I'm not a christian, but I grew up in a Baptist household, so I have at least a passing understanding of the Bible. Lemme know if I got any wrong.
If I'm understanding the bible correctly;
God Created heaven and Earth, Including Mankind and Angels
God is all-knowing and all-powerful
Relevant to this discussion, God created Lucifer and all the angels who sided with him.
God made Man in His image, and ordered the angels to serve them.
Lucifer, prideful of his own beauty, and envious of God's (at least perceived) favoritism of Man, and of God's position, started a rebellion in heaven and was/will be cast down into the lake of fire(aka Hell).
lucifer later tempted/took the form of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden and tempted Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.
my conclusion: God, with full knowledge of what lucifer would do/become created him and set him on the path that led to his downfall, and to the Sin of Mankind.
Or to put it more simply; God created Sin through his foreknowledge of what Lucifer would become.
I'm not trying to start a shitstorm here, but this is the logical conclusion that I find myself at.
Any Christian pedes wanna poke holes in this for me?
First, you tell me if creating beings with no freewill is worth creating in the first place.
To quote the great C.S. Lewis:
Yup, free will. We all have the “potential” to commit sin, didn’t mean God had foreknowledge. We must choose. Doesn’t mean we won’t make some wrong decisions, but some evil acts we just won’t do. Life on earth—kinda like a loyalty test.
Or, it is possible that, because God knows all that will happen, and can manipulate His creation, He may have plans that we cannot imagine for the fallen beings. For instance, I was recently listening to an Orthodox priest who mentioned a doctrine unfamiliar to me, that until Christ returns, there is a Hades for the condemned souls and they can be redeemed even from there. But at the end of the age, Hades will truly become Hell and there will be no escape. Demons appear to be irredeemable.
You may be confusing Hades with Purgatory.
No, he was discussing a special day when prayers are offered for those in hell. Maybe he meant Purgatory, but he didn't call it that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKei3nbx6wE
Before Christ's sacrifice, there was an afterlife of sorts that had two sections, one for the lost and one for the OT believers. The former doesn't really have a name, but the latter is called Abraham's Bosom, and the realm as a whole is called Sheol in the OT. This concept got conflated with Greek notions of Hades and Tartarus. Given the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man, Tartarus is an apt comparison to the place where the lost are tormented.
After Christ's death, He took the souls that were in Abraham's Bosom into heaven proper. The lost are left behind in what we now call hell. After the Millennium, these souls will be called up to the great white throne for judgment. Since they didn't trust Christ, they and hell itself will be cast into the lake of fire for eternity.
I'm sorry, but there's no room in scripture for the lost to be saved after physical death. It's common for Christians to concoct schemes whereby the lost get a second chance, or that they all get saved in the end (universal salvation). They mean well, as no one wants anyone to be in fiery torment for eternity. But the Bible indicates that this life is the only life you have to make the right choice.
God gave us free will. The choice is ours whether to serve God or Satan. This is not the same thing as creating sin.
Absolutely, freewill is paramount (insert vague reference to AI here), but I'm not trying to pass some moral judgement, just trying to figure out if I have this correct. If God created Lucifer with foreknowledge of the sin he would introduce into the world, did God create sin?
God created the option/freedom to sin. Sin is just a voluntary distancing from the Creator. You can choose to go to Him or not, but He wants you to choose Him. That is the whole point.
Also, what would be the other option? To not create Lucifer? Eventually you have to accept that to truly be creating beings with genuine freewill, something like Lucifer would be spawned on its own volition.
So then, God needed Lucifer to tempt man to sin to create the environment for freewill to flourish?
Without the temptation to sin, no choice would be made, right?
Here is the problem with applying human logic while pondering the infinite: if someone were to ask me the classic question "Can God create a boulder so heavy that even He can't lift it?" My response would be "Yes, but since He is omnipotent and there is nothing He can't do, it would break your mind upon witnessing it" And so it is with Him needing Lucifer to unfold the story of creation as we know it.
great answer.
I like that.
I take a little different route:
Contradictions are not possible. It is not an act of power to perform a contradiction.
