Friday, August 16, 2019

God is

“And God is a God of  grace and love, not rules.”

Or

“We never said that we have no rules.”

Pick one.

Aside from the grammatical faux pas, this is quite the claim.

God’s been stripped of all His attributes except 2 and severely limited by a human.  I wonder if He knows?

God doesn’t do rules, He does commands.


6 comments:

Dan Trabue said...

Why pick one question mark is it the case that you just don't understand how these are two separate issues?

I am folk like me believe the God is a god of Grace of love of Justice. Period.

We don't believe that God is primarily identified as a God of rules, not in the Bible and not reasonably, but a God of Justice and love and grace. Full stop.

At the same time, we humans, we progressives, all of us, we have rules and ideals we live by. I will not kill someone. I will not rape someone. I will not steal from someone. These are rules that most of us live by. We acknowledge these are good rules, primarily because of a pretty Universal understanding of the notion of Human Rights and how it's wrong to deny rights to other humans. That understanding of Human Rights comes from a place of concern for justice and love for the other. It's not coming from a place of Arcane rule-making and Rule following but from a place of justice and love.

Likewise, It's not coming for us because "the Bible says..." or because there is a rule that we can find somewhere in the text of a Biblical verse.

That God is primarily a God of love and grace and justice AND that we humans have rules we live by, ideally, are not mutually exclusive. We don't have to pick one or the other. Did you not understand that?

Dan Trabue said...

Re: " God doesn't do rules, God does commands..."

Let's look at what happens in the Bible. Indeed, you can find rules in the Old Testament, commands if you prefer, like the command to not commit adultery. Those who commit adultery are wrong it should be stoned to death. That's the command.

But Progressive folks and anabaptist, amongst others, believe the Jesus is the ultimate representation of God. If you're having a hard time understanding something about God, look to what Jesus did and said.

Fortunately, we have example of Jesus being confronted with a woman caught in the act of adultery. The rule/command is clear. She was guilty. She should be killed. Period.

But what does Jesus do?

He illustrates that the point of the command is not rule following. The point is love and compassion and Grace. And Jesus does not follow the rule. The command. He follows Grace.

That is the point. Those who look at the rules and think the rules are the point, miss the point.

Craig said...

“I am folk like me believe the God is a god of Grace of love of Justice. Period.“

So you’re choosing to ignore all of the other attributes of God, and limit Him to only two.

Got it. Thank you for confirming.

FYI, when you contradict yourself, you need to be prepared to have it pointed out.

FYI, no one believes that God is “primarily” a God of rules. Maybe your problem is that you’ve chosen to misrepresent the position of your enemies.

Yet, you continue to ignore the commands of Jesus. Maybe denying the existence of and obeying are the same thing in your world.

Oh, please stop pretending like you speak for some large number of people. If you’re going to claim that your hunches represent “progressives”, then you need to start taking responsibility for what y’all do.

I’m guessing that you had at least some rules for your children, why?

Craig said...

“God is a god of Grace and love and Justice especially for the marginalized.”


This is an interesting take. It seems to be suggesting that God’s justice isn’t actually just. It’s like God can’t actually judge individuals, but can only judge groups.

I like the way you snuck justice in after the staring emphatically that God was only about “grace and love, not rules”.

Dan Trabue said...

Your problem is, it appears, you have a diseased understanding of what justice means.

Craig said...

“the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments”

If this is diseased, then I’m in good company.

Your problem appears to be that you don’t think before you spew and your hasty words come back to bite you. Then you have nothing but ad hom attacks and vitriol.