That was a concise refresher, thank you.
Understood. Yes, if you don't believe that God knows what will happen, the story of the Flood and many other stories make a lot more sense. And I have not found a scripture that really supports total omniscience. Just things that say He knows more than we can understand or measure.
Ok, I think I see the problem here. God allowing and God willing are two very different things. God allows many things that aren't his will because he wants a real relationship with people. If he forces his will on us, that's not a relationship, it's just slavery. God wills that we be conformed to the image of Jesus. But we, in our own will, obstruct that process. It doesn't stop being God's will because he allows us to sin.
Thanks. And thank you for your patience with me. This is a concept I struggle to understand. Because if God can and does intervene, not intervening becomes something He actively chooses, right? I think I can make sense of it if God set everything in motion without foreknowledge and the power to change things. But once those items are introduced, I just can't grasp how everything that happens isn't His will. Granting that his will may be to simply let things play out and all of our choices are free. If He could do otherwise, then what is is His will. I think.
I understand, I've been there.
The passages were God seems to be genuinely surprised, or regretful, or reactionary (like the one you quoted here) are what make me question this "all-knowing" or "omniscient" narrative that is so common. It makes it seem like God can make a mistake, which to a lot of folks would be a blasphemous statement.
That makes sense. I cannot square an all-knowing and all-powerful God with Free Will. Though, if I can be honest, I haven't found a scenario where absolute Free Will can exist. But that's another topic. Thanks for your perspective!
It seems to me the text is telling us the answer to that actually(!) --
Ah, yes, a key question. There's an answer, but a first part is just considering that of course a real freedom means of course freedom to do evil as well as freedom to do good. A freedom to do only good would be an illusory freedom or faked freedom. And, for love to be possible, as we know it, a real freedom of individual response is required. So, for love to be possible, evil must come into existence, and there's not any other way. We have to learn about evil, or to trust God basically, to help us be able to live in an eternal life without just eventually sliding down into conflict and then war or murder eventually, and so on. (and scripture seems to tell us there was in fact a war in heaven and that's how the brightest of the angels fell. It was from not trusting God, ultimately. If he had trusted God, then the situation would have went differently instead of sliding into conflict, we can surmise.)
Right. Do you then believe that things didn't go according to His plan? Does regret imply that God made a mistake? If not a mistake, then was the outcome of "only evil" "all of the time" and the Flood simply a necessary course that had to be taken for what He wanted to accomplish from the very beginning?It seems to me the text is telling us the answer to that actually(!) --
5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.
At first it's hard to really take it in, and the words can slip past unless we really look... "every inclination" !.... "only evil" !.... "all the time" !.... (it's so extreme)
That means...zero love. None at all. Not even sometimes.
6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.
There's your answer.
7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”
8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
(whew!)
We're still here.
So, as you can see, God gave us a genuine freedom (and that of course means we can do actual evil as well as good!).
You might be interested in posts #34 and#37, addressing some key questions/aspects also.
Some additional aspects: God can easily see what direction an individual is heading in and there's a foreknowledge of a key kind: to know where someone is going -- what the outcome is over time -- if they don't change course.
Thanks for this. I was replying to your other post but it only sort of addresses things as I've never asked why evil exists or why doesn't God stop evil. I'm not interested in that question. I'm asking if when God created man He knew what was going to happen and that The Flood would be necessary from the very beginning. From this reply I don't think that's what you believe. Mostly just that He would need to rescue us at some point.