Saying God cannot do a contradiction does not detract from his power or Nature. There are other things God cannot do: He cannot sin, He cannot force you to love Him etc…
God can do all things possible. Contradictions are not possible.
This answer broke my mind reading it. Like AZ said, great answer
The boulder question comes from a lack of understanding the difference between omnipotence and sovereignty.
This is going to sound weird, but God is not omnipotent. There are things He can't do. He can't stop being Himself. He can't act contradictory to His own nature. I personally argue that He can't violate the laws of logic because they are an intrinsic part of His being.
What God is is sovereign. That means He has complete control and command over anything else in existence. If He makes a boulder, He can manipulate it however He wishes because He is sovereign. He can't make a boulder that He can't lift, else He would immediately cease to be God.
Again, you're applying human logic to something that supersedes logic... God can do anything even if our human brains can't comprehend it. There are things we will only gain understanding when we are free from the restraints of this mortal coil.
You don't need an external source of influence.
When God told Adam and Eve to not eat of the Tree (and to keep the Garden, and subdue the earth), they could choose to follow any or none of those commands. Satan was the specific catalyst for the Fall, but it could have happened from Adam and Eve just deciding on their own that they wanted to do their own thing. Man's Fall could have happened with or without Satan.
I don’t think God “needed” Lucifer for that necessarily. Lucifer was simply making sure Adam and Eve did disobey.
Adam and Eve were fully capable of disobeying God without Lucifer’s help, otherwise Gods command to not eat of the Tree of Knowledge wouldn’t have meant anything.
Side note. I always thought it interesting that Eve wasn't freaked out by a talking serpent. Does that mean Adam and Eve could communicate with all creatures in the garden?
Here's an interesting possibility:
The word translated "serpent" just means "to hiss or whisper". The word in Hebrew is almost more of a verb than a noun.
We know from Isaiah and Ezekiel that Satan was a guardian cherub in Eden. Maybe Adam and Eve saw Satan before his fall, maybe even knew him personally.
So when Satan came whispering to Eve, she would not have seen a talking snake, but a known and (up until that point) benevolent cherub offering knowledge and godhood. Now that's a lot more tempting, isn't it?
THIS!!!!
Agree
Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil (and sin) is simply the absence of holiness. It is not a tangible thing that was created.
It's a good question.
Ultimately, God's foreknowledge does not diminish human and angelic responsibility for their own choices. While God created beings with free will, it was their own decisions that led to rebellion and sin, rather than God directly causing sin to exist.
Maybe let C.S. Lewis explain it to you.
Mere Christianity The Shocking Alternative
So then God created Sin for freewill to flourish.
honestly, this is an interesting line of reasoning.
Like I said, I'm not trying to be an asshole, just sussing this out for myself
Did you listen to the C.S. Lewis audio I linked?
If you had, then you should have gleaned that God created creatures with free will in order for love to have meaning. What kind of love would it be if it weren't given freely. But a creature that is free to love, is also free to hate. The more capable the creature is, is it's ability to go right, or to go wrong.
You will not be able to understand truly how to spirit works through intellectual examination. When you repent of your sins, and genuinely ask Jesus Christ to come into you life, you will then be able to see things of the spirit.
I enjoy intellectual examination though. it's a reward in and of itself. just thinking and talking on things and seeing where the minds of other people and myself lead.
Yes, I listened to part of it, enough to glean the basic idea. There's an "no x without y" angle that I greatly appreciate and agree with. I feel the same about joy and suffering, honestly. How can you know Joy if you've never known Anguish?
Well if you like very stimulating intellectual arguments you will definitely enjoy listing the Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis who is unquestionably one of the foremost "thinkers" of the 20th century.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis, as he states, is not trying to turn his reader into a Christian, he is "Merely" explaining Christianity as he understands it.
Listening to his rational, logical argument on the points of the work, the way he used logic and language so effectively is like watching a top gymnast perform on the balanced beam, or listening to a great singer and saying to oneself, "Man I wish I had that talent." The works is in essence a intellectual. logical, rational explanation of why Lewis believes there is a God, and why Jesus is what the bible says he is.
