Can God actually "die?"

[Str8Bustah]

That's just an opinion, man. I've heard another opinion that God didn't destroy Satan to show humans how merciful he is and that everyone has a chance at redemption.

Both of these things can be true at the same time. They're not mutually exclusive from one another,

Is there a line in the bible that implies this? Cause to me it seems more like God was planning for Adam and Eve to disobey him.

Sola Scriptura is a heretical belief, I would strongly recommend you go and read some of the early church fathers, or homilies from Saints like St. Gregory Palamas or St. John Chrysostom as they explain a lot of context in the bible which is left out.

The Bible is the word of God, absolutely, but it can't be taken at face value, so you need to study the words of the men who compiled the Bible into what it is today, those being the multiple generations of early church fathers who originally went into the desert to live as hermits out of sheer obedience to the teachings of Christ.

"Love me or you shall suffer for all eternity" doesn't sound like genuine love. But then again, who am I to judge, God is perfect, so he knows best what genuine love is.

This is actually a misconception of how the Lord's love works based on a Western misinterpretation of the scripture, and you can tell it's a misconception because of how Legalistic it is; it places the Lord in the position of an angry Judge and not as a loving father.

To help explain what I mean, think about the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee; in the story, the Pharisee who follows all the law to a T boasts about how good he is at doing what the Lord asks of him, while he condemns the Publican for his sins. Meanwhile the Publican stands in the back of the church, beating his chest and weeping, asking for the Lord to have mercy on him. The Lord states that the Publican is blessed, and the Pharisee has damned himself. Why is this? according to the idea that 'if you do not follow my commandments, you do not love me, and if you do not love me you will suffer in hell', then the Pharisee would be blessed for following the Law, right?

The answer is that the Pharisee lacked any heart, and worshipped the Law instead of loving God. The Publican, on the other hand, weeps like a child who has broken their father's prized vase and who desperately wants to be forgiven for the action he has done, and like the loving father that he is, the Lord forgives the Publican because the Publican -of his own will- chooses to repent and to seek forgiveness.

I now realize I left out some context here so I'll explain further: the Lord does not condemn you to hell, this is another misconception based on legalism. What actually happens is that /we condemn ourselves to hell by rejecting God's light/. Even when the Lord becomes angry, his immediate action isn't to abandon you, but to treat you like a child who suddenly developed an alcohol problem which needs immediate fixing. The treatment might be painful, and it may take some time, but if you choose to be receptive to the treatment then you /will/ benefit from it. You just have to be aware that the Lord /always/ gives you a choice to accept treatment or to turn away, and if you do turn away, he won't abandon you at all up until the point where you can no longer pray.

There are countless records of people living horrendous lives who in the last hours of their life turned to the lord in bitter repentance and were granted salvation on the spot. Even a fraction of a second of true repentance is enough to save someone, and there is no way on earth that a God obsessed with legalism would ever allow such a system to exist.

To go further on our own condemnation of ourselves to Hell; God's light is present everywhere, both in Heaven, the Fallen world, and in the darkest corners of the depths of Hell, the difference is in whether we choose to accept it as grace, or to reject it as pain. When we choose to reject this light as pain and to serve Satan, that's exactly what happens: the light of God becomes impossible to endure, and it scorches you, and will continue to scorch you for eternity just as it scorches the demons. That is the nature of Hellfire, that is what it means to burn eternally. To not be burned by God's light, you have to learn to accept it as grace and healing, and the process of preparation for this is the process called 'Theosis'. I won't go into it any deeper as this post is long enough, but here's a video on the subject:

 

[Thomas Talus]

If time can be observed in such a way means that it's predefined.

Depends on your point of view. If someone inside time can observe it that way, then yeah it's predetermined. But if you're outside, that's not necessarily the case. We lack the proper frame of reference.

 

[skykiii]

If time can be observed in such a way means that it's predefined.

Is it, though?

"Hard to tell, always in motion is the future."

That's just an opinion, man. I've heard another opinion that God didn't destroy Satan to show humans how merciful he is and that everyone has a chance at redemption.

Things can happen for more than one reason.

