So I decided to make myself transparent tonight and throw some things out there that I always wonder about...here goes nothing.
1. So if God knows everything, which we know he does, did He know Adam was going to sin when He gave adam free will. The obvious answer is of course, but I just wonder why He created us to have free will if he knew we wouldn't obey. If God
knew Adam would mess up it seems that He came down kinda hard on adam... When I'm reading this in Genesis it sounds
to me like God is surprised to hear Adam and Eve screwed up.
2. If God knows everything before it happens, and we know He does, why in the wide world of sports did He create Satan. He had to have known that satan would betray Him.
3. If God has already planned a big war where we smash satan and create the new heaven on earth then why not just go ahead and smash him now. Or better yet why didn't He crush satan before instead of locking him in an abyss or pit or whatever.
4. It might sound wierd, but I wonder what the Holy Spirit and Jesus were doing while God was walking with Adam in the Garden. The whole Trinity thing is impossible to completely understand....for me at least.
5. I sometimes struggle with the idea of God being in complete control but us not being puppets and having free will.
6. Mosquitos........couldn't He have created an insect of like size that didn't want to chew my face off
7. I wonder what manna looks, tastes like. Can't wait to find out either.
8. i know He gets joy out of people choosing to accept Him based on faith and not just seeing is believing....just wondering if theres anyway He could make a brief appearance somewhere so that everyone would know what I know even if they didnt
have the faith.
9. Even though I know theres biblical proof of dinosaurs living with humans...it's still kinda hard to grasp. Cant wait to see the
museum in Cincy.
10. I wonder why, after all the miracles God has performed for me, do I continue to have doubts of every little thing He does.
11. I know there must be a lesson involved, but I do wonder why God allows great spiritual leaders to be stricken with cancer
like matt chandler. Seems like those kinds of people could bring a lot more people to Christ if allowed to live rather than sent home...i know its mans own fault but I'm writing this and I wonder about it....so there. Oh, and the second part to that is I wonder if God is just building his front line for battle and needs soldiers of that caliber to start filing in rank.
12. I wonder why I won't just let go and let God take the reigns of my life
13. Why is it so hard for me to improve my prayer life....
14. The arc thing is pretty tough to think about. Imagine putting every living species on a boat together and keeping things calm
for 40 days and 40 nights.... were there dinosaurs on the arc? maybe the flood killed em all. i wonder that...i'm wierd
15. I often wonder about the calendar year of the Bible. I know I know...a day is a day and a year is a year. But i always catch
myself wondering whether God created the earth in 6 24 hour days or 6 different days.
16. On the 7th day He rested...so we know He sleeps or rests. I wonder how much He does that now-a-days?
I could keep this going and going, but you get the point. No matter how much you read, or how many podcasts you watch, you're fleshly, doubting brains are always gunna have doubts about things relating to God. He is beyond our comprehension, and all these things we wonder about will one day be revealed to us.
-waino
18 comments:
so i guess i'm the only one that wonders about any of that.... well, i still do it with or without you. haha.
Lots of people ask those same questions...how are we supposed to learn if we don't ask right? With that being said...there are some heavy questions you brought up. I'd like to do some studying before I just throw out some opinionated answers.
A reply is coming soon from me...and hopefully others...
I love the mysteries of God. I don't desire a God I can define and completely understand. That being said, I'd like to share my opinions on these as well. To begin with, Noah had an ark, not an arc. Living in STL you should know what an arc is. More from me to come.
Terry
sorry for the spelling...... professor evans.
Question 1: What seems to bring more glory to God or to put it another way, what makes a better story? God creating a perfectly obedient world or a world that goes wrong and needs redemption? What better way for God to show His love than to redeem a creation gone bad. What greater love is there than that which One lays down His life to save lives? Was God harsh on Adam? What if Adam was created for common use? Does God create instruments of wrath? Paul thinks so in Romans 9. Yes, God's sovereignty in relation to Eden is mysterious but Praise our God His ways are not our ways. His purpose is not our purpose. His good is not our good. Perhaps, yes, God created Adam knowing what would happen and yet declared it "good".
I love that you brought these up Waino bc these are great topics to spark conversation and thought. We don't know all the answers and the sooner we accept that the better.
- Terry
Question 2: What if God's intention wasn't to creat a perfect world but rather a perfect and heroic love story? All good stories need a villan.
- Terry
Another important question to be raised is whether this universe was created for man or for God? Is this story about man or about God?