Try listening to the full audio book, and see if you agree with me that it is a great pleasure to hear such a great thinker embodied with ingenious language skills explain a complex topic with such pure logic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj_qM3gWNtk
I'll definitely take a listen.
...man, one of these days, I gotta finish the Space Trilogy... people rave about tolkien and how he needed to make his books so dense to describe his fictional world, but the reality is Lewis did basically the same thing in science fiction in a much less verbose way...
Seriously, read them. The space trilogy is every bit as grand (arguably more so, since he didn't have the entirety of european mythology to mine for his work), and you don't need a week straight of reading to get through the books.
Only reason I never finished lewis' work, was because I only had the first two, but I might go back and hunt them down now.
I will have to look into those books.
BTW, the link above is to the entire audio book Mere Christianity.
sounds like great listening material when I'm working on something.
been a few weeks since my lawn has had some love, lol.
it's very..."healthy"
The universe is a container of action, reaction.... black, white.... yin, yang... good, evil... and multiple shades within, but in either case, you fall on either side of the spectrum depending on actions and choices, with free will to enable such choice, and consequences.
Hey there! So, Saint Augustine, one of the Church fathers, had some interesting thoughts about this topic.
So, Augustine believed that God created everything good, including angels like Satan. But here's the thing: God gave angels and humans free will, which means the ability to make their own choices. He wanted them to love Him freely, without being forced or programmed to do so.
Now, unfortunately, some angels, including Satan, abused their free will. They got all prideful and decided they didn't want to obey God anymore. They wanted to be the boss themselves, you know? And that's how the whole rebellion thing started.
Augustine thought that God, being super smart and all, already knew that some angels, including Satan, would turn bad. But He still created them because He had a bigger plan in mind. He knew that even through all the chaos and evil, something good could come out of it.
See, Augustine believed that God can bring good even out of bad situations. Like, He can use the consequences of evil choices to teach us important lessons, to help us grow, and to show His mercy and love. It's kind of like how sometimes we learn the most valuable lessons when we face challenges or make mistakes.
So, in a way, Augustine saw Satan's fall and the evil it brought into the world as part of God's greater plan. It allowed God to show His love and redemption through Jesus Christ, who came to save us from sin and bring us back to Him.
It's a complex idea, but Augustine basically believed that God allowed Satan's rebellion and the fall of mankind to happen because, ultimately, He could bring something greater and more beautiful out of it.
Hope that helps!
Excellent info.
Free will.
Well, that's certainly a justification, but does it undermine the idea that God, even through benevolence, allowed sin to be born?
Again, I'm trying to steer clear of moral judgements on this one. I don't want to step on toes, just try to wrap my head around this.
The CS Lewis quote above is probably the best explanation, and Lewis started as an atheist, you might find wisdom in reading some of his works.
No one knows God's plan, so... his intention might be for a species to overcome sin as a collective and ascend to higher planes of existence despite it. A spoiled child who is given everything has no respect or gratitude for the existence they have, those that overcome do and are rewarded because of it.
Revelation 3:12 - The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it.
There are lot of passages in the Bible regarding the act of overcoming, which is a personal act of perseverance and reward. #HardWork #Grind #HeIsForYou
I have absolutely nothing profound to add. I just wanted to say thank you for being so honest and respectful. Very cool attitude.
😊 hey, just because I don't consider myself a Christian doesn't mean I hold animosity towards them (you?), and honestly? I like to think and talk about topics even if it occasionally makes people uncomfortable. It jogs the mind, and can lead to unexpected places.
Part of why I oppose the modern left is the dogmatic nature of their ideology. There's no room for exploring the cracks and devices when everyone must walk in lockstep.
There's no room for personal growth when you're denied personal responsibility.
An easy example would be to say that "white privilege" is the privilege of personal responsibly. How can you improve yourself if no one is allowed to acknowledge your faults? Your weaknesses? Your mistakes?
This, to me, is one of the great crimes of the left, both in modernity and recent history; depriving Black Americans of the great treasure that is free agency.
