God makes mistakes?

[Sharptee]

I have a question and would appreciate your thoughts on the matter. We know that God exists outside of time and space. We know that God knows and sees the beginning and the end of time. Then how do we understand the following verses?

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them".

When I read these verses I am always struck with the uncomfortable thoughts that God didn't really foresee the wickeness in man. And that the exceeding sinfulness took God by surprize and now He had to go back and erase everything and start over. Now I know that is not what happen. God is all knowing and all seeing, but how do you find God's attributes in these verses that make Him look like He made a mistake ?????

 

[Darren]

A very interesting question indeed friend.

Firstly, before this discussion even gets anywhere, we have to remember that there are some things that we will not know until we sit down at the big feast with God and someone asks the question "so what was ...... all about?". In all our seeking and discussion, do not let yourself get so confused that you no longer know God. Be content to say occasionally that there are just some things i will not understand...... yet! Praise God always!

Okay, that said, I will try to give you my opinion. There is something that a lot of us find it hard to get our head around, and it is called 'free will'. Basically, some people seem to have found the paradox, that if God created man, then he has already decided all the decisions in our life. I decided to sit down at my desk today. Some would argue that I didn't have the choice, God already decided it for me, it was my destiny!, albeit that my decision was based upon a set of circumstances and experiences. However, I would challenge such arguments. Whilst God can lead you a particular way (like a parent would influence a child), the ultimate decision is still yours. And yes, even though he made every single part of me, including all the atoms and electrical impulses that tell me to move my muscles or that i make decisions with, i still have the ultimate decision; free will.

Okay, Darren. So where are you going with this. You have not answered the question! Basically, although i assume God can know the future, he still wanted to give us free will. In a way, things didn't have to be this way. He put a power in our hands that made things no longer under his control. He could have made us more 'robot' like which means there would have been no mistake. But he didn't! We have an amazing power, which is why things went wrong!

We chose to do what was evil and wrong, and the Lord dispised it. It made him angry, and it 'grieved' him.

As for the origin of good and bad. Well that is a different dicussion.

Any ideas comments??

Love in Christ, (the one who knows all the answers!)
Darren.

 

[Optimus_P]

NASB Gen 6:5
5 The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth-men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air-for I am grieved that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord .

IMHO

I dont think God made a mistake createing man. but it would make you sad to know that your childrean choose to abandon you and not follow and do as you say. This is a good question on the omni(insert many differnt endings) powers of God. I am reading this verse over and over and over again and it really does make you think. The only thing I can come up with at the current time is.....

Altho God could have forseen the errors in man, He tried to show them the proper path through the forest, they detered and they zaged when they should have zigged. Doing as they had done, it was now time for punishment. Now that brings up the question on freewill vs. predestin path. This at the current time i havent an answer for. But that is for another topic.

But to say God makes mistakes I could not accept that. For God to make mistakes lowers him to our status, which IMHOO i could not accept any teachings of that nature, and would consider it blasphamy.

 

[DINGO]

God is the Originator.

His plans are perfect. All of them. Ya, we cant know what was in th mind of God when He did His stuff, so we're left with speculation. I do believe that everything God does, or has done, has been to the promotion of His Son Christ.

Think about it. Were there no flood, then would be no Noahic covenent, which was prerequisite to the Abrahamic...

Both of which are fulfilled in Christ.

The flood is a picture of the cleansing of sin through our baptism into Christ. As the world was cleansed, so are we.

The flood also point to our need for a savior as does the Law. If your into dispensationalism you know that man was governed by his conciense alone preflood, and they failed miserably.

Point is that God makes no mistakes. Not with the flood. Not with the Law. Not with Judas.

They are all in His plans, which are all motivated by His love for His Son. Above all things, I believe, that God wants the success of His Son and causes everything that happens in light of that goal.

 

[JohnR7]

>>God is all knowing and all seeing

Do you check up on your wife at work? Do you sneak around and try and catch her in the act of being unfaithful to her husband? No of course not, you trust her. It's the same thing with God, He wants us to trust Him, and He trusted man. He trusted Adam and Eve. Could He have looked and seen that Adam and Eve were going to betray His trust? Yes, He could have, but He did not look into their future. The reason is, that it would have been a lack of trust on His part, to sneak around like that and look into their future to see if the would remain faithful or not.

Also, you stoped where the Bible says that Noah found favor with God. He could have let the people live out their natural life and saw to it that they did not reproduce anymore. But God has a reason why He does things the way He does. It is not because He is against man, but rather because He is for man. He is redeeming mankind. He did that by using Noah and Noah's decendants to populate the earth. Who knows how much worse things would be if God had not done that.

There are rich people who breed horses, tell they come up with one horse worth maybe a million dollars. But along the way, there are a lot of horses that they do not allow to breed or reproduce. Now I do not fully know the difference between a millon dollar horse and one they may give away for peanuts, but they know the difference, they know what they are after. When they get their million dollar horse all the others do not matter anymore. They go with that one, and that is the one they reproduce. God found His man with Noah, and that was who God wanted to go with. Later on, God found His man with Abraham, and that was who God wanted to go with. Both were just men, and both had faith, and both found favor with God.

I am glad that God is not looking around for ways I may fail Him. But that He is there for me to help me in everyway to be the best I can be and to be a person who is well pleasing to Him. Thanks, JohnR7

 

[dissenter]

First off the word "repenteth" is not an appropriate trranslation. I'm not sure where that came from. The word "greived" in a quote in one of the responses, is far better.
I think that God knew that man would sin and reject him. He knew that man would do it again and knew that Christ would be necessary to save man. This was all done in foreknowledge. Why? Well, If you think about it, there's a certain satisfaction that God has from a person chooseing to belive in Him. Imagine a bunch of pupets that praise God all day long. That would be really boring. I think God made man, KNOWING that man would reject Him, but knowing that a few would accept Him. That was worth it. It makes me all the more thankful to realize that God made me knowing that I would reject Him until I came to faith. I thank God that he puts up with man's general rejection, because it gives those of us that accept Him, eternal life. So I think that makes it worth it.

 

[blood-bought]

Passages like these have definitely bewildered me along the way as well. And still do.

The passage I always seem to end up resolving things like this with is this one:

Isa 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
Isa 55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Our true existence lies in the spirit world. What appears to us to be a mistake or a calamity in the physical might possibly be the perfect thing to happen in the spirit. This is just my own little tid bit. No scriptural reference.