I'm not offended by anything you said. I deal with innumerable rejections on practically every conceivable angle, from the pagan to the satanist to the atheist to the nihilist to yes, the ex-christian. The things they all have in common is the misunderstanding of biblical truth, the mission of Jesus Christ, the state of creation, good and evil, and the sin nature. I'll try to answer to your statements.

Love and justice are not pitted against eachother and I am not sure why you say that. For instance, would it be loving to allow your children to just do whatever they want without consequence? We see the kind of children this creates every day; ones with no morals, empathy or wisdom. Children need boundries or they're going to hurt themselves. It's up to the parent to set those boundries, and enforce them. If you give a child a rule without enforcing it, they will just roll right over it and you. Now, take it up a notch. What kind of society would we have if we didn't have punishment for capital crimes? People will argue against the justice of a Holy God but not blink when someone gets sentenced to life for murder. How is it any different? That's every bit as permanent as Gods justice, ultimately, yet we as a society are okay with it.

You talk about arbitrary choices, but it's people making the choice, not God. If it were Gods choice exclusively, He could just override everyones will. However, If God overrode your choice, would that be love? You know it wouldn't. Yet, He keeps the door open your entire life. He is constantly reminding you and warning you, and not only that, but looking out for you. Love is a two way street. If you refuse to accept Gods forgiveness, how can you blame Him for not forgiving you? It's your personal choice and your personal responsibility to own up to your sins.

Your statements about Jesus fall a bit short as to the specifics of Gods plan. Far from being a mockery of justice, it was a perfection of it. For there to be perfect justice, every sin must be punished. For there to be perfect love, everyone must have a chance to be redeemed. Both of these seeming contridictions are reconcilled in Jesus Christ. I'll explain..

This is a fallen creation, due to the sin of one man, Adam. It is imperfect. Thereby, everyone born into it inherits this imperfection, which is the sin nature. God gave us the law to give us the standard of behavior which leads to perfection, and thus back into perfect relationship with God. The problem was that no man was capable of fulfilling this law, because Gods perfect justice requires a sinless life. Jesus was the first to be perfectly obedient to God and lead a sinless life, thus fulfilling the law. The law was given because of sin and was fulfilled by the sinlessness of Christ. Just as one mans sin caused creation to fall, one mans sinlessness redeemed it. Because He perfectly obeyed the Fathers will and fulfilled the law, when He took on our sins He earned no condemnation for them. It's because of His sinlessness that He was able to be the perfect sacrifice.

So now because of all this, man has a chance to be perfected and again enjoy perfect relationship with God. Jesus made a way for mankind to be reconcilled to God. Justice has been done on the issue of the original sin. So now, this is justice: that the one who rejects Christ stands condemned. The only way to escape punishment is be saved by the grace of God. That is what justice is after Christ fulfilled the law and broke the power of death. We are spiritually perfected by the indwelling of Gods Holy Spirit, so that we are remade in the image of Jesus Christ. This is what it means to be a new creation in Christ, to be born again. Thus we are no longer held accountable to the law, because the penalty has already been paid. Rather, we are under grace.

Yes, God is sovereign, and He has every right to judge His creation as He chooses. Yet, He Himself has never violated any of the rules he has laid down. That gives Him justification. Also, you seem to think people are innocent, when they're not. There is no one good, not one. How shall an unrighteous sinner judge a Holy God? Read the book of job for what a ridiculous proposition that is. He is the author of history and our lives..how shall a child instruct Him? We don't have any right to tell God what to do..none of us are justified. We're all hypocrites. Your personal sin makes you completely unqualified to judge God, yet here you are saying He is a hypocrite and a liar and a fool.

