Do you know the mind and will of God? Do you fully comprehend all that he is and can do? Do you limit his power?
Of course not. Never said I or anyone else did. But saying that one doesnt fully know the mind of God is a lot different than saying God can and will do anything. If you believe the scriptures, he says enough about himself, and yes, that means things he will and will not do, does and does not do. That is not me limiting God or saying I know everything that he will do.
If you are going to say that God can do whatever he wants, even violate his own standards if he wants, then besides being logically inconsistent, God really has no standards and "
Anything Goes"
I don't pretend to know all things, especially concerning God. I know God will always be just. He will always be loving. But neither you or I know his mind well enough to decide what he will do or will not do.
Do you not see how you are contradicting yourself? You know that God is always just and loving (How do you know?), yet apparently we cannot "know his mind well enough" to say whether he could do something unjust and unloving.
I too know God is always just and loving, but that is (in part) because God says he himself is just and loving, and he says he wont be unjust and unloving. It is not a matter of claiming to 'know the mind of God well enough', but instead I just take him at his word.
The Bible is the word of God. But it doesn't limit God. It is for man, not for him. God actions will never be morally wrong, but may not make sense at all times. Foe example, killing is bad, but God ordered the Israelites to clear the promise land, killing the prior inhabitants. We call that ethnic cleansing today....
Duh. "The Bible is the word of God." Of course it is. It is for man and it is where God
tells man what is on his mind!! (2 Timothy 3:16,17) Perhaps we should listen.
Something being morally right or wrong is based upon a standard. That standard is defined by God, not by man. And that also means that God via his power may follow or (hypothetically) violate that standard. But that does not mean that God can violate that standard and still truthfully claim he is being morally right. To think so is illogical and again would amount to saying that God really has no standards, including any of justice and love.
Your analogy fails.
* First off, the 6th commandment is
not "Do not kill", but it is "Do not murder". See this
LINK for a short and cool video that discusses it. Saying "killing is bad" is not totally accurate.
* Nearly 400 years prior to Israel coming to the promised land, God had decreed it was for Abrahams descendants. (Gen 15:16,18). So the Canaanites (prior inhabitants) were essentially squatters in a land that was not theirs.
* The Canaanites were particularly wicked in their ways. Archaeologists have attested to this by what they have found.
* Destroying the inhabitants was to protect Israel, God's people, through whom the Messiah was to come.
* God did not have ALL of them killed. Some were spared, like Rahab and her family and the Gibeonites.
So call it ethnic cleansing if you want. But in this case, it was justified, as per reasons noted in the Scriptures. There were reasons for it, but those reasons were not: 'God is just higher minded than us and we cant fully understand him'
Again, God isn't limited by our concepts and ideas or by our understanding of his ways.
Quite right! But instead, God limits himself by his own standards and provides us with understanding of his ways by what he wrote in the Scriptures.
See the difference?
The people of Sodom were beyond redemption, but did they ever really have the knowledge necessary to be held to God's standards? Plus Sodom was full of young children? Had they sinned in the cradle?
I am not criticizing the destruction. I am merely pointing that God isn't bound to be fair when he doesn't want to be.... he washes his hands with nations, even when they sin in ignorance.
How much knowledge the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had of God's requirements prior to their destruction may never be known. But what we do know (*cough* from the Scriptures) is that 1) via a conversation with Abraham, God would not have destroyed those cities if even 10 righteous persons were found there (Gen 18:20-33) [See, God himself laid out standards that he was willing to limit himself to], and 2) Lot, a man who did know God's standards, lived near and eventually inside Sodom.(Gen 13:11-13) He very likely tried to explain to them about their conduct.
And despite there probably being children in those cities, they, like everyone else, are born sinners and are imperfect. (Romans 3:23; 6:23) So yes, they were sinners in the cradle.
Whether or not you think it was fair or unfair is totally subjective and frankly irrelevant. The point is, God had reasons to destroy those cities, including any children in them, and the reasons
are stated in the scriptures.
