Jesus didn't come to help us...He came to save us, that is the help we need.
what's your agenda?
- Thread starter chrysostom
- Start date
Jesus didn't come to help us...He came to save us, that is the help we need.
Own will means natural wills born with.
do you guys understand each other?
can you imagine what we understand?
so how did we miss the total part?
But I wonder ... how is it that a perfect God can Love a totally depraved entity?
If "totally depraved" is there room for goodness?
If God in His infinite wisdom erases the "Total depravity" there would be nothing left?
Is that the death to self so that a new creation can be born?
so why does God love us?
You take goodness in human reality, and then force it back into divine reality
Sometimes I think it's the drama of the words we choose that becomes problematic. By way of, prior to relation I didn't desire every imaginable evil and shun any imaginable good. To the contrary, I desired many a good thing and shunned many an evil thing. But my context was my own and not truly a service to the good, only to my vanity, my usurpation of the seat of the good, the arbiter of righteousness.
So it is in our usurpation that we are depraved, in our lack of understanding and desiring the actual and perfectly good that we fail and live for and in our fallen, corrupted understanding. And we're taught by the good that there are two and only two masters in the world and we will serve one or the other by the choice we make.
There is no such thing as a practical agnostic. The moment we begin to make moral choices, we choose our master. And though we may work any number of inarguable good works, they will not save us, cannot reconcile us, will never perfect us.
The evidence seems to support that.
However, it would seem that there is also in many humans a modicum of decency.
Amen Brother! You have stated the case beautifully!
PureX
Well-known member
I would submit that they are still the same 'desire for good', but that our conception of goodness has expanded, as we come to realize that what is good for others is also good for us: that our well-being is tied to the well-being of everyone around us.
I think the ideal of "God" helps us to expand our consciousness beyond just our own selfish needs and desires, so that we can begin to see a "greater good". A more universal good. A good that is larger and more important than just ourselves.
Perfection is a pipe-dream based mostly on irrationality and ego.
I agree that our choices do define us. And that in the long run who we have made of ourselves can become 'irreversible' (unrepentant) if we persist on the course of selfishness long enough. I also do believe in a kind of universal good (morality) that it is to our own and everyone else's advantage to pursue. I do not believe, however, that "perfection" is anything other than an intellectual ideal. And ideals are like lighthouses: they are great to steer BY, but disastrous to steer FOR!
I think you may have misread me on perfection, a thing I don't believe we have the capacity to attain, though a thing present in God, who is perfect in every particular. I suspect the notion of self perfection of will is one of the most alluring snares of ego and tool of the enemy.
As to our desires...good is nothing without a context, just as a killing becomes murder or something else by that same understanding. So we can serve a beneficial purpose within a particular need, but the good will elude us, even as the benefit inures us to believing ourselves its maker.
PureX
Well-known member
Yes, I agree with you on both counts. One of the great advantages to believing in "God" is that for most people, "God" embodies the ideal of perfection. And as such becomes that "lighthouse; to steer the course of our lives, by" (quoting myself :chuckle: ). I know that for myself, and for many other folks I know, this characteristic of the god-ideal has been a great asset to the quality of my/our life, behavior, and being.
And I agree, too, that the illusion that one can achieve perfection (or even worse, HAS achieved it), oneself, is an open door to a kind of ego-centric insanity that can blossom into all manner of mayhem!
For me, the context is existence, itself.
It is a presupposition of mine that it's better to be, than not to be. And as my consciousness expands with maturity, that presupposition applies to an ever-increasing and inclusive grasp of 'being'. Not just mine, and yours, but ALL being. And this underpins that universal "goodness" that I was referring to: that it is better to create and maintain than to destroy. That the "good" is served by serving the continuance of 'universal being', while "evil" is served by the destruction/dissolution of same.
For me, the term "God" refers to that 'universal being', of which you and I and all things are a part. So to serve "God" is to serve the creation and maintenance of universal being. While to serve "evil" is to seek the destruction of same.
I think we basically agree, I'm just putting your somewhat religious terminology into my somewhat 'universalist' (taoist) terminology.
That's Right. We See And Hear More About The Evil And Depravity Through Media And "Shock" TV In The World. The More I Look For Good And Decency, The More I See