Try these examples:
Can you have a race that has no start point and no end point? How do you know if you won?
How can you have a valley without a mountain (ignoring the technicalities)?
How would you know "good" if you never saw "evil"?
Just a thought.
Great points to consider and philosophize over, Fren. Thanks!
My first book is out of print or I would send you a copy. So here is a whole book in a few paragraphs.
All religions are based on some outstanding assumptions... most of which either contradict or profoundly untrue. Yes, there is a creator and you are that likeness in that you too create (free will).
Religions, created by man (no exceptions) have all projected human traits onto their Gods. That wrong assumption was that a God would handle things like we do, judge as we do and react as we do. None of which are true.
That said, I am a knowing believer in God...just not via any religion... having spent decades investigating them all.
We live in a 3D construct based on dichotomy... down can't exist without the contrast of up, nor cold without hot or tall without short. Terms would be meaningless without the contrast. Today, buried within your questions is our current circumstance which is our good vs evil, dark vs light predicament. As you likely have discovered good is defined in infinite ways just as bad is. For example, Raping a child is defined good by some and bad by others. (Not advocating here just one example). Keep in mind the Christian story of Adam & Eve, if it was true...then without family incest the human race would not exist. Which is know bad. You see?
Free will in all religions is you making choices within this endless maze of dichotomies with ever changing definitions of right and wrong and good and bad. Thus we have religions to define this for us and make it simple for us... lots of different ones to choose from too. And thus may surprise many but the are all right! Let me explain.
All religions (bar none) teach you what to think about a matter, how to feel about that matter and ultimately what to do when encountering the matter. The real trinity of life energies your free will produces. They each train you to synchronize those three energies into one whole (holy) and when they are synchronized (regardless of which doctrines you use) you become powerful in your creations (your likeness to the creator). When you do this miracles happen and you will experience them. As a rational human being you in-turn know that it works. You are right. You don't know about the others but from your own experience you KNOW yours in right. So you assume that all the others must be wrong (just logical). But keep in mind that the others also taught their followers exactly the same thing (formula) with the sane results (synchronized thought feelings and action) and so they too experienced miracles and they too are equally convinced they are right and you are wrong! You can never agree. Arguments ensue and wars break out over such (our human history).
Their teachings are wildly different yet achieve the same results. In each circumstance it was YOU doing the creating (your likeness to God)... they just taught you a way to become whole through alignment of your thoughts, feelings and actions into one fully committed idea. Propaganda works exactly the same way.
Thus the war we are in isn't so much good vs evil as it is about WHAT we will create! Thus whomever can control our collective sway (thoughts, feelings and actions) will determine the outcome of what we create. Initially religions had intentions to sway us to create love and peace. Yet the Koran define Christians as infidels worth nothing to God and can be killed. Likewise, Christians have the same history of doing the same as we did during the inquisitions where we labeled people heretics and burned them at the stake. Propaganda can produce the same results.
When you hear "it will be biblical" it is referring to the scale of events not the religion. Keep in mind that none of the religions work (create a miracle) unless you are all in, fully commit mind (thoughts), body (actions) and spirit ( feelings). It is formula.
So what is the answer? The great awakening. Awakening to this fact of HOW we create! Then create it.
Do we want corruption or can we align in agreement that we don't? Do we want our children raped or can we align that we don't? Do we want peace or do we want war? That is our war amongst ourselves! Once we align our thoughts, feelings and actions on the matter...volia! We create a miracle and entire global paradigms will shift immediately where current creators of the chaos, etc can no longer survive.
I hope this helps.
The problem at hand IS the creative power of the collective. With media brainwashing on both ends of the spectrum, the unwashed, unthinking, sea of mind numbed humanity are creating division and certain destruction for us all.
You could change it all tomorrow if everyone on the planet unplugged from the beast system, unplugged from the net, social media, music , TV, radio and just went on about their business living and dreaming for a good future without all the negative noise in everyone's ear. The constant drum beat is leading our creative powers toward division and destruction.
