to receive if there are also some souls screaming in agony for all eternity? Surely not.
If our function is to learn and grow, then, learning and growing seems a wondrous good in and of itself, so why do we only get to do it for 70 years? How is learning and growing by some better if there are millions upon billions who can never learn and grow beyond the moment of damnation?
There are other examples, but this should give those of you who are serious the shape of the engagement. Free will does not seem an intrinsic, highest good on its own. What is its telos, and how could that telos only/best be accomplished by temporary free will with a crazy-high fail rate?
Oh dear. Can you explain how you get from God’s will being desirable in one’ s life to Stockholm Syndrome?
Is it not designed into the metaphysics and our very nature that we suffer horribly every time we assert our own will rather than just being as transparent an agent of God’s will as we possibly can? The more we do it or the longer, then proportionately the greater and longer our suffering and torment ending at a point where we are condemned to a lake of fire forever and ever after.
We can say that, but can we understand it in meaningful human terms? What I mean is, can we make sense out of how it would be good if a parent were to say, “I had children for the highest purpose of them uniting their will with mine forever”?
Yes, but (aiming back to the OP) how is the acquisition of knowledge or the process of moving toward the good made good/better only in the presence of a once-and-for-all moment of sentencing after which some will never again be able to learn or move back toward God?
Humans are moral beings. We have a responsibility, an obligation to do the “right thing”, whether we like it or not, whether we accept that or not. Hell speaks of justice, a consequence to our actions. It’s a declaration: that good and evil exist and that evil ultimately has no permanent place with good-and we need to act accordingly. How God will work it all out in the end, we don’t know-only that it will be based to one degree or another on our actions, on what we’ve done with what we’re given. Luke 12:48:
:clapping: It can be proved logically that egoism is destructive and self-destructive because
It isn’t. You are setting up straw men. You seem to have been fed some very distorted ideas about Christian doctrine.
That is exactly the same as doing it because God wills it. Indeed, if you do it because God wills it, being prepared to do otherwise (i.e., not show compassion) if God should will that, then you are worshiping an idol and not the true God.
In such a universe, the being “running” it would by definition not be God.
You will hardly ever find an atheist who believes in compassion for compassion’s sake. Rather, if he believes in that, it is because he is trying to prove something, such as that he can be a better Christian than some Christians are. But that is not worshiping God.
I don’t know how you would possibly know this. Obviously I’m speaking hypothetically.
Friendship with God and being a holy person are the same thing. There is no conflict between them. I’m responding to the hypothetical case raised by the OP, in which a Christian does separate between these things. Without speculating on how common this is, I think you’ll agree that it’s possible, just as your example of an atheist acting compassionately to “prove a point” is also possible (whether common or not). A Christian hypothetically acting this way (behaving compassionately because it happens to be what God wants, but theoretically open to the possibility that God might have commanded something quite different) would be committing idolatry. I hope that indeed no Christians have ever behaved in this way.
No one “earns” heaven.