Gods judgement became a stumbling block for you, and so you abandoned Him and now claim He isn't worthy of your love. Yet, has He ever stopped loving you? Has He written you off like you did Him? Who is really worthy here, and who isn't? If you had just persevered through your misunderstandings, the answers would have been forthcoming. Yet you gave up and then your thoughts became futile and your heart was darkened. This is always about personal accountability to God. Everything you've mentioned here is an excuse for something you failed to live up to. Sorry if that is harsh but I have to tell you the truth. God is Holy, and worthy of worship and all praise. He is worthy of our love, though we are not worthy of His. Yet, even though you abandoned Him the door is still open. It is only your refusal to be reconciled and obey Him that is causing this issue of your understanding. Being an ex-christian who knows the bible, you should know that. I pray you find the truth and repent and be reconciled once more.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
@<A rel="nofollow" class=profilelink title="member since January 21st, 2011" href="http://videosift.com/member/shinyblurry">shinyblurry
Sigh, I was trying to avoid being drawn into a theological conversation about love and judgement, but I guess I asked for it.
There are some major theological and philosophical problems with your resolution of justice and love. Let me go into a couple of them. But before that, let me say that I am not hatting on your faith right now. These are just my personal waxing on Christianity. I am no some master of theology, but I am also not naive of the bible and basic logical constructs. Understand, that I am not trying to drag you down or give you excess flack, you have had your fair share of that lately. BUUUUT since you did take the time to write something else, I thought I would return that favor.
First and foremost, you can't resolve what is unresolvable. Love and Justice are pitted against one another in certain instances. There comes a point where you can't be loving and just...you must make a choice. For instance, if your wife cheats on you, you have a choice. You can either forgive her or your can choose not to ignore it and break off the relationship. This has a few oversimplifications like, you could still be with them but also hold it against them, but that goes against the other idea of love, which is forgiveness (so they wouldn't be in a loving relationship anymore). At the end of the world, God makes an arbitrary choice, he decides to not love people who didn't accept Christ, and decides to continue to love those whom did. For the damned, the statement of Corinthians "Love never fails" surely has lost all meaning to them...love wasn't enough.
Second of all, if God is ok with transferring blame from those who are damned to those who are not, then he is forbidden to be the referee in any gaming event I control. It is a mockery to the ideals of justices to let the innocent suffer for the deeds of the wicked. I can't think of a MORE unjust act. The entire "idea" of salvation is a rosy picture. But if you actually care about justice, the idea of salvation flies right in the face of it. Either God isn't as loving as he would say he is, or he doesn't care about justice as much as he says he does. One must be true. God must either not be all loving, or not care about perfect justice. There is no need for judgement if both those things are not true (fucken double negatives!). Would you punish your neighbors dog for peeing on your rug when it was your own dog? Punishment is non-transferable if you really care about justice, period.
Also, it is a mockery to justice that Jesus still gets to go to heaven, even after being made sinful in our stead. Let us take another example. Let us say I am a murderer. I start racking up the kills, become the number one murderer of all times. Then, I get caught. On my behalf, the richest, most affluent political figure in the world decides to accept all the punishment for my crimes. For some crazy ass reason, everyone goes along with this idea. Being so rich and powerful, he is able to get all the charges dismissed. So he and I get away with the most hideous crime of all time, and no punishment is dealt out, to anyone. Is this justice? If it is, God once again can't be the ref any any sporting events I control. Jesus was made imperfect for our sake. Imperfect things do not go to heaven. Jesus should not be in heaven, period. If he is, then the God never really cared about the charges anyway, or doesn't really take justice very seriously.
I also don't understand how the Bible is able to claim the punishment for sin is death, when everyone dies anyway...even the saved. O ok, so I guess their spirit gets to live on or something, but who's spirit died in their steads? I can tell you it wasn't Jesus's, because he is supposedly chilling in heaven. The fact is, SOME will suffer death from sin, others will not. The saved are a special case where the rules needed for their salvation aren't needed because no one is going to die from their sins anyway. I mean Jesus might of literally died, but we all do that, so Jesus didn't save anything there. What you mean is a figurative death, and Jesus is surely not figuratively dead either. So no one died for Christian's sins, and no one died for the damned sins...sucks to be the damned. Once again, God can't see over any sporting events I frequent.
Also, I don't think the Bible supports the claim of "It's not that God wants to punish you...". For instance, in Romans it talks about how God specifically makes vessels of wrath.
"What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction?"
They have a name for that in Chess, they are called pawns. And while Chess is only a game, it does seem to me that God is more playing a game with us than loves us or cares about us, from the bibles perspective that is. Romans gives way to this even more with:
"“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”"
Reasons? I want to, I'm God, shut up. Misunderstanding, I don't think so.
"One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?"
This is the kind of flack an adult gives out when a child catches him doing something wrong. And while in many cases, it is the child's very naive understandings of the world that lead to this situations, many times, they are justified in the question and more importantly, and answer.
I should point out, that I used to be a 5 point Calvinist. Formerly, I used to look at Romans as the great justifier of predestination. It was a power verse of immeasurable theological insight. When I read it now, I have only sadness. It isn't like this is a trivial question to ask God, but in Romans, he brushes off our very important question like he doesn't give a flying fuck. Sadness. Granted it is Paul, not Jesus, but it is still "His word". Deepening sadness.
I have about 6 more points but I have already gone on for far to long. I hope this doesn't get stolen by atheists as ammunition to fire against Christians. Nothing would make more sad than my own personal insights being used to hurt someone. These are but a few of the troubles that lead me away from Christianity being the answer for my life. I actually hope I am wrong. I hope that other people will get to enjoy heaven, even without me. I would hope that there is an actual just God out there, looking out for us, protecting us, making sure the wrongness in the world is "taken care of". But as for wrongness, I only start to see more and more of it in the bible. What used to be a shining beacon of hope, is now a book of how not to care about justice and love.
To this day, though, 1 Corinthians 13 is still what I use to define love. It is also the root of my deconversion. The love I see in 1 Corinthians 13 does not exist in the God I read about in the rest of the bible. That is all, sorry if I cause you any pain or strife with my words. Or, indeed, anyone other person of faith that reads this. If that be the case, than I have failed in great way.