Well no.....we had these problems long before media. It is just more amplified now.
Well no ..... until now we did not have 30-60 year long studies of mass mind manipulation and the means to carry it out via mass media.
I think we are in agreement.
It is base 12 math. The ole "when two are gathered in my name." Whereby 2 synchronized = 10 unsync'd and10 = 1000, 10,000= 10 million.
In other words 15 to 20% is all the power you need... whole and fully sync'd
Guess what happens when it reaches 33%?
PS Nothing you said above makes any sense on any level, that crap does not even appear to be from the same author of the post above, if it was you who wrote both ... I like to drink too, but damnnn! Chill bro.
I only responded with a comment. I will be happy to clear up your missed understanding if you simply state what you are mostly confused about. I realize it is complicated but I can clarify any points you didn't get. Look firward to your questions.
It does thank you. Honestly, I think I'm more interested in the journey than the destination at this point...So many interesting conversations, so many ideas I hadn't considered.
Styx, is that you? Shouldn't you be logposting? Lol. (I kid, I know he's not the only person who writes books on stuff like this)
The journey is following God's laws to get to the best destination.
I am curious, you said you are not Christian. What do you consider your religious belief? My ask is self serving. As someone who went through catholic high school who never felt entirely right. Not that I don’t believe but my questions are so strong that it’s not hard to ask did the world get it wrong?
Catholic high school is not enough. I also know lots of people who got just enough training to confess, receive communion. Thats not learning the faith, thats just preparation for the sacraments. These people grow up with no moral compass, think nothing of stealing, lying, cheating, raping, murdering but parade down the aisle so everyone can see they receive communion every Sunday and must be holy people when in fact they are desecrating the Holy Host.
I had 12 years of catholic school and still think I have not learned enough. Every day is a lesson. I too 'dont feel entirely right' but I keep learning and striving 'what would Jesus do'.
Pagan-leaning agnostic theist
or to put it simply, a heathen 😂
Exactly what I was for most of my life
Even the pagans have ideas of good and evil, and sin. They have their own beliefs about punishment and propitiation. It seems to be a universal theme.
wait until you figure out the serpent was the same Reptillian species that roams our planet today
Sin is not something that needed to be created.
If there is existence, there is nonexistence. Similarly, if God exists, and is the purest good and truth there is in (and out of) the universe, then there must also be the state of not aligning with God.
That's essentially what sin is. The act of willful disobedience of God. That's why Lucifer was able to sin, as were Adam and Eve. They had free will to choose whether or not they wished to obey God.
It's like someone laying out a road in the countryside. Did that same person create any and all of the ways you can traverse the countryside off the road through the act of laying out the road? You could argue the case on a technicality, but I don't think reasonable people would say so. In the same way, considering the nature of God as the infinite good, veering away from God... you get the point.
You can check out open theism as a concept if this is the hangup with being a Christian. I'm an open theist.
It's the idea that the future hasn't happened. God's "foeeknowledge" in Scripture isn't knowledge of what will happen but a commitment to make certain things happen. Free will people and angels like Lucifer are given the ability to willingly follow.
Very short version of a complex subject.
Absolutely everything that exists, has it's exact opposite in existence as well. The goodness and innocence of Adam and Eve was the opposite of the darkness Lucifer represents. They had immunity to being harmed by evil, by being obedient to God. Their disobedience was their downfall, but I think it was inevitable. Humans are curious and rebellious. Every action and decision, every thought, is a creation. And has some result. Learning this is like fine-tuning your own frequency. I don't pretend to understand every lesson in the Bible in fact I don't know it well at all. But I do recognize the principles of free will and personal accountability. Living with a conscience does not require religion. But following and loving Jesus in a personal relationship, is life-changing. Once you come to understand that that you matter to God, you want to have the intentions of your heart, be in harmony with your actions. This is the key to peace of mind.
" Living with a conscience does not require religion." You are assuming conscience is only good thoughts. Good conscience has to have some moral guidance to be formed.
EG I know a family that steal all the time. They raised their kids to steal. So these kids grew up thinking thats the right thing to do.
