should Christians love or hate God

yeah i said it and i mean it
So who as a Christian can really argue with an atheist and their slant on God and his ways....that seem at the very least indifferent.
lets face it, its a really crap world, there is no victory we can see, life is one pile of poo after another and God seems to sit on His hands.
Yeah we have had the wonderful Jesus and his death and the promise of the future .....but what about the here and now, its crap.
Should we be happy and do all the dancing and Pentecostal praising or should we be doing the Job/Habakuk winging and arguing with God about how bad things are.
Is the modern Penti church lying to Christianity and telling us things are good when obviously they are not.
Is it better to hate God than ignore Him, or worse accept this world as a good place and thank Him for it?

I am a Christian suffering delusion, not with God but with the modern churches message.
I am happy to tell God I hate Him, I know He is real and He exists but I am not happy with His plan.

Does God want Christians to be mindless drones or questioning and critical thinkers who can voice an honest and sincere opinion.
Surely God can handle my criticism.
Are we here as His children to just accept all the bad or do we have a right to complain bitterly?

reply to post by borntowatch


We are idiots. God understands.

From what I've gathered from the teachings of Christ, we must love God with every bit of energy we have. Everyday.

God...

God...

God... (get it?)

God...

God gave us the choice.

He loves us for what we are, how could he have a problem with those that hate him? Its his experiment and he loves us and forgives us for our sins. So even if hating was bad, we would be okay anyway.

reply to post by borntowatch


You live in a time where you can call God's masterpiece "poo" and get away with it. What's to complain about?

reply to post by borntowatch

Does God want Christians to be mindless drones or questioning and critical thinkers who can voice an honest and sincere opinion.

Mindless drones... because God lives in a big building with a cross on it...

Where you're not allowed to have an opinion about the garbage in their mystical tome...

God Wrote the book with his own hand!!!

How dare you have an opinion of it..

I think it's important to recall that the 'poo' is free will and perhaps, God's greatest gift to man. Greatest...and worst....depending on day and context.

If someone is Christian, the title seems moot. They Love God or, at least, follow and respect. If they do not, they are not Christian. Simple and plain as that, isn't it? It's like saying you're a Muslim and believe everything....except for that silly part about Muhammad being a prophet and all. Kinda hard to pick and choose...and still hold the position of Believer, isn't it?

uhh...
i recall that in the bible it was common to fear god.

now, what were they tryin' to tell us?

reply to post by borntowatch

Does God want Christians to be mindless drones or questioning and critical thinkers who can voice an honest and sincere opinion.

Father wants all to question and be critical thinkers. He is intrigued by questions.

There are many here in the unseen handling many things, that are not seen by the eye. Above has had to "correct" many things that have gone wrong to date.

Originally posted by Akragon
reply to post by borntowatch

 

Does God want Christians to be mindless drones or questioning and critical thinkers who can voice an honest and sincere opinion.

Mindless drones... because God lives in a big building with a cross on it...

Where you're not allowed to have an opinion about the garbage in their mystical tome...

God Wrote the book with his own hand!!!

How dare you have an opinion of it..

I rarely laugh at anything, but this is one of those rare cases.

Originally posted by Akragon
reply to post by borntowatch

 

Does God want Christians to be mindless drones or questioning and critical thinkers who can voice an honest and sincere opinion.

Mindless drones... because God lives in a big building with a cross on it...

Where you're not allowed to have an opinion about the garbage in their mystical tome...

God Wrote the book with his own hand!!!

How dare you have an opinion of it..

While I love a good laugh...

...you do realize that everything you said is wrong.

Right?

reply to post by applesthateatpeople


Well....

I know sarcasm isn't always easy to display on a forum...

You raise some good questions... and I'd like to address them. Take what you will from my answers. If I'm right, your points/questions are these:

1) The world sucks. Why does it have to be this way?
----------------------------------------------------------

You're right. The world does suck. The Bible's actually pretty clear on this one. And here's the bad news: it's getting worse, and will continue to do so. I'd contend that you could go back even as little as 20,30 years and find a VERY different world. Let me use myself as an example. I'm 32 now. I grew up in churches (several different ones, due to moving around a bit as a kid etc.), and when I was younger, you were pretty much spoiled for choice. You could go to most churches and expect that the pastor would teach straight out of the Bible, and do a good job at it. Fast forward 30 years or so, and that's simply not the case. Most churches don't teach what the Bible teaches - and don't even bother trying.

