Why would God create a flawed creation?

[JGG]

1) Choice always involves two options (at the very least). If we are created to love God unconditionally and created to choose only goodness, there are no options to begin with. In that scenario, we are not free will beings but are rather programmed robots.

Let's say that's true. What of it? You're about to tell me that God's love needs recipients. Why not programmed beings?

On the other hand, the result is a situation where God is required to have His followers coerce people into loving a God they don't believe in by promusing threats of hell or rewards of heaven. Is that a superior way of being the recipients of God's love. I'd have gone with the robots.

2) Simply because God's love need recipients. Love needs to be communicated to another party for it to have any meaning.

I'm a widower. Don't try to tell me that love is meaningless because I can't communicate it to my wife. Your premise is just wrong.

God does not need to be loved, rather we respond to His love by loving Him back (or in the case of the damned, hating Him).

If God does not to be loved why does God demand we love Him?

 

[JGG]

If God is love and needs a recipient of His love, what was God before we came along?

 

[Dave Ellis]

1) Choice always involves two options (at the very least). If we are created to love God unconditionally and created to choose only goodness, there are no options to begin with. In that scenario, we are not free will beings but are rather programmed robots.

Do we have free will in heaven?

 

[WoundedDeep]

So God needs something (to be loved)?

God needs to express His love, and He can't do it if there is no one to express love to. His creation is that which He expresses love to.

 

[WoundedDeep]

Let's say that's true. What of it? You're about to tell me that God's love needs recipients. Why not programmed beings?

On the other hand, the result is a situation where God is required to have His followers coerce people into loving a God they don't believe in by promusing threats of hell or rewards of heaven. Is that a superior way of being the recipients of God's love. I'd have gone with the robots.

Leave aside how God intends to bring people to accept His love and follow Him first, and consider on a laymen level, if your love partner is a robot and could only respond to you in one way, what would you think your love mean to her? Do you really think that love can mean something and be deeply appreciated by a recipient if right from the beginning, they have no ability to respond according to their choices? Are not people more appreciative of a love that they can freely evaluate its worth and choose for themselves to accept or reject?

As for your description of the situation, it is wholly inaccurate. The fact is, true love is not void of justice or righteousness. While God is love, He is also a moral being who has laws for His creation. The reason people are damned is far more than just because they choose to reject God's love, but by rejecting God's love which in itself demands justice and righteousness, they choose to sin and go against laws instituted by God for the benefit of mankind. God has already revealed to us that not a single human throughout the generations since Adam's fall is free from sin (except Jesus Christ), therefore everyone is judged guilty under God's law. The very first sin of mankind was committed in Garden of Eden in the form of pride whereby Eve, beguiled by the serpent, think of herself being able to attain to knowledge and become a god by eating from the forbidden tree. It is sin which causes people to perish and become damned, and this is a natural result of rejecting God's love and counsel. Why? Because in this world there are only 2 choices, either you choose what is good and live, or you choose what is evil and die. If you reject God who is the source of goodness, what do you expect to receive then? Evil and death no doubt.

And what you perceive as threats of heaven and hell are nothing more than a depiction of the reality of what your choice means and what consequences it brings. Would you rather God leave you completely unaware what your choices mean for your future? Or do you want to know beforehand so that though it sounds unpleasant you can make a wiser choice than if you were kept in the dark? No mortal can force you to choose against your will, but you do have the right to know the consequences so that you are able to responsibly choose for yourself what you want.

I'm a widower. Don't try to tell me that love is meaningless because I can't communicate it to my wife. Your premise is just wrong.

I'm sorry that you have lost your wife, but I have no idea why you took my words personally though it is pretty clear my words are not meant to insult or diminish your love since I do not know your predicament. My reasoning is simple: that love needs a recipient to bring about its effects. Yet it is a very human reasoning and complicated questions like those you've asked can only be speculated.

If God does not to be loved why does God demand we love Him?