- Terry
Qustion 5: A Christian should be a fan of paradox. If you want to be rich, be poor. If you want to be first, be last. Jesus said come follow me but also says that no one can follow unless the Father draws him. Christianity has black and it has white but both are placed on the canvas to make a magnificent work of art.
- Terry
Question 15: In the book of Exodus, God lays out the commandment of the Sabbath. He explains that the Israelites are to work 6 days and then rest on the 7th day just as God created everything in 6 days and rested on the seventh. I believe the sam Hebrew word for "day" is used here in Exodus as in the first chapter of Genesis. The Israelites took this to mean that they were to work 6 24 hour periods of time and rest every 7th 24 hour period. This leads me to believe in a literal translation of Genesis 1.
- Terry
terry, thanks for the feed back. still waiting to hear from nolan on this one
I want to clear up something that I have a hard time expressing most times. In response to these question, I am not trying to come across as if I have these things figured out and providing answers. I can not tell you how free will and God's sovereignty work perfectly together. I also don't know with certainty that the creation week in Genesis is actually a literal week. I just wanted to share my thoughts and opinions on these questions but I don't want my responses to be confused as answers. I have found that the more I know about God, the less I know about God. Does that make sense? I love the mysteries of God and I've really enjoyed responding with opinions and thoughts to such great questions. Thanks for starting this dialogue waino and I really would have liked to have seen more feedback from others on these questions.
- Terry
Question 11: Im sure there were people who witnessed the suffering and brutal torture of Jesus and thought why would God allow such terrible things to happen to someone who has done so many great things for our community? Obviously, we know the reason for Christ's suffering and we even take it a step further and consider it good that He suffered. We can't explain and give an adequate answer for such suffering but we know that there is purpose bc no evil takes place without God's approval. Also, suffering reveals the true depth of our faith and trust which brings more glory to God which is our purpose here anyway. We aren't here for health, wealth, and prosperity but for the glory of God. We are called to suffer and to suffer well so that Hod is glorified. It may not make complete sense to us but the New Testament screams of suffering.
- Terry
with free will, i think its free will in God's will. sin is in our nature but Gods will is going to play out
I like where you were going with that. I agree with that comment so I was wondering if you wanted to attempt to explain that a little bit further?
so i used to think of free will as we're gunna do whatever the heck we want. But, then you sort of eliminate the whole God is in control thing. We are programmed to sin, but not bound by it because of Christ's sacrifice and God's amazing plan for us. To say He has a plan is basically saying there are actually limits to our personal free will...ultimately He is in control and if He wants to direct us somewhere else I believe that is exactly what He is going to do. I hope I made that sound right.... not sure I got everything in that I wanted to say.
Agreed. I have wrestled with the doctrines of Free Will and Predestination for quite some time now and I am starting to realize that you can't go too far either way. I will always lean on the side of God's sovereignty but not so far that I take away man's choice entirely because man is responsible for his decisions. I believe these two doctrines come together in a way that is above our total comprehension. We can see a glimpse of how they work but can't quite bring the two sides together. We tend to want to bring the black and white together to make grey. However, God takes the black and white and puts them together on the canvas to make a masterpiece. C.S. Lewis said it well when he claimed that he felt as if he made a choice in his decision to put his faith in Christ but it felt as if he had no other choice to make.
- Terry
Question 14: I'm not sure that I can help you too much on this topic through just a single comment. The reason being is because I believe that dinosaurs and men roamed the earth together and I believe in dragons too. I actually have no problem believing that dragons may still exist today somewhere. So that being said, here is a response to this type of question that I got from John MacArthur....
God reveals in great detail the measurements for the ark in Genesis chapter 6. He has these measurements recorded in His written Word to reveal to those who seek the Truth how Noah’s task was actually a probable scenario. According to the measurements given in chapter 6, the volume of space in the ark would be equal to about 522 railroad cars which would be able to carry about 125,000 sheep. Today there are less than 18,000 species of land animals on the planet. We can now double this number to make up for the extinction of species through the ages and get a total of 36,000 species. With 2 of each, 72,000 creatures is very reasonable to assume. The average size of land animals is less than the size of a sheep, and the very large animals could have easily been represented by young so perhaps less than 60% of the space on the ark was used for the animals! This leaves plenty of room for 1,000,000 species of insects, food for the family, and the huge top deck pool that Noah always wanted.
yuck, didn't even think about insects
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