I also know a man who repeatedly beat his wife. Now his sons do the same and think there is nothing wrong with that.
At the very minimum they needed to be taught the 10 Commandments (even though its been removed from govt buildings and schools).
How could our freewill be tested if Satan had not been created ?
So, your conclusion is valid up to the point where you say God created sin. If you had said, God created evil you would be correct and I could show you ample scriptural proof.
Sin literally means, to miss the target, as in archery. You aimed for the bullseye but went off the mark.
Understanding the distinction between sin as an action that effects the force of evil versus evil's true purpose and function is a great philosophical journey.
I could give you my conclusions from having taken that journey but more wisdom is gained from you asking the correct questions and earnestly seeking out those answers for yourself.
If you watch this video, you'll better understand what true Christianity is.
God created beings with free will. Some chose evil. Yes, God knew in advance that that would happen.
He created a pathway for fallen man to be reconciled with Him. But He is a gentleman and only offers the gift and does not force it on anyone.
And remember angels and fallen ones cannot be redeemed because Jesus didn’t die for them.
when man was tempted by Satan, he had free will. He could have chosen NOT to sin, but he did not.
I had no faith around my adolescent years. I gave up religion when i had unanswereable questions such as "if nothing existed before God then how did God exist in order to create existence?" Priests told me faith and i just couldnt feel it or see it - faith.
Stopped going to church as an adult. I am wary of any organized religion and how truthful the bible might be. Kind of like an elaborately written game of telephone through the ages ...full of mistakes in translations, lost contexual meanings from time periods, lost text, dropped text...etc
Okay that said good vs evil is apparent - you can tangibly feel it when open to it. I had awakening to evil all around us especially for some reason in 2015 as trump emerged. Felt like i was being hit with the sledgehammer of demonic presence.
So while i had no faith as a teen or young adult i am able to better grasp it now. For me it is a feeling of Gods presence. I believe in God and Jesus and i dont need a place of worship for that or to even understand the workings of all the whys and hows and mysteries of the universe anymore. It is enough to know i dont need to know them, that man cant answer those questions for me. If they could they would be God.
You just have to stand back in awe at the beauty and love we can grasp and glimpse. It is enough for now. Faith has to be genuine and somewhat disconnected from our hubris of reason and logic. I couldnt feel that as a teenager though i felt it as a child and accepted it. It is like coming full circle.
With that feeling came an openness to all i couldnt believe before and of course Q.
Total mindfuck. I dont think i made any sense in this post. Sorry. At any rate you can almost feel evil like a cloying stickiness in the air these days. It prickles the skin and sends tingles in my spine. I feel it more now that i found some faith and belief in God.
This is my long winded way of saying what priests told me as a child and i couldnt bare to hear as an adult is that the answer tonyour question is probably that we cant know it or understand it. We arent God. So faith is the answer. Have it or dont....no one can answer the question of why God created sin. We arent that being. We can only guess.
That's alright. I'm happy you found something that brings you peace. 😄
If I'm honest, this is more of an intellectual circle-jerk kind of thing... I'm not looking for deep meaning or morality, just a thinking-high, if that makes any sense.
These kind of questions fascinate me while simultaneously poking me in the ribs until I explore them.
Wow, I sound high on my own farts, don't I? Lol
Thats all right, i sounded like a loon myself.
lol, nah.
"We're all a bit mad...here..."
What better alternative can you think up?
better? none, sadly.
Alternatives that occur are that
God created lucifer to 'purge' Himself of evil, but I'm pretty sure that goes against Judeo/Christian doctrine on multiple fronts.
God had a blindspot when it came to Lucifer, but that contradicts the whole All-Knowing thing....
God believed that Lucifer would be able to overcome his pride and envy, but again, all-knowing.
