This is a thread asking why believers use one set of rules for Humanity, and another set of rules for God. I’m going to list the inconsistencies below:
Lying: "“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8).
Of course, virtually everyone knows the above biblical verse is not true. Those who believe try and “worm their way out” by saying that a prayer is dependent on God’s will, and it is ultimately God’s will that is done. But nowhere in these verses, or those to follow, does it suggest that an answered prayer is dependent on God’s will. This amounts to lying by omission - lying by deliberately leaving out a crucial truth. This is punishable by law in some jurisdictions. Businesses can be sued for such an action. Yet believers believe this is somehow acceptable for the one who they worship, the one who is supposed to be the bastion of virtue. We find similar empty promises and statements with devotions such as the rosary: “You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary” (11th Promise).
“Virtually everyone know…” is not a proof. Nothing is verifiable, particularly by an appeal of a majority outside of an intelligible social order. Statements in public language are either less false or more false. However, this can be taken on faith with understanding because there is an active tradition which affirms the verses of the Bible. What does that mean?
Well, people have found it to be accurate and have testified to that accuracy. They have put their faith to the test and found it to be less false than untrue.
But your question goes beyond that, into other avenues with several assumptions that make it hard to discuss together as people. The assumptions that I see:
*If there were a God, He cannot lies, here is an example of a lie from God
*If there were a God, He would fulfill every wish as promised
*If there were a God, and the Bible His Word, he omits the “philosophical language” necessary to make Himself a truly intelligible (and caring?) Authority.
These questions presuppose a narrative structure taken from the Enlightenment with ethics, morals and laws that do not speak to traditional non-pagan beliefs but rely on them so as not to lapse into paganism.
For example “lying.” May I refer you to what Saint Thomas Aquinas says about lying, or to Jewish discussions on the lie God tells Abraham after announcing that Sarah is going to get pregnant.
Lies might not conform what you think it should.
The only other idea worth mentioning is how one proceeds from the idea that God is a wish-fulfiller. Often, very often, we are unsure of what we want, even when we think we know. Much like Jacques Lacan points out, our world is filled with polymorphic perversions we all conform to since we are social creatures and we conform to these without necessarily being articulated to do so. We are not taught the will, drive, ability to define our own wants and we are left to swim in our imaginary desires and/or unconscious drives. Not getting too into him (though I suggest you read him) there are differences we lack in determining our real needs and wants from our imaginary and symbolic desires that leave us un-whole as people.
This is why marketing and peer pressure is so effective, this is what makes good citizens, but it doesn’t make good people.
And making good people is the job God left to the Church through tools and artifacts- namely in this case, the Bible. The Christian can understand what Lacan is saying and go further because he can point the polymorphic perversion being apart of original sin triumphed by Real Love- the kind displayed by Saint Francis when he prayed not to be loved but to be loving; or the kind displayed when Christians are asked to empty (or die to themselves) and be filled by God. This is what is meant by the suffering maxim you point out below- making room for what is Real in terms of needs and wants and leaving behind the unreal artifices society and sin drill into us.
And until we can make sense of our needs or wants clearly and articulately, it is hard to make sense of this passage and to deem it a lie that God doesn’t keep his promises in relation to each one of us.
As for the rest of your examples, since they are all intended to show an error in Christian thinking:
You show a preoccupation with rules that does not apply to humans or God outside of an Enlightenment context. To me, it sounds like a more sociological problem (also apart of that Enlightenment context) than an actual philosophical/theological one. It is born of a confusion between what amounts to authority and it is valid and reasonable. But it doesn’t speak to what is truthful for believer or non-believer and it has more to do with the inability to ground Law in human social interaction anymore. And to that, I say: that is a gift of the Cross which has made it impossible to live as the pre-moderns did, who grounded their authoritative cultus (societies and laws) with the blood of innocents and scapegoats. In other words, it’s a very Christian thing for you to point out.
