Posted on 08/21/2010 3:35:55 PM PDT by markomalley
I for one do not try to speculate on why anyone gets a disease/or damage other than the sources we can observe in the material world, such as a virus or stepping off of a high cliff. Then I can see the observable why----but any unseeable underlying why is too deep for me.
I don't believe I stated such.
What I thought I stated was that a person must make a decision about who Christ is and who he (the person) is and their relationship to one another.
One type of decision leads to eternal life (acceptance). The opposite position leads to a different kind of eternal life (rejection).
No one gets to eternal life except through Christ. He is the door.
They were not satisfied with my attempt at an answer, which was that since we have free will, we can change the reality that He has to work with. We become people praying rather than people not praying.
God wants us to pray to Him, often, as unceasingly as we can.
I don't believe we can "change the reality that He has to work with." God is infinite. He knows what will happen to us before we are even born.
If we can change the reality God deals with, then that says God is finite. I don't believe that.
When these complications come up, I go back toward simplicity and concentrate on what he told us to do. I just try to focus on the two great commandments. Nowhere does it say “Be a theologian” or “Figure out the problem of free will.”
Quite true.
You didn’t really answer my question, though.
You can only make the commitment at the proper time for you. He will keep at you until you do. He will take the obstacles out of your path, one by one, and show you the futility of your own aspirations, one by one, until your way is clear enough.
I have heard many testimonies. Almost universal is the story: But still I went back and tried my old life again. He will burn them out of our souls, like a refiner’s fire.
Then we are able to make the choice.
I thought I did. If you were brought up without the concept of free will, then it might be difficult to imagine. It’s still difficult, even for those who believe in free will. He wants us to make the decision to pray. Remember, everything is for us, nothing for Him, unless it be for the glory of His name, which is not really for Him. He wants us to make the decision to pray because it is good for US to make it. Yet at the same time he knows if and when we will decide to pray. He rewards us according to His fundamental and eternal rule: To do the loving thing toward us.
No determinism of the earthly type will suffice to explain completely the reasons for a particular human act. Behaviorism and developmental psychology are wonderful sciences, yet we are nowhere near knowing why someone decides to do a certain thing in a context of freedom. It is still a mystery. Millions of years of gifts that we were not conscious of, eventually becoming our godly heritage? That’s the only naturalistic explanation I can imagine. Yet how did it start? So there’s always a divine spark, only then, then and now, whatever.
I don’t think it profits us to dissect it too much. The divine is miraculous and way beyond our understanding, so be satisfied with awe. That’s the best I can do with the question of whether it helps to pray. It changes things. All spiritual actions change things, sometimes invisibly. So yes, it helps—but not always in the way we picture it. Often in a better way.
You are not answering my question: What good does it do to pray for someone else? You’re not going to influence God.
A_perfect_lady wrote:
“You are not answering my question: What good does it do to pray for someone else? You’re not going to influence God.”
How do you know what God is influenced by?
Me, Holy Writ says He hears our prayers, that He answers them and that He loves us.
Okay, so you DO think you’re influencing God when you pray for someone else’s health. People who are popular and get more prayers are more likely to be helped, then.
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