Lucifer thought himself over the Heavenly Father and managed to take 1/3rd of the spirit children with him when he was cast down to earth. For his error of hubris, neither he nor his followers would ever attain the flesh, and never share in the resurrection to come. But they would plague mankind out of revenge-thus, there are demonic possesions. J/S
It's a matter of choice, choose God or choose not to choose God. Yes God knew exactly how things would turn out and so Christ was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, Revelation 13. But more God is love and desires love in return, not commanded love but freely given love not commanded, demanded or robotic. At the end of time mankind will no excuse for our behaviour, neither individually or corporately our hearts are continually dark, there is nothing we can do, only Christ can do it for us.
I don't know of any verses indicating that angels are ordered to serve us.
We don't know if these were Satan's motives, a lot of that stuff is just conjecture. All we know is that he thought he could be like the Most High (Isaiah 14:14).
God knew what Satan and later Adam would do, but that doesn't mean that He set them on their respective paths. Foreknowledge of what you're going to do doesn't mean anything's forcing you to make that choice. Foreknowledge is just a side effect of God existing outside of space and time.
God created both angels and man with free will. He gives us the choice to serve Him or not because He wants us to love Him. You can't truly love Him if you're a robot predestined to do what you will do. Creating us with free will also created the potential for sin, but did not guarantee sin itself.
Sin and evil aren't even really things by themselves. They are the absence of God's goodness just as darkness is the absence of light.
Hope this helps.
"Know ye not that ye are gods?"
God is holy, and his plan is to end evil, so that only good remains going forward.
If you've ever heard of the trinity, it's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These are the distinct persons who are part of it, and who all of us can look to in any age for an everlasting example. Some do that, and become examples for the age they're in, like prophets, saints, and those who stood by their faith that we now know of, like Moses, Joan of Arc, etc. By doing this, they became a physical living presence for the people in the age they existed of the trinity. For us long removed from them, we now have to find those who are part of that body in our age, but if we can't we can always look to the trinity. In essence, those saints and prophets became part of ye are gods. Those who followed those saints and prophets to live godly lives also became part of ye are gods.
"God is love"
Love isn't about forcing people to do things like the deranged demons do. God simply told us how it's going to be, and we can make our choice to get on board with Him and, or not. Like Noah did, vs all the people who decided to do evil instead, and died.
Love is also about sharing. This is why God wants us to share in everything, yes to be a part of the trinity (which we can be now through the body of Christ). Yeah, God threw some dust together and blew into it and created humankind. You're going to get to do the same when ye are gods. Creating all of creation out of nothing? Parting a sea? Walking on water? Turning water to wine? Making 2 loaves and bread feed everyone? You got it! you're going to get to do the same when ye are gods sharing in God's love and power.
But think about that kind of power. If you had that power, you're not just going to give it to everyone, right? You want to make sure you test someone to be sure, that without question, they have earned the right to hold such power. And so we have all creation, including angels (even the fallen ones who became demons), and humans (even the evil ones). This way the harvest can grow, and at the very end He can harvest the result, toss the chaff (evil) in the fire, and keep the wheat (good).
Will everyone start out in heaven with the same power? I don't know. It may be a slow and steady trust-based thing where people are granted more powers as they go. I don't know anything about how it will be in Heaven, but I have been offered glimmers of heaven, and it's so incredible, i wish i could describe it, but i would need to be all the greatest poets and writers in all of history combined into one to do so, and that's not something I'm called to do. But everyone is going to love it there, and scripture tells us of the day of judgement, that even the Evil will see heaven, and part of the reason they wail and gnash their teeth is because they will see what they missed out on, but never get.
Some may say "well if we can all be like God then what differentiates us from God?" Well the answer is pretty simple: God is the eldest, and the wisest, the first, and the last, and none of us will ever be that old or wise.
Anyway i probably got off track here, but hopefully you get the idea. The bottom line is this is all part of God's plan to share His way with us, in one great family (instead of just Him).
Freewill
I don't know.
Would your girlfriend feel so special if you were only with her because she was the only girl on the planet, thus being your only choice?
As opposed to freely, concertedly choosing her out of a multitude of other choices of ladies?
You could search for "theodicy" which speaks to why God allows evil. This might give you some background for more to consider.
The Father did not create sin. He gave humans free will and we are really good a sinning rather than loving The Father. He gave humans free will so we would love him because we want to instead of having to love him.
