The Relevance of Creation Doctrine Today

[mindlight]

Are there built-in limits to our existence that we need to respect?

Can gender or sexuality, for example, be a fluid concept? Can we abuse the planet without consequence? In an age where people obsess over superheroes on TV are there limits to our humanity that we need to respect? If God created us in his image whether quickly or slowly what limits has he imposed on us as finite, mortal beings who know only a little of what is out there?

Is respecting medical advice respecting how we are made and the limits that that configuration imposes on us. Or is medical advice now politicized by ideology and profit into something else? We cannot live by chocolate alone. Can a profession that profits from transitioning and abortion be trusted?

Have we lost sight of the boundaries offered to us by the doctrine of Creation?

Did sin fundamentally alter our relationship with Creation in such a way that the old boundaries are now beyond repair and destined to degenerate further?

This is not a specifically Creationist topic. I invite anybody who believes that God created the universe to participate however you think he did that.

 

[Jonaitis]

Are there built-in limits to our existence that we need to respect?

Can gender or sexuality, for example, be a fluid concept? Can we abuse the planet without consequence? In an age where people obsess over superheroes on TV are there limits to our humanity that we need to respect? If God created us in his image whether quickly or slowly what limits has he imposed on us as finite, mortal beings who know only a little of what is out there?

Is respecting medical advice respecting how we are made and the limits that that configuration imposes on us. Or is medical advice now politicized by ideology and profit into something else? We cannot live by chocolate alone. Can a profession that profits from transitioning and abortion be trusted?

Have we lost sight of the boundaries offered to us by the doctrine of Creation?

Did sin fundamentally alter our relationship with Creation in such a way that the old boundaries are now beyond repair and destined to degenerate further?

This is not a specifically Creationist topic. I invite anybody who believes that God created the universe to participate however you think he did that.

I believe it is safe to say that the creation doctrine can be understood directly via natural revelation, because, well, the light of nature openly teaches us some pretty important truths. If there are naturally two sexes of our species, then there must only be two gender identities, which is set. We can certainly find this applied to in many cultures where each creation doctrine is different. Marriage is still respected. Responsibility is still regarded. Etc, etc. When it comes to salvific issues, then we may need special or spiritual revelation to guide our feet.

 

[mindlight]

I believe it is safe to say that the creation doctrine can be understood directly via natural revelation, because, well, the light of nature openly teaches us some pretty important truths. If there are naturally two sexes of our species, then there must only be two gender identities, which is set. We can certainly find this applied to in many cultures where each creation doctrine is different. Marriage is still respected. Responsibility is still regarded. Etc, etc. When it comes to salvific issues, then we may need special or spiritual revelation to guide our feet.

You are suggesting that we can look at a broad range of cultures and see that there is a settled agreement about something like gender. But a great many in the world today do not look on that general level and suggest that God works with individuals and that it is the exceptional circumstances of this part of creation that are the preeminent considerations. In other words, the natural order defines no boundaries because 'God made me gay' or a 'woman in a man's body.' Do you think that a scientific affirmation of general patterns overcomes that criticism? Does the doctrine of Creation i.e. that God made us give us sufficient detail to allow for limits to human existence?

 

[Jonaitis]

You are suggesting that we can look at a broad range of cultures and see that there is a settled agreement about something like gender. But a great many in the world today do not look on that general level and suggest that God works with individuals and that it is the exceptional circumstances of this part of creation that are the preeminent considerations. In other words, the natural order defines no boundaries because God made me gay or a woman in a man's body. Do you think that a scientific affirmation of general patterns overcomes that criticism? Does the doctrine of Creation i.e. that God made us give us sufficient detail to allow for limits to human existence?

I'm suggesting that God provides insight via natural revelation, and that these different cultures often exhibit this truth.

I don't know how to answer your other questions.

 

[Tolworth John]

Did sin fundamentally alter our relationship with Creation in such a way that the old boundaries are now beyond repair and destined to degenerate further?

The calvanistic teaching of total depravity comes to mind. Christianity is salt and light to a dying world and we are seeing the effects of a decreasing influence of Christianity.

 

[eleos1954]

Are there built-in limits to our existence that we need to respect?

Can gender or sexuality, for example, be a fluid concept? Can we abuse the planet without consequence? In an age where people obsess over superheroes on TV are there limits to our humanity that we need to respect? If God created us in his image whether quickly or slowly what limits has he imposed on us as finite, mortal beings who know only a little of what is out there?

Is respecting medical advice respecting how we are made and the limits that that configuration imposes on us. Or is medical advice now politicized by ideology and profit into something else? We cannot live by chocolate alone. Can a profession that profits from transitioning and abortion be trusted?

Have we lost sight of the boundaries offered to us by the doctrine of Creation?

Did sin fundamentally alter our relationship with Creation in such a way that the old boundaries are now beyond repair and destined to degenerate further?

This is not a specifically Creationist topic. I invite anybody who believes that God created the universe to participate however you think he did that.

we are to guard against deception ... and there is a lot of deception going on ... Jesus is our example of how we were intended (originally created) to conduct our lives .... the only way to guard against deception is through understanding and following the precepts as taught in His Word.

John 17:17

New King James Version
Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.

The world is in decline and will continue to do so until His return.

Romans 8:22

King James Bible
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

whole creation ... all of it.

 

[mindlight]

The calvanistic teaching of total depravity comes to mind. Christianity is salt and light to a dying world and we are seeing the effects of a decreasing influence of Christianity.