I'm reminded of something I read about the book Don Quixote: the impressions/interpretations you wind up having say more about you than about the book.

"Mysterious ways" tends to be just a go-to for either people who have a lot on their minds and don't have time to answer kids' questions, or simply don't know the answer but know they're seen as authorities and thus can't just say "I don't know." It's not technically a lie--to someone in that position the ways might very well be mysterious. It's much the same way a lot of the stuff a writer writes makes perfect sense to them but may seem odd to the audience.

The answer, as always, is "think for yourself."

Heck, even sometimes Satan can help with this. Someone else mentioned "false doctrines" but I can't help but remember another saying: "the best lie is hidden between two truths." Sometimes those other views help these things make more sense. Like the Bible clicked with me more after I read the Tao Te Ching, a book whose author likely had never heard of the Bible. These are the true "mysterious ways"--connections that aren't always immediately obvious, and might for many never become obvious at all.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

Can free will even exist when God knows every choice you'll make even before you're born?

yes, free will is not incompatible with linear time. as the Bible tells it, God and Satan are free to influence your will, but not compromise it. in Biblical cases of demonic possession (which is almost entirely a New Testament phenomenon), demoniacs are mainly rendered insensate or stricken ill in some way, and post-exorcism, they seem to be cast as otherwise innocent victims who bear no responsibility for the possession or its consequences. similarly, though God may interact with people occasionally, he's never shown to directly induce somebody to act a certain way (except in the case of "harden[ing] the Pharaoh's heart" in Exodus, but apparently that's a whole metatextual discussion).

so, free will is the freedom to act on your own conscience without the direct interdiction of any external spiritual forces. however, choice is (or at least, it can be modeled as) the inevitable result of whatever combination of factors exist in your head at the time. thus, it's only possible for you to ever make one specific choice at any given point in time. that sounds a lot like predestination, sure, and the idea that everyone is more or less sorted at birth by various factors beyond their control, such as the behavior of their parents, their economic condition, the culture they're born into, and so on. it may be that there is some room for conscious choice between good and evil that this whole thing rotates on, and the inability to conceive how such a manifold universe can be reduced to a single deterministic point in time is, again, another limitation of being human.

Is there a line in the bible that implies this? Cause to me it seems more like God was planning for Adam and Eve to disobey him.

no, this is more something you have to infer from the conclusion that God is flawless. if God is flawless, then everything he does is an intentional act with full knowledge of the consequences, which means he planned all this shit out in advance. but yeah, the Bible never explicitly says that in relation to the fall of man.

"Love me or you shall suffer for all eternity" doesn't sound like genuine love. But then again, who am I to judge, God is perfect, so he knows best what genuine love is.

to understand the Bible's sketch of the metaphysical universe, you have to think of it more like this: God is, essentially, the perfect incarnation of everything Good. he doesn't really have a personality in the way that we as humans understand it. he's more of a cosmic aspect of perfection, like a hacked RPG character with all the stats set to computational max. it's not metaphysically possible for him to do anything wrong, or imperfect, or any of those things we would judge human behavior by. it's not that everything God does is right; it's that God does everything that is right. the nature of God's identity as the source of everything Correct(TM) is not the result of who he is, but what he is. so the judging of God as some kind of selfish asshole who gets to decide what's right and wrong all by himself is completely missing the point. you might as well be dissatisfied with water for being wet.

since God is basically the master node for Goodness, the rest of the universe is defined as good and evil by its distance from God. the difference between heaven and hell is depicted as an actual physical distance in a few cases. so, though God is also depicted as the final judge, it's also thoroughly implied that the actions of any given person, and their resultant metaphysical proximity to God, is entirely the outcome of their own actions, rather than a fate imposed on them directly by God. if you're an unrepentant piece of shit, you wouldn't like it in the VIP club anyway, though I'm sure the devils wish they had some of that champagne.

 

[bharat way]

There's a chance they could die if attacked by a Reptilian, yes.

 

[Whatevermancer]

Sola Scriptura is a heretical belief

According to whom?