God does not demand us to love Him, demand implies force or compulsion but God does not compel or He would not have given us ability to choose. The Gospels clearly said that we love God because He loved us first. Those who choose to love God is merely reciprocating the love He gave beforehand when Jesus died for their sins.

If God is love and needs a recipient of His love, what was God before we came along?

Not sure what you mean here, but God is God and has never changed.

 

[WoundedDeep]

Do we have free will in heaven?

When sin is finally put away, free will is no longer needed because everyone would have already made the choices of good or evil. It doesn't make sense for us to forever be choosing and wavering between our choices. One day choosing has to stop and we have to finalize our decisions. That's when God's judgment comes.

 

[juvenissun]

So God needs something (to be loved)?

God wants to see something．

 

[GoldenBoy89]

God needs to express His love, and He can't do it if there is no one to express love to. His creation is that which He expresses love to.

So the question remains....

What was God doing for an eternity before His creation of love recipients?

 

[Dave Ellis]

God needs to express His love, and He can't do it if there is no one to express love to. His creation is that which He expresses love to.

He has a very strange way of showing love....

 

[Dave Ellis]

When sin is finally put away, free will is no longer needed because everyone would have already made the choices of good or evil. It doesn't make sense for us to forever be choosing and wavering between our choices. One day choosing has to stop and we have to finalize our decisions. That's when God's judgment comes.

So we're all robots in heaven? I thought everyone was saying how that'd be a bad thing on earth? Why is it a good thing in heaven?

Why not create everyone like that initially?

 

[ViaCrucis]

God needs to express His love, and He can't do it if there is no one to express love to. His creation is that which He expresses love to.

This would indicate God is incomplete and is in need of something else in order to be complete.

As such this seems deeply problematic to me.

Of course historic, orthodox Christianity understands God as a Trinity of Hypostases. This means that God needs none other than God to love, and this love does not become "selfish". Namely that there is the Father who loves the Son, the Son who loves the Father, and the bond of that love, the Holy Spirit.

The Trinitarian view comprehends that the Divine Being is a "community" of love. There is "One and the Other" Love given and Love received; Love reciprocated. This is God's perichoresis, the dynamic movement and inter-coinhering, the Father pouring Himself out to the Son, the Son pouring Himself back to the Father, and the Spirit flowing, moving, between Father and Son. In this to say "God is love" does not necessitate a necessary and separate other (e.g. creation) to become the recipient of the Divine Love; it instead means that this Love is complete unto itself within the communion of the Three Hypostases sharing and possessing One Another, having one Being, Essence, and Existence.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[WoundedDeep]

So we're all robots in heaven? I thought everyone was saying how that'd be a bad thing on earth? Why is it a good thing in heaven?

Why not create everyone like that initially?

No, robots can never choose, they function by a set of protocols and nothing more. Coming to a decision (ie. stopping the process of choosing) is not robotic, if decisions are never made things can never be done in the first place.

 

[WoundedDeep]

So the question remains....

What was God doing for an eternity before His creation of love recipients?

No human knows that, I'm afraid.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

This would indicate God is incomplete and is in need of something else in order to be complete.

As such this seems deeply problematic to me.

Of course historic, orthodox Christianity understands God as a Trinity of Hypostases. This means that God needs none other than God to love, and this love does not become "selfish". Namely that there is the Father who loves the Son, the Son who loves the Father, and the bond of that love, the Holy Spirit.

The Trinitarian view comprehends that the Divine Being is a "community" of love. There is "One and the Other" Love given and Love received; Love reciprocated. This is God's perichoresis, the dynamic movement and inter-coinhering, the Father pouring Himself out to the Son, the Son pouring Himself back to the Father, and the Spirit flowing, moving, between Father and Son. In this to say "God is love" does not necessitate a necessary and separate other (e.g. creation) to become the recipient of the Divine Love; it instead means that this Love is complete unto itself within the communion of the Three Hypostases sharing and possessing One Another, having one Being, Essence, and Existence.

-CryptoLutheran

Of course other Christians find this explanation problematic by itself, taking it to mean polytheism.