Again, you don't know how he defines things for himself.
Umm, to a great extent we do know how he defines things... because he goes ahead and defines them..... in the Bible.
God is not limited by puny human understanding. He will always do this in accordance to his will, in a just manner, we just will not always understand it.
Never said God was limited by human understanding. Yes, he will do things according to his will. And guess what?!? He tells us what his will is in the Scriptures, and yes, we CAN understand it.
Limiting God again? So rigid and narrow. Peter was instructed to violate the Law of Moses. He was told to expand the church to non Jews. And they were not required to live by the previously revealed Law.
Why are you so hung up about "limiting" God? He does it to himself. That is not necessarily a bad thing. IT only means that God is consistent and truthful (In fact God could not be truthful if he did not in fact limit himself)
And limits to God in no way implies that his will can be stopped or prevented.
I'm not sure what you mean by the reference to Peter, or how expanding the church violated anything (unless you are somehow relating things of Peter's dream when he was about to go see Cornelius). Nevertheless, by then Christ had been put to death and had fulfilled the Law of Moses. After his death and resurrection, the Law of Moses was no longer binding on Christians. (Romans 10:4; 7:6; Ephesians 2:13-15) So no, they were not required to live by that Law....
Do you live the Law of Moses today as set forth in detail? I think not.
... and neither am I.
And if God's will were so clear, why do we have so many different churches? Do Baptists and Lutherans and Methodists have the same standards?
non-sequitur. But frankly,...and logically, if various churches have different standards, and they claim to get those standards from God, at best only one of them is correct, at worst none of them are. Do they get their standards from the Bible??? It might be interesting to actually investigate that.
The will of God is for each of his to find. By our own inspiration. He wants to communicate with us. He wants us to hear his guidance.
Sorry, but no. Those first two statements are crap. Assuming God wants to communicate with us and have us hear his guidance, what sense does it make the for us to find it on our own. That is a very unscriptural idea. You are looking to have your cake and eat it too.
Scripture is a great way for that, but does every passage hit you the same way each time you read it? Or do you get new insight for his will uniquely for that situation? Where does that unique insight come from? The Holy Spirit guiding us to truth and enlightening our minds.
Non-sequitur. God does give us insight (Ps 32:8) and he does so through his Word (Joshua 1:7, 8; 1 Kings 2:3) Yes, God's spirit is involved (Nehemiah 9:20). Once acquired, insight must be safeguarded. One can lose it by turning from God’s ways. (Ps 36:1-3; Pr 21:16) And his ways are revealed...oh yeah... in the Scriptures.
Oh, ye of little faith. I feel sorry for you that you want to limit your relationship with God. If you don't recognize the Holy Spirit talking to you, I feel really sad for you. If you have never felt it, I feel even greater sadness for you, sincerely. You sound like you desire to follow His will, but you reject his ability to guide you and love you.
Sorry, nice try. But a real relationship with God is based upon KNOWLEDGE of him from his word, not merely some emotional experience. God's spirit works with that knowledge (which we get from studying God's word) and gives us INSIGHT on how to apply that knowledge, which is WISDOM. His ability to guide us is done via what he tells us in his word, and his Word is evidence of his love for us.
No one needs to suffer needlessly. I don't see divorce on the ten commandments, do you? God makes the rules, not you. Not me.
Divorce is not in the the 10 commandments, but it is covered in the Law Covenant.
But besides there, Jesus, in discussing the practice of divorce, plainly said: " I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.†(Matthew 19:9; 5:31, 32)
So, ya, God makes the rules on divorce, and what do you know, they are right there in the Bible. Go figure!
But I can shout to the hilltop what I believe I was told. You can disbelieve. That is fair. You are free to believe or disbelieve everything I write. It is up to you.
But your truth, as you see it, doesn't limit me or God.
That is fine, and I would say "Ditto." But I think you should double-check where you are getting your "truth" from.