This is actually a misconception of how the Lord's love works based on a Western misinterpretation of the scripture

But I will still have to suffer for all eternity if I don't love him, right? Therefore if I don't want to suffer I must go out of my way to try to love God. And it's hard to do it genuinely if I'm doing it out of fear.

the Lord does not condemn you to hell, this is another misconception based on legalism. What actually happens is that /we condemn ourselves to hell by rejecting God's light/.

That sounds like shifting the blame but sure, let's say it's true. In this case it's still God who set up this system where people condemn themselves. He didn't have to do it this way, but he did.

When we choose to reject this light as pain and to serve Satan, that's exactly what happens: the light of God becomes impossible to endure, and it scorches you

Again, he didn't have to make his light hurt the disbelievers, but he did.

Is it, though?

If your life is like some kind of a book or a script and you cannot do anything that's not written in it, can you really say that you have free will?

free will is the freedom to act on your own conscience without the direct interdiction of any external spiritual forces

Again, what "your own consciousness" is, is determined by the script.

God is, essentially, the perfect incarnation of everything Good

Wait. Do I understand it correctly that God doesn't get to determine what Good is? Is he even worthy of being called God in this case?

 

[Thomas Talus]

Wait. Do I understand it correctly that God doesn't get to determine what Good is? Is he even worthy of being called God in this case?

"Good" flows from God, not the other way around.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

If your life is like some kind of a book or a script and you cannot do anything that's not written in it, can you really say that you have free will?

yes. being chained to a script is just a human limitation, no human has ever existed that has had true universal freedom of choice as that would break causality for one, but also violate everything we understand about human behavior. a saner definition of free will is being chained to your own script rather than that of some other entity or force.

Again, what "your own consciousness" is, is determined by the script.

perhaps, but what I was getting at in my previous post is that The Script is not something that's determined on a moment-to-moment basis by God. the ascribing of everything that happens to God puppet mastering reality behind the scenes is not supported by the actual text of the Bible. he started the ball rolling at the point of creation, but beyond that, whatever shit that happens in meatspace is the result of that plus the unknowable influence of choice between good and evil.

Wait. Do I understand it correctly that God doesn't get to determine what Good is? Is he even worthy of being called God in this case?

God and Good are the same thing, so this question gets into the same weeds as shit like "can God create a stone so heavy he couldn't lift it" or "can God sin". in the Biblical formation of the universe, God is the only God (maybe? there's some weird shit in the OT), so whatever God is, that's the definition of God. ergo, yes, God is worthy of being called God.

 

[Str8Bustah]

But I will still have to suffer for all eternity if I don't love him, right? Therefore if I don't want to suffer I must go out of my way to try to love God. And it's hard to do it genuinely if I'm doing it out of fear.

The Lord is the literal definition of goodness itself. To not Love him means to not Love, and why would anyone who isn't capable of Love be scared of the Hellfire that comes from rejecting the essence of Love itself?

Based on your post I don't think you actually reject Love at all, given that you say you're rightfully scared of the concept of rejection by the entity that is the literal manifestation of Love. St. Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia wrote alot on this subject, I'd default to reading some of his works if you have any more questions.

 

[Vulpes Mulpes]

I've read through most of this thread, and I have to confess: I find it to be somewhat annoying.

It seems to me, as a non-Christian (or as someone not belonging to any other religion), that the whole deal with Christianity is circular-reasoning.

"God is the ultimate good, therefore anything that deviates from God is deviating from the ultimate good, because God is defined as the ultimate good."
Shit like this is why I understand why the atheist-movement of the 2000's and 2010's was such a big deal at the time.

Still, I must say that my emotions tells me to yearn for the safety and protection of "God".

OP skykiii tells of his "awakening" when reading Taoist-litterature.
Please, tell me more. I'd love to hear what, exactly, in Taoist litterature that made you "get" the Christian God.

For as much as I want to, I can't bring myself to believe in the Christian God. It all seems to clearly be merely about human stories designed to keep human civilization together, which is of course a good thing on its own, but hardly proof of "God's" existense.

The circular reasoning in particular is something you have to explain away for me, if I am to believe in your stories.
Please, indulge me.