 

[WoundedDeep]

This would indicate God is incomplete and is in need of something else in order to be complete.

As such this seems deeply problematic to me.

That is why I repeatedly say that I might not be 100% correct and even if I am correct in what I say, I might not have brought it across in a right manner. You can easily see that the questions asked are way beyond what God had revealed in the Word and are actually not really our concerns as what is really our concern is God's message of salvation.

God is certainly not incomplete, but if God desires to show His various attributes and His nature, who is He going to show them to if He is all alone?

 

[WoundedDeep]

He has a very strange way of showing love....

That perception stems from lack of understanding, and in many ways, I also don't understand fully. But ultimately we all know from observation that there is good and evil in this world and history are filled with people from all walks of life, including philosophers, who through careful study and seeking of uncompromising truth, come to the realization of a single Creator who is the source of life and everything good and revere Him.

 

[WoundedDeep]

Of course historic, orthodox Christianity understands God as a Trinity of Hypostases. This means that God needs none other than God to love, and this love does not become "selfish". Namely that there is the Father who loves the Son, the Son who loves the Father, and the bond of that love, the Holy Spirit.

The Trinitarian view comprehends that the Divine Being is a "community" of love. There is "One and the Other" Love given and Love received; Love reciprocated. This is God's perichoresis, the dynamic movement and inter-coinhering, the Father pouring Himself out to the Son, the Son pouring Himself back to the Father, and the Spirit flowing, moving, between Father and Son. In this to say "God is love" does not necessitate a necessary and separate other (e.g. creation) to become the recipient of the Divine Love; it instead means that this Love is complete unto itself within the communion of the Three Hypostases sharing and possessing One Another, having one Being, Essence, and Existence.

-CryptoLutheran

This is the first time I have seen this interpretation, but in a way I acknowledge that God prefers community rather than solitude. He does not desire to be alone but rather have a family of His own. Since we are created in His image, we share this desire for community and familyhood. Therefore I believe that God creates us because He desires a family that involves us as His children, and it is evident in Scriptures that God calls His own people His children.

God is complete through and through, if my words seem to imply otherwise I apologise. What I mean is God creates things for a purpose, to show His love/attributes/nature and to have a family of His own. Is He incomplete because of that? By no means.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

a flawed one trumps none, and all must be flawed, for God alone is one.

 

[Dave Ellis]

No, robots can never choose, they function by a set of protocols and nothing more. Coming to a decision (ie. stopping the process of choosing) is not robotic, if decisions are never made things can never be done in the first place.

However, what you're saying is once you're in heaven you no longer have the capacity to change your mind. That means you lose the ability to choose, and therefore turn from a sentient being with free will into a robot per se.

Basically what your argument leads to is that we have the ability to choose to become robots in heaven, or maintain our free will and go to hell.

 

[WoundedDeep]

However, what you're saying is once you're in heaven you no longer have the capacity to change your mind. That means you lose the ability to choose, and therefore turn from a sentient being with free will into a robot per se.

Basically what your argument leads to is that we have the ability to choose to become robots in heaven, or maintain our free will and go to hell.

No one knows what happens in heaven, but you totally misunderstood what I was trying to say. During our time on earth, the biggest choices with eternal consequences are to choose for God or against Him. Once that choice is made, it is made once and for all. You will no longer need to make that choice once sin is taken away, and certainly it makes no sense for one issue of for God or against God to forever be "in the process of choosing".

Do I then imply there are no choosing in heaven? No, I never said that. All I am saying is the choice of good and evil stops once God's judgment comes - that is one single issue I'm talking about. Don't we as humans now make choices every single day, such as going to which university, taking up which job? Once we choose a university and graduate from it, do we still continue to choose universities? No. Does that now make us robots? No, because choosing university is only a single issue in our life. God intended to make us eternal beings, but choosing good and evil is the very first step in His plan for us. We have to make a decision and then move onto the next step God plans for us. Does it make sense for us to forever be stuck in the first step of choosing good and evil?