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The following is from a conversation with someone else. The Lord allows His people to speak according to His wisdom. And His wisdom should not be bottled up. So I post this here that more people might have a chance to encounter the Gospel.
I am not a wise man. But God is Fully Wise. It is God who will be glorified. And it is simply man’s duty before Him to serve in whatever arena God allows.
The person had made the statement that the first command Jesus gave was that we love our brothers as we love ourselves.
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Actually, the first commandment Jesus gave us all was to Love the Lord with all . . .
Now let me go a bit afield, then I’ll try to narrow it down a bit. I hope this isn’t one of those stupid moments.
I have to go to the dentist soon. OH MAN I HATE GOING THERE! I’ll sit in that chair and she’ll do a number on me. The smell of burning bone is hideous. But I gotta go if I want avoid looking like Mater in the movie cars.
How do I know I have to go to the dentist? It’s because I have a mirror. I notice that I chew kind of awkward. Sometimes there’s a whistle attached to my “S”. And my Lady has kind of let me know a few times that wedding pictures would look better if I went.
Ok… that was as far afield as I planned to go. Let me try to bring it back home.
If the first commandment is to love the Lord, then everything after that is going to have God in it, solid and foundational.
I know the things that suck within me because I have looked long and hard into the words of the Bible and saw as much of my real self as I could stomach. I listened to the preaching and teaching of hundreds of men who knew the intimate details of that Word. I noticed how much of a fool I was compared to the Glorious nature of the God of the Bible. And as for a comparison to my Lady’s comments: We who have accepted the gift of forgiveness of God in Jesus, and allow ourselves to be taught by the Holy Spirit He gave as a seal are refered to as the Bride of Christ. There is a wedding to attend. And it won’t be good to attend full of evil, foolishness, unholiness, and rebellion. So as much as it can be a hard task, pride must go by the wayside, and humility must take it’s place.
The second commandment, which you mentioned is to “love your neighbor as yourself. So if I love my neighbor as myself, what’s that mean? I hate who I am. So am I allowed to hate my neighbor also. Not likely. I find I don’t hate everything about me. What I hate is the stuff that doesn’t align with God’s Holy ways. I don’t hate being alive or free to choose. I hate being a rebellious fool. So when I see others acting like the things I hate about me, I’m allowed to speak up, given that I’ve begun a rapport with the person. And allowing that I’ve at least begun to address the same behavioral problems with in myself.
I know it’s a long answer. But I thought the clarification might be useful.
“Not to mention the Christian God simply cannot exist because it defies every understanding of every fundamental law of physics.”
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The Bible teaches that God is completely “other”. He is absolutely not like us. Nor does He live in a world restricted by the same physics we endure. So I’m not sure judging the validity of Christianity based on the known science of the day is a really sound refute to the claims of the Bible.
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On top of that, something that is supposed to be perfect cannot create imperfection. If God is perfect and created humans, because humans are imperfect that makes God imperfect which would make God LESS than God.”
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What God made is a creature who is able to function with free will. (I have a personal theory why the creation happened in the first place. But maybe that will come up at a later date.) He didn’t create sin. He created a place removed from His Holy Throne where free will could play out among a people who had never seen the face of the Most High God. In the end, God reserves the right to harvest from this place of testing. But there is absolutely no indication that God created anything imperfect. He did warn Adam and Eve that if they chose wrong there would be a deadly horrible price to pay.
And please don’t forget that the Bible mentions another character who has no regard for anything pure or Holy. He plays a rather central role in what I’ve come to refer to as “This Place of Testing”.
By His Grace.
Words From There 