...so why does the world suck? Frankly, because, as Isaiah (53) states, "each of us has gone his own way". Romans talks about this a lot too. The world sucks because it's riddled with sin. Even our righteousness is as filthy rags. ...but that doesn't mean it's pointless.

2) The church keeps telling me the world is awesome. Are they stupid?
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Yep. This isn't the picture the Bible presents. One of the major problems is called "dominion theology", and most churches these days preach it, teach it and believe it. That is, the church seems to believe that it's their destiny to "conquer the world" (in spiritual terms) "for Jesus". Now, you can go looking for this concept in the Bible as much as you like, but you won't find it. The Bible DOES teach that Christians will rule with Christ "as Kings and Priests" (e.g. Hebrews, pretty much the whole book), but it teaches that this will occur AFTER Christ's return, not prior to that point. Prior to that point, Jesus Himself said that "the love of many will grow cold", that there would be "wars and rumours of wars", and so on. Point being, things are bad, and they're going to get worse, until we reach the Tribulation. The Tribulation is a 7-year period where all hell breaks loose, figuratively and literally. That time, however, culminates in the return of Christ, which is a good thing.

The point is this. The church these days doesn't bother teaching what the Bible does. The world isn't awesome. It's broken. The good news is that Christ has already done all that must be done to fix it, by giving His own life for us. The reason that the world keeps on ticking, the reason that we endure to this day, is because of grace. God is patiently waiting, because He is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance". We suffer now, and we "groan inwardly, awaiting our redemption", but it's only for a time.

3) What is God doing about it all?
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Well, hopefully I've already answered that to a point.
There are a few things that are important to note through all this though. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it's difficult. ...and... yeah, this world is a pretty crappy place, no matter how much people try to sugar-coat it. I'm not going to pretend like I understand all of God's motivation in doing things the way He has chosen to. Quite simply, not everything is revealed to us. There's a lot we know, thanks to God's Word, but there's also a lot that we're just not told - because it's God's prerogative to do things the way He will. What we DO know, however, is that God is good. In fact, "God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all." So whatever His plan, whatever His purpose, even through this suffering, we know that His plan is ultimately for the greatest possible good.

One further thing I will say, though.
I could rant and rave about how the church was supposed to be a "light in the darkness", supposed to uphold and represent all that is good in this world, and how we were called to be "in the world, but not of the world"... that is, something different, something pure, something beautiful.

...obviously, the church isn't that. It may have been once, but it certainly isn't that now.

...but even that is easy. It's easy to point the finger at the church, or the world, or Islam, or whatever poison you want to pick today. But maybe, just maybe...

If you want to point a finger at anyone, to complain about why this world is the way it is...
the most appropriate place is to point inward.

You say the world sucks, you say it's a miserable place to be... and I'm with you on that... but what have we done to make it any better?

Personally I'm horribly critical of the church. We can talk about the Catholic church, who have a 1700 year history of theft, lying, taking advantage of its members, wars, division and obfuscation of the Truth...
...but when it comes down to it... I can be as critical as I like of the fact that the Roman Catholic Church hordes wealth instead of giving it away... but am I any better?

...or, we can be critical of the Pentecostal movement, which tells the world that it's an awesome place to live and that we're going to rule it all, that we're conquerors, victors, that we're awesome blah blah blah...
...but again, when was the last time I bought a homeless guy a sandwich?

Maybe we... maybe I should start there.

Originally posted by Biigs
God gave us the choice.

He loves us for what we are, how could he have a problem with those that hate him? Its his experiment and he loves us and forgives us for our sins. So even if hating was bad, we would be okay anyway.

We love God in spite of ITSELF. Because We are IT, so his experiment uses us to describe ITSELF, and must love us and forgive us right? NO. It seems to test constantly and with no advice on how to proceed. Questions? not answered, and the 10 commandments, A JOKE. I hate God in its inconsistancy, its failure to be a hands on parent, and its cowardace. It expects us to be it without giving us the "gameplan". In response to another post 4 upwards, God did not write anything down; I suppose allowed its 2 year olds to bring scipture (meaningful?) into being. None of this makes any sense.

reply to post by borntowatch


You shall love the Lord your God
with your whole mind, heart, emotion,
soul and will.

Originally posted by slugger9787
reply to post by borntowatch

 

You shall love the Lord your God
with your whole mind, heart, emotion,
soul and will.

