(May 24, 2013 at 1:03 am)Godschild Wrote: We believe God is all good, however we are smart enough to know the difference in God's justice and what you refer to as benevolent.
FtR Wrote:What an odd statement to make. One would think that being just stems from benevolence. Apparently not for your god..?
Justice always leads out in good, without justice there would be no good.
The opposite of justice is poverty, and I do not mean monetarily.
GC Wrote:You want to compare our liberal court system to God's court. We sentence people to a punishment considering the criminal and not the victims. God punishes with the offended in mind and gives the offended justice. This is being benevolent to the one who deserves the benevolence.
FtR Wrote:Please specify what you mean by "punish". Eternal damnation? Because in the here and now, the exact opposite is true to what you want me to accept. The victim is the last thing on God's mind because the criminal can be cleansed by God's grace, as if God speaks on behalf of the wronged party. Murderers can potentially go to heaven while their victims can potentially go to hell, depending on their beliefs before departing from this world. The entire thing is bent on benefiting the criminal, not the victim.
You want to bring grace into this argument we can, however I believe it would be better for later to keep things form getting to complicated.
The eternal for the present time, in the past here on earth. What I was trying to say was this, people use today's court system to judge God's actions in the Bible. No one who judges God's actions in scripture ever take into account what He was trying to do for Israel. When He first brought them into the land of Canaan He wanted to remove all the godless worship, well that meant removing all the people, if you would study scripture you would be able to see this. Then God brought punishment on His people because they took on what He wanted removed from the land, they practiced the pagan rituals and forgot His teachings and became, as He put it a vile people. He said this more because of the way they were treating Him and those who were less fortunate. Tell me something why do people who hate the Bible not see this, it's as plain as the nose on one's face. The judgments God made were through His omniscience and righteousness and were not meant as a guide for people to judge others by, though it happens and far to often. God's laws about people living with people are for our justice system. I'm going to stop at this point so things want get spread out in to many directions.
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.