Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Pt 3: God forming His plan

We must now reflect on the forming of this eternal plan. God, when forming this plan, did so in accordance with His divine and perfect nature. It is therefore inevitable that the plan is perfect in all it's capacities. God must, with respect to His holiness, damn a certain number of people to hell. He must also, with respect to His mercy, choose a certain number of people to heaven. One response to this idea of God choosing is that it isn't fair. This only begs the question: What is fair?

An entire creation and existence relies on a holy and just Creator, does it not? And this holy and just Creator allows sinful creatures to experience moments of joy and happiness despite their consistent rebellion, does He not? If we search the Scriptures for guidance, since our sinful minds pollute our view of God, what we find is humbling.

The book of Romans says that the wages of sin is death. Reflect on that for just a moment. Imagine your place of employment telling you, "Your wages for moving these boxes will be $100," only they refuse to pay you once you have finished. Your first and most apparent reaction would be to say they are not being 'fair' and that they should honor the agreed wage for the task you've completed. Why then, is our reaction reversed when we are taught that God honors the wages due for sin? Think of it this way. Death is the due payment for any sin committed. In God's eyes, the most minute sin is repugnant and deserves due punishment. The simple fact that God does not strike dead every human the very second they commit their first sinful act is an exercise of His mercy.

And we, as sinful and finite creatures, have the audacity to question God sending sinners to deserving punishment? To this many ask, "Why then, does God create men who will only one day end up in hell?" As Christians we should always approach questions upon God that begin with "Why" very cautiously.

NEXT:

PART FOUR: God's Creation Displays His Glory

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Pt 2: God's Plan

At this point some might say, 'How can His eternal plan have an order if it is eternal and has no beginning?' To this we must admit a sense of mystery. How can God exist eternally? Do we truly have the capacity to understand that? And if He exists eternally, is everything within Him eternal? Thus concluding His thoughts are eternal? The answer is that one cannot be eternal and have finite qualities. For example, 'God is eternal, but His thoughts are not, they come and go.' This is far more contradictory than what I have laid out. The qualities of an eternal being must be of the same nature to which they are attached. Some would then say, 'But we have temporary bodies and our souls are eternal in heaven or hell.' This is not altogether true. We have a beginning, a starting point, a forming in the womb, and God does not. We will live eternally in heaven or hell, but we do not and have not existed eternally, so our existence is still finite.

To restate it in a different manner: To make any facet of God finite robs him of His eternal quality. God is not completely eternal if His thoughts suddenly come to Him and leave when they are unnecessary. We, as sinful humans, are prone to take our finite qualities and project them on to God in an effort to better understand Him. However, we must always remember, God does not bear our image, but we bear His.

So it must be restated: The harmony and order of God's thoughts can be seen and proven by the harmony and order within the universe. God has so engrained Himself into every thing that exists that the smallest most microscopic creature bellows of God's harmonious perfection louder than ten orchestras of the loudest instruments. Anyone deaf to the outcries of creation must be so blind that Satan himself is their master; blinding them and enjoying their inability and imperfection. His enjoyment of their imperfection isn't solely because it makes them serve him, but because they willingly choose to make his job as the dark master all the more easier.

NEXT...

PART THREE: The Forming Of God's Eternal Plan

Friday, June 09, 2006

Pt 1: God's Perfection

God receiving joy from our existence does not create any form of dependency within His existence. The fact that He created us out of nothing proves this. How? Prior to the creation of the world God was perfect in His existence. He needed no added agent of imperfection to complete any part of Him. The reason I say 'imperfection' is because anything that exists outside of the triune God lacks the ability to be perfect. Just the fact that any secondary agent must have been created and is therefore not eternal makes it less than God.

So here He sits; perfect and glorious, unaided and one. He views Himself and thinks of Himself perfectly. In this perfect thought process His eternal and ultimate plan exist. Within this perfect plan lies the birth of time. God, in His ultimate plan, which could only be based on and influenced by His perfect view of Himself, created time as a dimension within which He could carry out His created work. Our very existence depends upon a dimension that was perfectly sown together in the eternal thought process of God.

Now, just saying God has a 'thought process' robs Him of due glory. We imperfectly taint His perfect nature by describing Him with human characteristics. However, He has stamped us with His image, so the idea or philosophy of 'the thought process' is a glimmer of our Lord's functionality. Also we must remember God describes Himself using human characteristics in the Holy Scriptures. The mere fact that His creation had an order points to the orderly and perfect function of His thoughts. He saw fit to create the dimension of time, and that must have laid within some form of thought process because the creation of time was a necessary preceding act to the creation of the world.

The Lord, in His perfection, created a world and universe of harmony and order. This defeats the notion that our Lord may have had disjointed thoughts. For example, the idea that God spontaneously decided to create man and then needed a harmonious universe to place him in which would then need a dimension called time to exist within. Any notion that even resembles such random juvenility is rubbish that smells of lies from Satan. Our glorious Father laid out His plan, from start to finish, needing no fixes or changes, and all this took place within His thought process which is eternal and has no beginning.

NEXT...

PART TWO: The Order and Harmony of God's Plan