God is good and merciful?? I love my children, no matter what. My youngest daughter is seeing a man I dont approve of and I still love her... my kids live lives that are not always as I would like.. my friends make bad choices.... But I still love them all the same...
Why then would GOD punish any who choose the wrong path or make mistakes..... isnt that just petty?.
What kind of nasty insecure diety would DEMAND that we love them or suffer for eternity....?
Even if my kids turn against me I love them, but God just seems to threaten pain and punishment for any indiscretion.... If a father had that attitude to his offspring we would call him a monster!!
2006-09-04 20:06:48 · 47 answers · asked by mr_spike432 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Right on. I like the comparison you make between yourself and God, as far as being a creator with offspring. God demands you follow a certain way for Him to love you, but a father like you does not demand anything to give love back to his children. I respect that.
2006-09-04 20:34:55 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Are you comparing yourself to God as the father? As what you have said you still love your daughter though she doesnot obey you. God is more than you think because He is a loving and forgiving God, full of grace and mercy. In what instance you came up that God gave punishment? He is not giving punishment we are the one who punished ourselves because we choose our way instead of His way. He give us choices just like what you did to you daughter allowing her to be with the man you dont like for her but of course you remind her every now and then the consequence as well letting her know why you dont want that guy for her. Now if she insist and the relationship will not work out and she come back to you and admit what she have done was wrong -you will accept her with open arms right -the father will do the same.
2006-09-04 21:07:49 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
God is good.
You are a pretty good Dad. When your kids make bad choices, make mistakes, turn against you and abandon you, do you think that their life is all perfect and lovely? No, they are suffering without your love.
Well God is, not just pretty good, He is a Great Dad. If we mess up & abandon him, the distress and emptiness we feel is a Great deal more than it would be if you were our dad. No offence.
It is a matter of porportion. Comparing a human father to God the Father is like compairing and Ant hill to the Sears tower. Likewise with the suffering. No one said God stops loving those who reject him, but, you will see, we will be very fair. Their choice is their own, He won't MAKE people love him.
You said "God just seems to threaten pain & punishment". That's about right, like when you tell your kids not to play with fire, you seem to threaten the pain of a burn, and when they are burned, they are mad at you. And you are going to say "hay, I warned you". Well, hay, he's warning us. If you break his heart, yours breaks too. Sorry but it will hurt more than you can imagine, it's not his fault.
2006-09-04 20:42:52 · answer #3 · answered by J Z 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
God is a god of love.....so to answer the question yes God is good all the time....because you love someone doesnt mean that you allow them to do what they want...there are still rules that must be set...If you read the Bible you will see that God loved you and the whole world enought to give up his only son...doesnt sound mean to me....guess what he didnt do that just for those of us who loves him and even did it for those who say he doesnt exist...love will make you punish your child yes you may not like it but you do it....God states in the Bible that it is not his will that any man/women should perish but that all would come to repentance and everlasting life....God has given us a choice plain and simple it either heaven or hell.....you must do what he says to make it to heaven....one of the perks to being the man upstairs....his world, his rules....its the same as in the world a man takes something that is not his why lock him up because he made a mistake or chose the wrong path as you so nicely put it....the world would then be in total chaos if the goverment didnt do anything about all the crime.....so the same applies to God...God is good all the time and all the time God is good
2006-09-04 20:22:02 · answer #4 · answered by Presiding Bishop 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
God is good, but misunderstood. If you disobey God, and are punished for it, you did it to yourself. For every action there is a reaction. He made us, he made the rules, he even published them in a book, so we would know what the rules are. He hates the sin but loves the sinner. I do not believe hell is a literal place. It is symbolic for being separated from God. Now that would be a true hell.
Proof of his goodness is that he allows us to ask these questions. If he were evil, he wouldn't have given us free will. We would be like robots. Yet-we have a soul. We can learn and grow. We may suffer bad things in this life, but we can look forward to eternal love, peace and tranquility in the next. I believe that is the point, to this drama called life.
2006-09-04 20:17:23 · answer #5 · answered by eugjoh 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
God punishes not bec he dont love us or wants to hurt us; He punishes, so we can improve. Everything done in love is long term. why does a parent dicipline a child? all in the hope of making that child better than he/she is today. no punishment = no love. think about it that way.
sometimes God punishes whole nations, whole city, etc. thats bec He is assured that the sins of the ppl has already so much to do with what is to come - children becoming bad due to the influences they have absorbed in their society, etc etc. and if that child or those children lives, they might have to suffer more. dont think as death as an end all be all thing. death is not a bad thing; sometimes God take away a person in our midst bec He knows it would be hard for that person/child to deal with things to come.
2006-09-04 20:19:54 · answer #6 · answered by The Punisher 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you believe the Bible, God is good. You say you love your kids even if they turn against you. Would you send your kid to die in the electric chair for some murderer who deserved to die(especially if it was your only kid)? God did. He sent his only begotten Son to die for Osama, Hitler and everybody else who's ever lived on planet earth(John 3:16). The christian doctrine of omnipotence doesn't mean that God can do everything. It means that God can do everything that can be done. God can't make a square circle. Even the bible says that God CAN'T lie(Hebrews 6:18). It doesn't say he DOESN'T lie. It says he CAN'T lie. God is ruled by his perfect nature. Sinful beings will never enter a perfect heaven with sin that has not been paid for. They would just ruin that heaven. It would become another earth. But God has taken care of that by sending his perfect Son to pay the price for sins that we could never pay. The bible says that 'God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth'. He doesn't want anyone to miss heaven. When you accuse God of sending people to hell you're falsely accusing God. God is not sending anyone there. We're all already on our way there. God is trying to save us from ending up there. It's as if we're all walking down a path that leads into a minefield and God is standing on the path and screaming "turn around(which, incidently, is what the word REPENT means), your going to blow yourself up". What does he get for trying to save people? He gets called(to use your own words) PETTY, INSECURE and a MONSTER. Before you imply that the God of the bible is not good, I defy you to show me any other religion where God sent his Son to die for the people.
2006-09-04 21:01:35 · answer #7 · answered by upsman 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
When your children were small didn't you have to correct them at times, even if they cried?
If a child runs out into the road, don't you run after them and disipline them because you know if they run out in front of a car they could be killed. It is the same with God, he knows that if we choose Satan as our father that our eternity will be in hell, and God wants to give us a home in heaven where all is good.
God does not demand that you love him, remember we have free will to believe what we want, he is telling us about the life we can have with him and warning us of the life we will have with Satan.
Do you demand that your children love you or do you assume they love you, because of how good you have been to them?
2006-09-04 20:32:46 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
We all carry our own God within ourselves. Some kind and loving others the bringers of war and hatred.
We are made in Gods image? I don't think so, He is made in your own image. People choose to be kind or horrible, no Deity effects that only your own internal conscience. Religions are a set of rules that groups try to live by and give order and reason to their lives. How can 1 be right and the rest be misguided.
Caring for others makes you feel good as long as they are appreciative. Others find enjoyment and fulfilment from being horrible to others and the feeling of power that gives them. No great mystery that's just the way it is!
2006-09-04 20:22:02 · answer #9 · answered by Rob S 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
God wants you to love him, he is after all you heavenly Father, but he gives you free will to do so. You have children and that is one reason you should be thanking him. Children are truly a blessing.
God does not punish us for eternity. And he doesn't burn us to suffer for all eternity. You just simply cease to exist. To be wiped out of God's memory for ever with no chance of ever coming back.
Read up on what the Biblical Hell actually means. You will be surprised, I was.
2006-09-04 20:16:14 · answer #10 · answered by GraycieLee 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