I'll Be Honest

Warning: there's an awful lot in this post about how I feel. If this is likely to offend because you think a debate should be objective, try skipping to the end or something. I think it's necessary to explain why I haven't been updating and where I am at the moment.

I've been ignoring updating this blog - or procrastinating, if you will.

There, I've said it, you can flame me now.

But I'm going to have a go at explaining why and maybe you'll understand.

Over the last couple of months things with me and faith (as in religion, not the very nice girl in our youth group ;)) have changed a bit - I would like to hasten to add here that I have not had a crisis, I haven't converted to Islam or anything like that. I still believe Christianity is true and indeed the only truth, etc etc.

But I've sort of come to realise that the way my beliefs were expressed in my life doesn't quite fit anymore - because my life has changed a lot, the way my faith affects my life must also (to some extent) change. This is something I've sort of been thinking about and - to be honest - being uncomfortable about over the last couple of months. I didn't feel confident enough with the way I am thinking about faith and living to come and talk about it in a debate setting. I guess I half-consciously felt I needed to work something out for myself before I could talk about this issue "publicly". I felt that things in my life weren't quite right but more importantly, they weren't quite honest. Did quite a bit of reading yesterday (book mentioned below) and quite a bit of journalling and now I feel I'm in a place where yeah, things in my life aren't quite perfect (humanity is like that) but at least I'm being honest with myself and God, properly honest rather than vaguely honest, and so I can talk about it (type about it) to/with others without being a hypocrite.

Mum gave me a book for Christmas (one she wants to read, the cheek ;)). It's called Velvet Elvis (weird title ... it is explained but it's still weird) and is about the need, as Christians, to keep changing because there's always more to explore and because if things don't change they become irrelevant. I don't think faith is ever irrelevant, but I do think that sometimes the ways it is expressed can be.

I feel in some ways that I know less than I used to know, partly because things are more complicated than they used to be. This will be a relief to people who consider me a stuck-up know-it-all ;).

So Lucie, I'll have a go at answering your questions. It'll be the best I can do in this place at this time. It may not be right, because it'll be a mixture of the Bible (which *is* right) and my own interpretation/opinion (which is fallible - very much so).

"If God made a plan, and is omnipresent and omniscient, then when he created Adam and Eve he knew they would fall with the serpent there to tempt them."

Yes. Personally I can't see how you could wriggle out of that one - if God knows everything, he must've known that Adam and Eve wouldn't cope.

"If he didn't intend for this to happen, how can everything be according to God's plan?"

I think that the important word here is "intend". I guess I'm not sure if God intended this to happen. I think it's clear that he didn't *want* it to happen, but that's different, as I'm sure you'll appreciate - our English stuff taught us the importance of lexis, didn't it? lol.

I'm not sure about how "God's plan" works. I don't know whether (for example) someone dropping a coffee cup and it breaking is included in God's plan for their life - on the one hand, it does say in Psalm 139 that "all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be". But is that King David being poetic (note that the Psalms are songs or poems and so it is certainly appropriate to talk about poetic stuff in this part of the Bible) or does he really mean that somewhere God had written down/noted "David, entry #1359876. Got up. Would've brushed teeth if the toothbrush hadn't been nonexistent. Rubbed teeth with salt instead. Walked downstairs. Dropped pottery. Pottery broke - annoyed as was favourite bowl. Went ...".

God knows what we'll do. Does that mean that He's scripted it all out beforehand, or that He just knows because He's outside of time and so He's seen us do it and knows that we will? (Kind of like that bit in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) I lean towards the latter, but I wouldn't swear on it.

"And why did he put the tree there in the first place, if not for them to fall?"

The explanation I've always tended towards is that you cannot be truly free to choose what to do with your life if your only choices are ones that someone else wants. That there had to be a way for Adam and Eve to break away from God if they so chose, or they weren't truly choosing to stay with Him. Faithfulness doesn't mean much if it's entirely enforced and there's no choice about it.

"If it is the case that it was a test, and we failed, then as his creations are we not flawed? He created us flawed - does that mean that God is flawed, or that he intended all humans to fall and be imperfect?"

Personally I don't think it was a test, exactly. I think it was there as the capability to make the wrong choice (capability's not quite the right word in terms of grammar but I think it explains what I mean). I think that the fall shows that Adam and Eve were capable of making wrong choices, and that that means that we as humans are capable of making wrong choices (which I don't think anyone would seriously deny). In my opinion this means that God intended all humans to have the choice between doing what is right or what is not.

A common illustration I have heard is that if God wanted a race of people who always got it right, he would have had to make robots and so their devotion to him would not be meaningful. I don't really know if I think that's a good illustration or not but it might help so I include it for your consideration.

"If this is the case, then why?"

Well, I've sort of said "that's not the case - or at least I don't really think it is" so luckily I don't really have to answer this one.

"Why did he want to create a race of people when a large proportion of them would go to hell? "

I don't know. I really don't know. The irreverant would say something like "He was bored", probably, but of course that is not a satisfactory answer.

"What is he proving, what is his purpose?"

I don't know. If anyone claims they know they're either Jesus or they're insane, in my opinion.

A side note: I've just reread the beginning of Genesis and as far as I can see it doesn't say how long Adam and Eve were in the garden for. It doesn't say how long they got it right. The bit about the fall starts with "Now the serpent was more crafty ..." not anything about the time. It says in Genesis 5 that when Adam was 130, they had their third son Seth, and that was after they had left the garden (and also after they'd had Cain and Abel and Cain had killed Abel). So, feasibly, they *could've* been doing things right for 100 years (of course it could've been 3 days or something). Perhaps mankind has the potential to be less flawed than we think.