How Can God "Want" Anything?

[Bloodblister Bob]

It seems that whenever I listen to a Christian spokesperson, I'm being told of the myriad things God "wants" us to do. But how can that possibly be? How can God be God and still have wants or desires?

To have desires is a sign of incompleteness, of lacking in some essential way. If God really does have such a laundry-list of "wants", how can he possibly be worthy of worship?

[meegbear]

1. What God wants, God gets.

God help us all.

[mrfrapp]

8. Just what I was thinking

Now I'm going to have to find that CD :-) Great stuff.

[meegbear]

10. Listened to it last week

Unfortunately, alot of the tracks are relevant today.

[Mnemosyne]

2. Welcome Bob,

:popcorn:

[Bloodblister Bob]

6. Thanks for the welcome. Love, Bloodblister Bob n/t

[tocqueville]

3. those "Christians" you refer too have no theology

they aren't smart enough to even ask the questions you ask... unlike the old Churches (Catholic, Protestant...) who have theologians discussing the nature of God, they have only a book which they quote what fits them and thus express THEIR wants...

Evangelicals and such must be exposed as a religious FRAUD. In a way they are comparable to Scientology. You don't have to be a believer to make the difference between established religion and a millenar philosophy and sectarians bible thumping money launderers.

[SHRED]

4. Christian spokespeople...

telling you what God wants?

Snakeoil of the first degree.

If there is a God, then obviously someone should wake Him up!

[Ouabache]

5. Good question

to ask my favorite fundy next time he on a rant about what god wants.

Thank you.

How can God be God and still have wants or desires?
I think it is a projection of the fundamentalist agenda onto 'God', myself. Another way to promote their agenda in such a manner that they can't be questioned on it. Or so they think.

Now we have Bloodblister Bob's question to ask them. Will they really think about the question? Or will their heads explode? Film at 11.

[tularetom]

7. Oh no Mr. Bill!!

Is this another "Is God a dick" thread?

[tularetom]

9. Seriously though

I'd have to agree. If God is unhappy with how we are acting he can always make us change. If he can't do that he ain't omnipotent. And I don't want to hear about "free will". He could change that too unless he is enjoying watching us fuck everything up. And if that is the case he is a dick.

[pretzel4gore]

11. "I said to myself, God..."

i heard a evangelical preacher say that once, long ago. i was with a friend in a city at a dropin place just before xmas and a group of christians invited a group of us for a meal. We attended a service where the preacher described some incident where he was forced to pray for guidance. He was standing on a stage in front of hundreds of people, using a microphone when he described what happened...he said "i said to myself 'God...etc'"
Not one person in that vast crowd caught it. not one

[chaumont58]

12. An abomination

Leviticus says 'to lay with a man as a woman is an abomination.' I'm not religious but I have heard that more than once. I didn't know what 'abomination' meant. I could figure it wasn't something good, but I didn't know exactly. I finally went to the dictionary and found it means 'disgusting.' In my opinion, of the many emotions a God might have, it seems unlikely an all powerful God would have an emotion like 'disgusting.' It just doesn't seem logical, but really neither does most parts of all religions.

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. Does the love of parents for their children diminish

because they are overjoyed and blissfully content in respect of their own self-contained needs, so to speak? Or is it of the essence of love to overflow, to want to share the bliss, the happiness that we feel?

This would seem to be the over-arching theme of the Christian message. The parable of the Good Shepherd, leaving his flock to seek out the sheep that had wandered and become lost in the mist and darkness, that of the Prodigal Son, and that of the Good Samaritan, all in different ways (as well as others, no doubt), seem to me to inform us, even before the other messages we are told they convey, that God is a person - indeed an ultra personal person. "There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents..."/ one lost sheep who is found than those who were already safe and secure.

Furthermore, in Romans I, 2 and 3, St Paul writes: "... now at last in these times, he has spoken to us with a Son to speak for him....
... a Son who is the radiance of his Father's splendour, and the full expression of his being;"

Indeed, almost the entire thrust of Jesus Gospel teachings was that we should understand God, not to be some great, transcendental and impassible monolith (though in a sense, he certainly seems to be, as indicated by orthodox, traditional theology), but quite the reverse: as ultra-human - like a little child, such as, in his innocence, Christ Jesus personified right up to his death on the cross.

In relation to God, this appears to be contradicted by Christian theologians, who state that God needs nothing from anyone or anything, since he created everything that exists; a theme mused upon by David in the Psalms 1000 years BC, and taken up in one Gospel passage by Jesus, when he intimates to us that no-one can ever know God fully, so it is not a good idea to imagine that we can.

However, this leads us into the realm of the utterly imponderable paradoxes which lie at the very heart of the Christian faith (scarcely surprising, since the same can now be said of physics at both extremities of scale), one of which you have raised.

We know that during his ministry, Jesus, at times felt great joy, that he also wept over the sufferings of his friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha, at the venality, incorrigibity and impenitence of the Synagogue of his day, and that, though we nowhere read that he laughed, he sure had a dry and at times very bitter sense of humour (like an uncle of mine, who once got quite upset because I laughed at one of his jokes...!)

[LaurenG]

14. Well defining intangibles

causes grief. First what is God? An energy, a feeling, a being. Does everyone have a piece of God in their makeup? Are all of us "sons" of God?

If I go with the concept that God is omnipotent how can man ever understand that and what that means? If God has desires I couldn't tell you what they are unless it was a comforting, warm and loving feeling but that would be channeled through what I already think so it wouldn't make it so for anyone but me or those who agree with me.

I will always come down on the side of love and compassion. Skip the judgment, find someway to serve and love the hell out of whom ever passes my way I'll leave the rest to God whoever and whatever that is...

[Igel]

15. Question your definition of 'God' and perfection.

Can God be perfect and have wants or desires? Doesn't it rather depend on the goals?

Define perfection one way, and the answer must be no.

Define it a second way (in terms of power and morality, but with the morality and goals constraining the application of power), and the answer putatively can be yes.

[JerseygirlCT]

16. I think the idea is less

what God wants for God and more what God wants for us.

God obviously doesn't need anything of us, but if you think in the terms of loving parent (the metaphor that is often used), it's more what that loving parent wants us to learn, to see.

Am I making sense?

[FM Arouet666]

17. God does not interfere in the lives of those he created.

He wants us to act without sin, follow his word, but will not act in our individual lives. Okayyyyyyyy

So why do believers pray? Religious fundies claim god sent the hurricane, the fire, the earthquake? Seems that every positive occurrence in the life of a fundie was directed by god....

I just do not understand. God wants us to be moral, does not interfere, yet believers ask for interference on a daily basis and claim natural disasters are his wrath.

God must be neurotic, and we are cast in his image....:evilgrin: