Fish,
I said goodbye to the forums a while back, and still intend to maintain my absence for the most part. However I do stop by from time to time just to see whats going on. I could not restrain myself from responding to this thread.
First I must preface all that I say with the statement that I do not presume to judge the state of your spirit or soul, or your eternal fate, and I do not do so for fear that I should underestimate the grace and mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
However, the view that you have expressed thus far is in no way "christian". It is, in fact, the very opposite of christian. The root of what you have expressed is exactly the same as the original sin that seperated our race from God and brought death upon us.
The basic temptation offered to Adam and Eve by the serpent was that they could become their own gods, knowing good and evil for themselves, apart from God. It is often thought, vainly, by humanists and gnostics that God sought to with hold knowledge from Adam and Eve by forbidding the tree. This is not so. God was giving knowledge to them, the only issue was what would be the source and measure of their knowledge.
In the conversation of Eve and the Serpent it is evident that she knew it was wrong and evil to eat of the tree.. she did not sin from niavity or ignorance, but willfully in a desire to have knowledge apart from God, and to be equal with God.
Furthermore, the result of this sin is unavoidable when you consider the teaching of the whole of scripture. God is holy utterly and completely holy.. this means he is entirely pure. The concept of holiness is something the bible also refers to as "singleness" or "oneness" in modern terms we might call it homogeneous. It is impossible for there to be anything within God which is contrary to God, or even other than God.
thus, when adam and eve chose to have knowledge apart from God, in an act of disobedience, which was an act of seperating their will from God's.. the unavodiably seperated themselves from God. Cut themselves off from communion with him, from his life, from his goodness, love, mercy etc. This can be seen as punnishment, but more so it is simply the result, the necessary consequence of their action.
We being in the likeness and image of God still have a semblance of what He is, we have a semblance of life, a semblance of goodness, of love, of mercy and so on but it is marred and ruined. That is the state of our mortality, and that is what Christ came to fix.
Now, when you say that you do not believe God to be just, or his actions to be just you are holding God to a standard. Gtsecc attempted to make a very valid true point that apart from an almighty God, there is no standard. Thus the action of holding God to a standard, aside from being unwise, is also illogical. If you attempt to hold God to a standard there are only two options to choose from.. either you make yourself the standard (which is merely a repetition of the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden) or you believe that there is a standard apart from God which is higher than God.
In the first case, you make youself the standard (which is the recourse of secular humanism and ethical atheists) it is really just an exercise in illogical reasoning. For if there is a God, and we are his creations, for us to dictate to God is the lower attempting to criticize the higher. Whatever true knowledge of justice we have as creations must come from God.. how then can we hope to justly criticize him? If on the other hand there is no God, then there is also no over arching morality, no such thing as right and wrong.. only expedient or not expedient, doable, or not doable, able, or not able.
In order for there to be anything other than "might makes right" there must be an over arching all knowing, all just, all authoritative God who decrees from himself what justice is, what right is... because with out that there is only each person's prefrence and their ability to force their prefrence on others. So the only way to avoid "might makes right" is for there to be a God like the God of the bible.. and if there is such a God, you not only have not right to hold him to account, it is impossible and absurd for you to think that you could do so justly as he himself is the source and standard of all justice.
If you opt for the second case and believe that there is a standard apart from God, and above God, that standard must have arisen from some source, it must be backed by some authority through which it governs both you and God.. where-ever it derives from, and derives its authority from would be in essense the real God.. thus all you are doing is arguing that one god is false and there must be a different higher God.
However, in your discussion thus far you have given no source other than yourself for your convictions of morality and justice thus it would seem that the reality is that you are exalting yourself to godhood by exalting your standard of morality and justive above or at least equal to God Most High. That brings us back around full circle to the garden of Eden and our original sin.
The heart of all sin, of all human evil is the exaltation of our own will above God, of our own standards above God. It is that act which seperates us from God and it is primarily that attitude and act which the grace of Christ directs us to purge from our soul.
The process of santification, salvation of the soul, is entirely bound up with the submission of our will to God's will.. submitting our will, our thoughts, our beliefs, everything that we are to Him. This is the path that Christ offers us, he will accomplish this work in us, but we must be willing to submit.. willing to give up will. It is only on this path to which Christ is the gate, that we may find communion with God.