I'm commenting as I watch here, he's already screwed on the "problem" of evil. He's got the whole thing ass backwards. The only way to really solve the problem of evil from a theistic point of view is as he rightly points out the "lack of perspective argument" ie "Maybe there is a larger plan"/maybe it isnt evil after all/maybe its all part of gods plan or similar nonsense.

The point about bringing up this from an atheistic point of view is that there is of course a much more elegant, more logical, more reasonable and more probable solution to the "problem" of evil: There is no god.

It seems like Keller hasnt even considered this as a real possibility, because if he did, he would realize that the problem dissappears entirely. And its not just for human acts of evil, of course. Think of the recent Japan Tsunami..Thousands pointlessly killed by the physics of tectonic plate movement. In a godless universe there is no "why?!!" here, we live on a thin crust wrapping around a lava ball, partially covered by water. A tsunami now and again is inevitable.

If you believe in god, you'll have to make up lots of shitty excuses for these kind of events

None of this proves that there is no god, its just one of those many things that makes it unlikely.

Oh and now his dragging Stalins corpse out again to bash atheism. Nothing to do with atheism. Stalinism was a sick personality cult catering to creduilty and superstition in order to promote a form of marxism. The reason they went after Christianity was because they were competing to convert the gullible to a new mindless cult.

Its not just that its pointless "keeping scores" as it were, I would like to see him tackle Hitchens 2-part Challenge:
Part 1: Name for me one good thing done, or one nice thing said, in the name of religion, that it would be unthinkable that a secularist/atheist could just as reasonably say or do.

I've never hard a satisfying answer to part 1.

Part 2: Name for me one bad thing done, Or one bad thing said, in the name of religion,that it would be unthinkable that a secularist/atheist could just as reasonably say or do

I bet you thought of something after reading the fifth word in that sentence.

Its not a tie.

Kelller parroting atheist argument:"Until you prove there is a god, I dont have to believe in god!"

What a dishonest douche.

I've never actually heard any atheist make that argument. Heres how the argument really is: I've never seen a shred of evidence, ever, anywhere, in the history of everything that would even suggest, in the slightest,remotest possible way that there might be a god. None. Zip, Zero. I'm not demanding that you come up with a mathematical proof or anything, far from it, but until there is some evidence, ANY kind of evidence, I dont see any reason to believe in god, any more than santa.

More rubbish: Why do I assume god is "inside" the universe? I dont, douchebag, I'm not assuming anything, its your invisible friend, moron, you can fantasize. Oh great, there you go now... "He might be outside of everything", please do go on wasting brainpower trying to make that work..

"You cant prove anything" "So why do you say to God.."---BEEP-- I dont say anything, Keller, I dont talk to invisible things that arent there.

"You cant prove there is no god, so not believing is an act of faith" Yup, I take the same risk you do, Keller, But I'd wager disbelieving in Cthulhu will land you in much more trouble than the mere wuzzy little lake of fire I'll be surfing on (while listening rock music).

Oh fuck. "Fine-tuning" now.. Yep, this universe, that has almost NOTHING but vaccum at minus 270 celsius instantly deadly to any living thing, where the extremely tiny exceptions are 99.999% nuclear fireballs that will burn anything to death once its close enough not to freeze to death. So among a hundred billion galaxies with a hundred billion stars, we know of exactly one that has a planet at just the right distance. What are the chances, eh? Ten thousand billion stars and one of them has life around it (and in few million years its gonna toast that motherfucker too). Ergo: stars are perfect places to have life around. Yup Finetuning. Four aces? more like one ace and ten thousand billion worthless cards, but whatever.

Of course, if I was god, I might make just , I dont know, lets say ten stars, with lots of fine planets around them with lush green envirionments and no nasty earthquakes, asteroids, hurricanes and so on, perhaps I'd even make sure that the sun doesnt blow up and kill everybody in the end. But then again, what the hell do I know..