I am sure that teaching is there because we see how terrible this world is and God wants us to have faith in what we cant see. But should we just accept it as Gods plan or should we be offended?
The opposite to love is not hate.

reply to post by borntowatch


You're having a "crisis of faith." Welcome to the real world.

In my opinion, the answer is that we need to focus on what's going on around us, and not worry about or even think about what "God" is "doing, planning, thinking", because we won't know until possibly after we die.

Worry is counterproductive. God may or may not be ignoring us altogether; to 'assume' "God" is paying any attention to us is arrogant and causes strife. We have EACH OTHER, and with the help of EACH OTHER, we can make the world better.

So, I say: ignore God, and see to your fellow man and the planet. That is our real job.

We need to stop "expecting" 'God' to do anything, or to let us know what the agenda is. Having no expectation = not being disappointed. God is clearly "ignoring" our struggling. Maybe the grand plan is for us to figure it out on our own, maybe we've gotten all the guidance we need, and the answers are really as simple as they appear to be.

TREAT OTHERS THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE TREATED, and TAKE CARE OF OUR PLANET. With no expectation of "reward" or "glory." Simply because it's the right and only harmonious way to live in a society on a planet that has finite resources.

Conversely, being "nice" just to AVOID HELL or out of FEAR is counterfeit. And "ignoring God" so that one may inflict harm is equally counterfeit. People know what the right thing is to do, except for sociopaths, and as for them, they are free to kill one another off and no one would be the worse for it.

No as I understand it God wants us to hate Him so much we want Him dead, then we know the truth.
I want Him dead

reply to post by borntowatch

So who as a Christian can really argue with an atheist and their slant on God and his ways....that seem at the very least indifferent.

There is no arguement, we explain and defend. So that the scoffers cannot decieve people, through their malicious intent to make people stumble and i assure you as a reformed agnostic they recieve pleasure in hurting God's lambs. I know i once did.

lets face it, its a really crap world, there is no victory we can see, life is one pile of poo after another and God seems to sit on His hands.

If you don't see victory it's because you're looking down and not up. Change your perspective. God isn't sitting on his hands, he's been working tirelessly from the start. Even now he does things, and people are so blind they take it for granted and do not give him his due glory.

Should we be happy and do all the dancing and Pentecostal praising or should we be doing the Job/Habakuk winging and arguing with God about how bad things are.

Praising him and singing his glory brings us joy (or it should if you're really his and not faux). Does whining ever accomplish anything? Declare the negative and you shall recieve the negative. To what can we complain? We have salvation if we accept him, what more do we need than his promise our souls shall recieve rest? Don't tell God how big the storm is, tell the storm how big God is.

No we do not have a right to complain about anything, because he will do whatever we ask of him, so how then can we complain. If you have a desire to whine and complain, then you need to hit your knees and humble yourself, for if you can complain then you have too much leavening.

reply to post by borntowatch


we should pray for knowledge of Gods
will for us and the power to carry that out.

reply to post by borntowatch

No as I understand it God wants us to hate Him so much we want Him dead, then we know the truth.
I want Him dead

It's a little bit dated-'60s, but you might want to look into Christian Atheism aka God is Dead movement.
The Gospel of Christian Atheism by Thomas J.J. Altizer
That's how it was first popularized in the 60s. William Hamilton worked on keeping it up to date until he died recently.
See

The Dangerous God: A Profile of William Hamilton
by Lloyd Steffen

Some say that the radical theology movement died like so many fads of the ‘60s; it was a "theology of the month" that made a flash and disappeared. There is some truth in this, as Hamilton himself is willing to concede. The death of God was a media event and, as Hamilton has written, "Any event the media create they can uncreate." But in another sense death-of-God theology has not disappeared at all; it has simply been transformed. It has entered, or is in the process of entering, mainstream theology.
. . .
But his deep concern for retaining ethical coherence in a postmodern world was also evident, as was his traditional allegiance to Jesus: "In his baptism, his teaching, his healings, his passion, death and resurrection -- in all of it, there is a demand laid on us, or an offer tendered, and it is the task of the Christian to embody that offer in his world, being as candid as he can about the difference between Jesus’ beliefs and his." For Hamilton, the death of God, rather than rendering Jesus superfluous, makes him all the more indispensable -- for Jesus is a comrade who provides a place to stand.

Sometimes the links don't work, but that's usually temporary.