Hi Jimmer — welcome to the forum, by the way ...
Is it true that everything and everyone ever made or that ever will be made God created for a very specific purpose...
If we accept that 'God is Good' or 'God is Love', then the Good or Love, is the source of all things ... and the end of all things ... so I cannot conceive of a Good that causes something to be for a bad end, or that Love creates something that is not meant to be loved ...
I think the danger is in thinking of God as someone 'micro-managing' everything everyone does (and He'd have to micromanage the life of every sub-atomic particle, by the same rule) ...
But when God creates, He knows not only the rising of things (which in in Himself) but also the end of things (which is in Himself)
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If Satan is leading mankind into an everlasting hell/separation from God, why does God allow him to exist?
God said, let us make man in our own image ... now firstly, God has no 'image', God is not contained nor confined by anything. So what Scripture is saying is that God wants His creation to enjoy the suprabeing that God is ... and this means 'freedom'.
If man is not free, then all his religious aspirations — no matter what religion — are a nonsense. In spiritual terms he is pre-programmed, the die is cast, and no matter what he does, nothing is going to change that. So why bother with God or neighbour, it's not going to change anything?
All the Great Traditions assert that man is free within the context of creation (you're not so free as to be able to jump off cliffs or swim in volcanoes) — but the one, ontological freedom, the one freedom from which all other freedoms derive, is the freedom to accept or deny the will of God.
The Scripture story of the Fall tells us this — that our freedom is a gift, but man saw it as a right, as something to possess — and as soon as he tried to possess it, he lost it.
So my view is separation from God is not something that God wills, but something that man wills, by putting his own will first.
Whenever I think about "Spiritual warfare" the idea seems bizarre to me as God created all the combatants.
I think people tend to read spiritual warfare as me against S•t•n and his hordes. A silly mistake, as we wouldn't stand a chance ...
The true 'spiritual warfare' is within the self, the place in which my will/thy will is decided. The toughest battle is to love one's neighbour ... not one's friend, but the others ... (It's the true meaning of jihad, according to Moslem esoterism).
I find it depressing to think that God allows Satan to exist, knowing he will convince the majority of mankind to follow him into eternal damnation.
S•t•n is the personification of a negative tendency. I'm not saying he doesn't exist, and I find it more depressing that modern western culture, the first culture ever to cut the tie to some kind of religious aspiration, convinces itself that he doesn't ...
I can't think of that verse without thinking that God created the devil.
God didn't. People who say that really don't understand 'God' ... to say God is the cause of evil is a nonsense, as evil is that which God does not will, so how can God will what God does not will? It's a logical contradiction.
That God allows evil is something else.
But then, I didn't kill my kids the first time they were naughty.
God does not will what God does not will, but if man is to be truly free, then for that freedom to be real, God must allow for man to do other than 'the right thing' ... and eventually God must allow for man to refuse the love of God.
I don't believe in hell as a burning lake of fire, but I do believe in extinction. Christ offers eternal life in God, the opposite is not suffering, but separation and abandonment (Gehenna) ... and the ultimate separation from God is non-existence.
But if you ask people, what fate is worse, a burning lake of fire, or nothing, then the burning lake of fire has more power, which shows just how much we are enslaved to the senses ...
God bless,
Thomas