Ok, that was half an hour. maybe I'll do the rest tomorrow.

good story and all... right up until the self satisfied bit about "his plan wasn't in gods plan". Really? I'd like to see you tell that to the face of all the other child rape parents whos children really did get killed. I suppose their rape and murder WAS in your merciful all knowing forgiving ultra kind Gods plan? I applaud your personal strength lady, take responsibility for it yourself, not hash it away like some cheap trinket to an invisible genie.

The 'everyone is here for a reason' concept is a total fallacy. It is the other way around.

We are here, thus we must make a reason for our existence. Assuming we are here for a predetermined reason assumes that something beyond ourselves and our own actions predetermine what we will do and what we will become. That is just plain stupid and makes about as much sense as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Now if this girl does reveal a biological condition to help better understand aging and potentially result in technology that extends human life, then great. All the better.

It is sad she suffers from this rare condition for sure, and it must certainly be difficult for her family.

Ultimately, we need to thank medical researchers for advancements in modern medicine on all fronts. We should say thank you doctor for the heart or liver transplant that saved a child's life. "Thank God", is not who should be thanked. A so-called 'God' giving a child a failing organ, requiring the harvesting of a good organ from another individual with the 'misfortune' of dying due to apparently god-planned circumstances is totally nonsensical.

A lot of the world's ills would be remedied if we lived for THIS life, rather than a magical NEXT life that no-one can prove even exists.

don't worry im sure you can reinterpret a verse ore page in the bible to make it say life exists on other planets and its all gods plan, religions have manged to do this thousand of times before

"theres times when these things don't go your way and GOD has other plans"

look here you witless fucktard "gods" plan was for the baby to die from a tumer growing out of its ass. how you can invoke god in any form after science alone has saved your baby i just don't know. i just hope this kid survives the indoctrination and dosent end up spiritually and mentally retarded.

First, my responses are under the belief that the book is in fact true as I believe it to be.I enjoy ironing out doctrinal knots and at least helping people understand what the belief system really is, whether they believe it or not.
That being said.
More of my take on it and your response:
It may seem easy to look at it the way you said, but God sees the end from the beginning. He knew when sin entered the world what men would choose and that those choices would lead them from Him and what He has to offer. The law is essentially a way to reveal that man is sinful and that sin leads to separation from God (by its nature... "the second death"). This is an oversimplification but, since sin is such direct rebellion and leads to this separation from God and thus "death" (not of the body, but of the soul), something of great value must be sacrificed in its place... And Sin has no place in Heaven so nothing tainted with it can enter, by nature. Since man is full of sin, God planned a way to free us from it by His own hand through His own sacrifice ("so that none may boast"). The OT laws and the sacrificial requirements were prophetic to the sacrifice on the cross. The "sin offering" was a lamb taken out of town and slaughtered. Jesus was also called the "lamb of God" and was taken from town and slaughtered. In fact, a HUGE number of events in the OT are straight forward prophecy of this event and its ramifications.

He's not saying:
"Screw it, I give up. Do what you want. You're gonna be bad anyway, so go for it. I'll fix it." Would a human father really say that if he loves his child? Think about it, and if you wouldn't say it to your kid, do you think a perfect father, God, would?
He's saying something like:
"I want you to be good and it will make you closer to Me and that is a great thing for both of us, but I know that you will rebel even though you love me. For this reason, I will love you by saving you anyway so we can remain together forever."

To the first a child might respond:
"Alright! Screw you too, I'm outa here, since it doesn't matter anyway." ...and so much for that relationship...
To the second a child might say:
"I know I'm not always doing what you want, but because I love you, and in gratitude for what you're doing for me, I'll keep trying."
A Christian believer (hopefully) sees what God has done and keeps trying, not just in gratitude, but also to remain close to God like a son wants to be close to a perfect dad. This is the personal relationship that God wants, but lets us choose to accept or reject.

All this is part of the argument that quoting single phrases/verses from the bible and drawing enormous conclusions from them is unwise. The canon is a story that is far more complex and interwoven for that sort of method. The "context" is often the entire redemptive plan through history. So reading a verse from numbers and ignoring all that preceded and followed in history will just lead to confusion or misunderstanding.

P.S. There are many books written on why Jesus' sacrifice was necessary. If what I've said at the top of this post gives no hint, the books on the topic are decent, or maybe I can try more later... but for now, I'm off to bed.

p.p.s The fact that I'm still awake while Farhad is posting REALLY tells me I should be in bed. lol.

This will happen no matter what. Just wait for one of the vampires of the high echelons of power feel tragedy strike himself or his closest loved ones... Because it's not like we argued against the use of antibiotics because it goes against Gods plan of you dying is it now...