Tags
acceptance, atheist, faith, know, love
I wonder if to know God is to like God, is to believe in God, is to rest in God. To be known BY God is to be exposed to God’s character – to God’s perfect and powerful love and to His/Her holy, pure love. There is nowhere to hide, equally there is no NEED to hide. It is a fearful thing if a person does not know God’s acceptance, does not know that we are made whole (perfect, holy) in Christ, that we are safe in God’s company, to know and be known.
Many atheists I listen to seem to have two major reasons why they cannot believe in a Divine Being. The first is to do with suffering. They cannot understand how a God who is heralded as all-powerful and all-loving can remain inactive in situations of extreme human suffering. How can a Deity who is supposedly compassionate and mighty turn a blind eye to a child being traumatised by abuse or a life-threatening disease?
The second issue that atheists seem to regard as evidence that there is no God is to do with the concept of hell. I have often heard them say that the belief in the ‘God of Love’ is totally incompatible with the ‘God who would send a person to hell’ idea.
Both of these theological issues are problematic. Some see God as loveless and therefore undeserving of their attention. This is reason enough for them to decide that they do not believe in, like or want to know God. They do not and will not believe in the God-of-lovelessness. And nor shall I.
I believe ‘God is love’ and I believe God exists. The problem of suffering and the concept of hell continue to perplex me, however I choose to believe. I want to know the Divine and I want to be known. I realise I cannot know fully, nevertheless it is still my chosen goal and desire.
I think that to know God, is to like God, is to believe in God, is to trust God, is to enjoy God, is to live fully alive, is to be the beloved.
God and me 
I believe – Even through pain and loss – I believe —- To get to the end and have all we do here mean nothing and return to nothing is incomprehensible to me.
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Very sorry to hear of your loss. Well done for persevering and even for overcoming.
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Thank you – I still have plenty of ground to cover …but thank you
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Your line of reasoning in your first paragraph is impeccable. I was beginning to wonder if anyone would come to these conclusions.
This is where the concept of God becomes circular or cyclical. God is in us, we are in God, and one continues to play out in the other.
The atheist’s dilemma is more of the same. They cannot believe in God because bad things happen and hell is within the paradigm. At the same time they cannot see that it is not God that allows bad things to happen, but bad things happen because we have not stepped up to the level to which God wants to reveal Himself/Herself in us. We are actually the missing link, not God
The same goes with hell. The two words for hell in the Bible are sheol and gehenna. The first is the grave and the second is the Jerusalem dump. The Jerusalem dump used to burn their garbage. Hell is a state which we can have, btw, while still alive physically. it is the state we have when separated from God. It is a living death and a burning. The atheist going through hell is using it as an excuse to not enter Heaven or bliss. How unenlightened. The state does not have to do with God, but having a lack of God. These are our projections upon the environment around us.
God is not alone. God is in us and through us. If we took hold, all these environmental baddies would simply vanish. I wonder how many are on this level?
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Thank you. Beautiful thinking!
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I believe the concept of God expressed here is imposing unenlightened limits on God. Do we accept that God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent?
Omnipresent – everywhere present. In ‘hell’ as well as ‘heaven’, in brutal torture as well in the most respectful loving relationship, rape and murder and in charity and compassion.
Omniscient – the sum of all knowledge (and I’d include potential knowledge) of both light and dark, earthly, cosmic, universal.
Omnipotent – the sum of all power – think Energy = Mass X the speed of light squared!!!
When one thinks of God in these terms one feels the awe and the presence.
We have the incredibly good fortune to have been given a life in this polarised world of extremes and with everything in between. We have the opportunity to a large extent to choose which experiences we will have, to interpret them in the way we choose and to make decisions based on these interpretations. We can spiral toward the light or to the dark and know that when the journey is over we will fully re-merge with the power and presence – what I think of as spirit – in the knowledge we have contributed to it.
The God described or alluded to in every organised religion I’ve come across in nearly 60 years of, at times, ardent investigation is a far more humble being.
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