Therein lies the flaw ... God is not responsible for anyone's choices - good, bad, or indifferent.

He's not responsible for a person bettering themselves (good) ... He's not responsible for a person hitting the skids (bad) ... and He's not responsible for a person standing in front of their fridge, hemming and hawing, wondering what to have for dinner that night (indifferent).

He will give a person avenues through which they can make the choices they want, but He does not make those choices for them. If it wasn't that way, "free will" wouldn't exist.

It isn't that hour one sits in a church on Sunday that is worship - or at least it's not a huge part of it. "Church", per se, is more for listening to His Word. Rather, it's the choices one makes in their daily life that are acutally worship. And not the overt ones (e.g., "look at me, I'm shovelling soup to the homeless!!!"). That's nice, but the more mundane, unpublicized ones are the ones that matter in life the most.

If you're doing nice things for your show, for your own glory, you're doing it wrong. If you just do nice things as a matter of character, not thinking about it, not publicizing it, that's probably going to be a better deal in the long run.

(That said, nobody "works" themselves into God's favor, but that's far more dogmatic an argument than I wish to delve into, and it doesn't belong in this thread anyway)

It's really little different than how one treats their own children (hopefully, anyway) .... you instruct them as best you can but allow them to make choices. Sometimes, those choices need to be limited or even removed in some rare instances. But, your kids are going to lead richer, fuller lives if they are allowed latitude (albeit monitored) to find many things through personal experience. And you're there to correct them appropriately and always love them all the same despite their faults at the end of the day.

In other words, God doesn't make monkeys (do anything), He just trains them.

_________________
Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

I'm not making fun of him, not at all. And I am not telling ANYONE to believe me. I am here to waste time and discuss topics that interest me... many of which are topics I would like to learn more about. This is one of them, because I have a very difficult time believing in religion/God, so it is interesting to hear why other people do.


Again... while I have a large disdain for organized religion, I don't blame anyone for being religious. My mother is very religious, and I genuinely believe it makes her a better person.

But if she came out and told me God healed her, and then she again was not healed... I would raise this same question. It's a logical question... one which you haven't answered.

If God was responsible for healing Josh, why wasn't God responsible when he fell off the wagon? Just answer it!

Unless there are pictures of him in the act he should deny, deny, deny. You kids aren't having enough fun when you go out to bars. You guys are prudes.

Pfft, if you need to get hammered at a bar to score with hot chicks you're doing it wrong.

Right focus on getting the hot young chicks hammered.

Look I was pretty wild once, and have gotten wild on occasion. I'm sure there are some bad pictures of me out there and I've never cheated on my husband. More often than not he was only a few feet away when the pictures were taken.

Thankfully (or unfortunately) Facebook was 10-15 years too late to get any really embarrassing pictures of my circle of friends.