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Re: Thoughts on Jonah (was Re: Radio Satan) and let me add pharoah to thediscussion


                peter,
thanks for taking the time for putting that together for me.  i wish so
badly my father was still here to talk to him about this...esp. your
response.  you have put so well into words my questions....and added some i
never tho't of before.  my dad believed that god is god..and lived
accordingly...he said he'd never fully understand god..but that was ok.  at
his funeral someone said dad spoke of a bumper sticker that reads "god said
it, i believe it. that settles it." but that dad changed it to "god said
it. that settles it."  as a person given free will...i'm not sure how
easily i can accept it.  i live in a conservative area...and many preach
hell-fire & brimstone..and that questioning the bible is a sin.  but i
can't accept that...i can't accept that god put us on this earth with this
ability to question & doubt...and didn't allow us the freedom to exercise
it.  thanks for stating my tho'ts so eloquently.

                          ..................twila




................

First, re: verses 17 and 22-24, I don't much cotton to the idea that any
one of us might have been "prepared for destruction" just so God can show
off his power, or just so everyone else can be grateful that God didn't
destroy *them*.  Second, re: verses 14-18, Paul's logic seems a bit off
when he tries to defend God against the charge of making arbitrary
decisions by saying that God makes his decisions, well, arbitrarily.

Third, re: verses 19-22, there is a significant difference between people
and lumps of clay.  Lumps of clay do not have sentience and cannot talk
back, while people do, and can.  But if you look at one of the Isaiah
passages that Paul alludes to, it seems that Paul was, indeed, working
from a point of view which basically equated people with clay:

  ..............

So here, both clay and children serve as metaphors for the idea that God
can do with his creations whatever he wants.  But we no longer accept the
idea that children have no intrinsic rights or dignity of their own; in
our culture, it is generally accepted that parents have a responsibility
to their children, simply by virtue of bringing them into the world.  So
the idea that we cannot question or disapprove of our Heavenly Parent's
plans for us does not ring true to us the way it might have rung true to
the ancient Israelites.  True, we cannot "order" God around, because we
simply haven't got the power to enforce our "orders", but that doesn't
mean we have to meekly accept everything he does.  Witness Job.

And this, of course, takes us back to _A.I._, and to the question of what
responsibility a creator may have towards his/her creations.  ("In the
beginning," says Professor Hobby, "didn't God create Adam to love *him*?"
Implicit in Hobby's remark is that God had no moral obligations to Adam,
and thus, we have no moral obligations to any of our own creations.)

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---





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