 

[sedoL]

The best way to believe in God is to have the belief system of a child, or to atleast realise that the best view man can have of God is very narrow, because man cannot actually comprehend God himself.

Circular logic happens when you don't wish to take in that logic but to simply be humored. Most people who believe usually realise early on that reasoning cannot be made to God.

God is the ultimate good, and to reach for Gods love, to worship him, to spread his word by Christ, by Holy Spirit or random encounters is the best thing to do overall, because you worship goodness, reach for it and spread it.

There is no system to it, no matter what anyone tells you or explains to you, even the "infallible church", the preachers, the kings, the popes, the nuns, the abbots - belief in God is a relationship and it is personal. There are systems for what's basically 'group worship'.

If one does not believe in God it is usually due to pride, usually

Re OP, God cannot die because he will reach the heart of at least one who wishes to take in his light and he has an eternity to eait for that person.

 

[Str8Bustah]

I've read through most of this thread, and I have to confess: I find it to be somewhat annoying.

It seems to me, as a non-Christian (or as someone not belonging to any other religion), that the whole deal with Christianity is circular-reasoning.

"God is the ultimate good, therefore anything that deviates from God is deviating from the ultimate good, because God is defined as the ultimate good."
Shit like this is why I understand why the atheist-movement of the 2000's and 2010's was such a big deal at the time.

Still, I must say that my emotions tells me to yearn for the safety and protection of "God".

OP skykiii tells of his "awakening" when reading Taoist-litterature.
Please, tell me more. I'd love to hear what, exactly, in Taoist litterature that made you "get" the Christian God.

For as much as I want to, I can't bring myself to believe in the Christian God. It all seems to clearly be merely about human stories designed to keep human civilization together, which is of course a good thing on its own, but hardly proof of "God's" existense.

The circular reasoning in particular is something you have to explain away for me, if I am to believe in your stories.
Please, indulge me.

I know it sounds like a cop-out but over-rationalization is a trick of the Devil, the reason being that the Lord is not a worldly creation, so the laws of the world do not apply to him. You can't rationalize his existence in the same way you can rationalize why a storm generates in the Atlantic, for example.

What you /can/ do is look at the world around you, the various systems in place that are so oddly specific that it's not possible to chalk things up to random chance without having to do a lot of highly complex mental gymnastics in the process; if the speed of light were even a fraction of an attosecond faster or slower than it actually is, it wouldn't be possible for life to exist, to give just one example. That's not the hallmark of random chance, that's the hallmark of intentional, engineered design, and we can recognize it because we were made in the Lord's image, and as such we share specific traits with the Lord such as his Love of creation and of design.

EDIT: I'd also give an addendum that while the Church is the shared body of Christ, how he calls you to that Church is a deeply personal experience which is completely different for each person. In my case, I have a problem which I couldn't solve with anything I tried out of personal willpower, so I already had a very low opinion of will and ego as a result as the one thing I wanted to put effort into fixing simply wasn't getting fixed. Through discovering Christ's body and trying to take action out of humility and obedience instead of out of ego, I've finally been able to make progress in fixing a problem I'd just about given up on resolving on my own. If you haven't had a similar experience yet, then I'd say no amount of convincing from any of us is likely to change your mind.

Sorry again if this seems unsatisfactory or waffle-y.

 

[skykiii]

OP @skykiii tells of his "awakening" when reading Taoist-litterature.
Please, tell me more. I'd love to hear what, exactly, in Taoist litterature that made you "get" the Christian God.

So... this question is not easy to answer (like most things involving Taoism).

Of course, the Tao Te Ching itself immediately opens with the phrase "The tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao," which is basically saying that any dumbing-down or "explaining" of it is gonna give you a skewed or outright wrong idea. I have a similar feeling about the Bible, as I've voiced in this topic already.

But actually the thing I liked most was something I read about Lao Tzu, the mythical author of the Tao te Ching: that being that Taoists don't really care if he's a real person or not. The thing I read specifically contrasted this to Jesus, where a lot of believers seem to think they have to think Jesus was a real man or they can't believe his message.

I sort of like the tao outlook there: it doesn't matter who wrote the book or who said the thing. The thing stands on its own. To put it another way: I know for a fact that none of the characters in GI Joe are real people.... that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop using that "stop a nosebleed" trick from that one PSA, or that I'm gonna go around locking myself in discarded refrigerators after the one Joe member told me not to in a cartoon. It doesn't matter if the person saying it is real as long as the words themselves are good advice.

It goes a bit further too.... like I said already, you don't necessarily need to buy into the Bible to buy into God or Jesus, and it amazes me so often that Christians (even here on KF) act like any part of that triangle is worthless on its own. In fact I have known people who think God is real but don't necessarily believe everything the Bible or the Church says.

Your post repeatedly asks for help "believing in" the Christian God. Ultimately tho, the only person you can ask is God itself. Other humans are only gonna confuse you and lead you astray because we all have our own brand of autism fucking up the way we think. Once again, "The God that can be spoken is not the eternal God."

 

[Str8Bustah]

It goes a bit further too.... like I said already, you don't necessarily need to buy into the Bible to buy into God or Jesus, and it amazes me so often that Christians (even here on KF) act like any part of that triangle is worthless on its own. In fact I have known people who think God is real but don't necessarily believe everything the Bible or the Church says.

This seems to be more of a Western belief, in the Eastern Church all parts of the Holy Trinity are equally important. The sheer amount of times that you hear 'in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit' in a single Sunday service alone is more times than you may hear it mentioned in an entire year at another Church.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

I don't think God ever dies. I think he is within immortality and probably everyone else. It's why I think the realm we live in which is a mortal realm is only a temporary place and we go somewhere after death.

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

How can you kill God? What a grand and intoxicating innocence.

 

[hip hop dragon]

God is just an abstraction of the laws of the universe (math basically). Can't kill math, nigga.

 

[Otterly]

I don't know what the pillar of salt thing is about,

There’s been some very interesting archeological work done in a place called Tal-el-hammam in what is now Jordan (?) - there seems to have been some kind of air burst from a cosmic event like a meteor. The entire site was razed, and literal brimstone is everywhere. The temperatures so intense that items have been ceramicised. s so strong that metres thick walls just blasted off, that kind of thing. Anyway, it sounds very like what happened to sodom and could well be the source of the oral myth.
The salt: well, the impact seems to have changed the salinity of the area by fucking uk the water table and groundwater, to the point it was so salty that nothing grew there for several hundred years and the site was never occupied for that time.
Fire, brimstone, pillars of salt. It must have been a devastating event. For a believer it’s easy to think this is sodom, and if you’re a non believer, well almost all these tales have a kernel of reality in them, see it as trying to explain unimaginable destruction and rationalise it

 

[regginknurd]

Christian bullshit: no, god cannot die. There is only one, and if he "dies" it's a personal thing that just means YOU died and are doomed to life in hell.

Metaphysical bullshit: if a god falls out of favor or worship from humanity then they technically die. The religion around them that dictated our actions is subsumed by another god like figure that replaces them, either hero worship, a new ideology, or mode of thinking; which in turn becomes the new religion and births a new "god" even if it isn't perceived that way... but for all intents and purposes, it is the overarching narrative, like a god, so it is essentially the "new" """""""god""""""".

Put down the joint and read around a little.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

This seems to be more of a Western belief, in the Eastern Church all parts of the Holy Trinity are equally important. The sheer amount of times that you hear 'in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit' in a single Sunday service alone is more times than you may hear it mentioned in an entire year at another Church.

It's the same in the Catholic Church. The very first prayer in the Mass is crossing ourselves in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and at the end of the Mass the priest blesses the congregation in the name of the Trinity. Same thing when the Gospel is read. I think the addition of the filioque

Western Christianity is ultimately Roman in origin while Eastern Christianity is overwhelmingly influenced by Greek culture. The Romans had a very intense focus on ritual, law and precision and the proper form and matter of the ceremonies performed. There were numerous legends of priests being struck down by Jupiter and other gods for doing some trivial part of the ritual wrong.

This is why there is more of a legalistic, formulaic approach to worship and theology in Catholicism and Western Christianity in general.