Yes God created an originally good angelic being who chose to sin and God knew it would happen. In a broad way, from a 40,000+ft view a conclusion can reasonable be drawn that God created sin along with every single possible outcome of ever choice of every human throughout all of humanities existence. But we don't look at all those but we humans wrestle just with sin? God created an angelic person who sinned and then through deception and an irresponsible social desicion got humanity seperated from its creator. To draw the connection that God is responsible for sin, as the creator of everything while having foresight, is then to remove the responsibly of the consequences from the devil and from us who have actually done the sin and throw them back at God. Do we do this with the good things or just the sin though? If we were consistent we should be honoring Him 24/7 for oxygen and water and everything else we have done for ourselves that we need. But sin bothers us and we know we need to do something about it were all the good stuff we need we can convince ourselves we deserve all that... this is like a fat guy blaming a blue collar worker who makes ice cream stand spoons for making him fat though when the problem is personal responsibility. The crazy part though is not the sin issue it's that the same God would willingly die in offering to restore the relationship humanity broke.
God created mankind (in His image) so that a free, willful, open and loving relationship could exist. He will not have a relationship with anyone that does not desire it, the choice is ours. He also sent us instructions , The Bible. The angels were created with free will, but with a different purpose.
I'm a Calvinist, so I don't actually believe in the concept of free will.
Christ tells me: "You did not choose Me, but I chose you."
Salvation works like this:
From eternity, the Father chose certain people for salvation.
In the fullness of time, Christ came to Earth and died for them, His Bride, completely erasing all the sins. Yay.
At an appointed time in a chosen sinner's life, the Holy Spirit will spiritually regenerate the individual, and such will begin to understand spiritual truth. Before that, you're just a pagan bumping around in Satan's dark kingdom, like everyone else. Check out Romans Chapter 9.
I'm grateful God saved me from my stupid self.
The Bible says that God is absolutely sovereign in all things.
It also says that God made everything for His glory.
Scripture also says that God chose "the foolish things of this world in order to shame the wise." So I'm happy God chose me to be a "foolish thing."
Everyone should wish to be one of those "foolish things," also.
Is God all knowing and all powerful in the context of this universe? Could there be a realm above ours in which "God" is merely the author of our "simulation" in the same way a SIMS player controls their own simulated world?
We know very little about our own universe, and many people have a lot more faith in the accuracy and infallibility of the Bible than is frankly warranted, especially when you consider how much was translated and left out intentionally.
I grew up in a Baptist church as well, and while I still believe in the basic tenants of Christianity, I think the biblical worldview is simplified for the masses. "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared." I think the true nature of things has yet to be revealed to us.
The only way for one to know the Biblical text was "changed" is if one knew what the original said. See the conundrum?
The Bible has been accurately recorded and transmitted throughout the millennium. The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) are an excellent testimony to this truth.
This verse is specifically speaking about the Gospel which was proclaimed to the Nations through the Apostles.
Yes, in Paul's letters to the Corinthians. He is referring to what God has prepared for those who love him- those saved by the blood of Jesus. Do we know what that means in a cosmological or even spiritual sense? Nope. We haven't a clue what heaven will look like, or even what it means to live in the same dimensional plane as our creator, if such a thing is even possible.
My point is that the Bible gives us clues, but we really don't know much about the nature of our own reality, let alone the reality our creator lives in.
An all knowing God would know how the story of the devil ends. Maybe that was well worth all the millennia of suffering and struggle.
God wants all of his children to be with him.
He has a bus chartered for you to go to his home.
There is a ticket with your name on it. It's already paid for and signed for by Jesus Christ with his own blood.
Will you pick up the ticket? The path to the ticket booth twists and turns and has many diversions. There is a book that shows the way.
Will you claim the paid for ticket?
Choices, choices...
Leaving aside the paradoxical "why did God allow/create evil," I've never seen anything that says angels were created to serve man. I've read a few books specifically on angels, and they do God's will.
If anyone wants to correct me, I'd appreciate the relevant verses.