The western world perhaps but much of the rest of the world is experiencing Christian growth. But agreed, a man without God tends to decline and sinful dissolution, and that is what we are seeing in many Western countries. In such a state of deceived darkness, moral relativism prevails and all sorts of sins are concealed and nurtured by the grey toxic fog.

 

[mindlight]

we are to guard against deception ... and there is a lot of deception going on ... Jesus is our example of how we were intended (originally created) to conduct our lives .... the only way to guard against deception is through understanding and following the precepts as taught in His Word.

John 17:17

New King James Version
Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.

The world is in decline and will continue to do so until His return.

Romans 8:22

King James Bible
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

whole creation ... all of it.

You seem to suggest that creation is doomed and that only a focus on Christ can restore the church to right thinking and truth. I agree with this but so also I think we can learn things from the doctrine of creation, from the ways in which God formed, filled, and then sustained his creation which can be instructive to our lives. This is not a distraction from Christ since all things were made through Him and He Himself walked gently but with great authority through the natural world. There is both transcendence and sensitivity in his example. He carved the wood, as a carpenter, into things that people could use. He was no stranger to the secrets of the human heart or the sporadic fruitfulness of fig trees which he used by way of an example in one of his proclamations. Jesus saw the natural world and felt its rhythms of hunger and thirst and the pains unleashed into it by sickness and malpractice.

So there are things that creation itself and our Lord's interaction with it that can tutor us here. When a man tells me he is a woman because he chooses to think like that then his biological reality screams to me that he is lying to me and to himself. His identity was not of his own creation and cannot be unmade by his own decision into something that it is not. He is a creature of God and God made him with certain attributes including gender.

 

[Diamond7]

Can gender or sexuality, for example, be a fluid concept?

Why do we have gender? Why did God make us male and female: Adam and Eve? He divided so we could be united in Him. The Rabbi calls this to run and return. Just like the universe can either expand or condense. All of Creation started out the size of a dot at the end of this sentence.

 

[mindlight]

Why do we have gender? Why did God make us male and female: Adam and Eve? He divided so we could be united in Him. The Rabbi calls this to run and return. Just like the universe can either expand or condense. All of Creation started out the size of a dot at the end of this sentence.

A Godward focus on a discussion of gender renders it reasonably irrelevant to our relationship with Him and especially our salvation. There is neither man nor woman in Christ. God portrays Himself in mainly masculine imagery and incarnated as a man but clearly, the Divine substance is beyond such creaturely definitions and the temptation to anthropomorphize God should be resisted. But there was a purpose in the creation events that separated male and female and a different rationale for the creation of each gender in Genesis. In a sense together we can image God more completely than considered in isolation. We are finite creatures and the masculine and the feminine together mirror God better. In the same way, the body of Christ (the church) is made up of many parts and each complements the other in providing a more complete picture of who Jesus is.

The blurring of the boundaries between genders in defiance of biological fact and tried and tested historical analysis and basic common sense is about elevating a view of self and self-identification above any notion of the objective. Neither God nor science can apparently tell a transsexual that he is wrong. This seems delusionary to me.

I am unconvinced about Big Bang but that is another discussion.

 

[Diamond7]

I am unconvinced about Big Bang but that is another discussion.

God showed me in a dream when I was 8 years old that the universe is expanding. At some point in time it will all come back together again. Just like people are growing apart but they will all come back together again and be united as one in Christ. Trigonometry is not that difficult. That is what we use for our GPS. So the science is pretty solid that the universe is expanding. We are expanding slightly faster than the speed of light. So we can look and still see the light from the early universe back at the beginning of time. The Bible clearly tells us that there was a beginning. That is the very first word in the Hebrew Bible.

 

[Diamond7]

The calvanistic teaching of total depravity comes to mind.

Calvan, Josephs Smith, and some of the well-known Hasidic Rabbi all believe that God wanted man to disobey him.

Genesis 2:17 "but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”

They say that the statement: "in the day that you eat of it". Is a prophecy that they were going to eat from that tree. It just makes no sense to me that God tells them not to and then tells tham that they are going to.

What is so tempting about Figs that people can not resist eating them?

 

[Tolworth John]

What is so tempting about Figs that people can not resist eating them?

We are not told what fruit t was, only that it looked and smelt good. It apealled to Eve's sences, just as satan appealled to her ambition.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Are there built-in limits to our existence that we need to respect?

Can gender or sexuality, for example, be a fluid concept? Can we abuse the planet without consequence? In an age where people obsess over superheroes on TV are there limits to our humanity that we need to respect? If God created us in his image whether quickly or slowly what limits has he imposed on us as finite, mortal beings who know only a little of what is out there?

Is respecting medical advice respecting how we are made and the limits that that configuration imposes on us. Or is medical advice now politicized by ideology and profit into something else? We cannot live by chocolate alone. Can a profession that profits from transitioning and abortion be trusted?

Have we lost sight of the boundaries offered to us by the doctrine of Creation?

Did sin fundamentally alter our relationship with Creation in such a way that the old boundaries are now beyond repair and destined to degenerate further?

This is not a specifically Creationist topic. I invite anybody who believes that God created the universe to participate however you think he did that.

By limits, I'm wondering if you really mean 'built-in', since such are more than obvious. If instead you mean limits where we should not direct our pursuits or self-identity, of course there are such limits, and they are more common than we are willing to admit. Love the Lord your God with all your being, and love you neighbor as yourself are not conducive to many pursuits.