Digging in to the CRC

I have to start with my belief in God according to sin/evil/pain/suffering. Again, I feel this is important because of how pulled i have been to it. this has been the largest reason for my questioning religion as i knew it. This is nothing new. This problem of evil has gone down throughout history as a reason for many conversions to atheism, agnosticism etc. I am unwilling to give up. As I said in the previous post. I have chosen my belief in God, and that is where i begin. The problem of evil is not one that compells me to lose belief in a God simply strive to understand that this god is not what i have always been taught.

The CRC's belief, as well as I know it is: God created the world (God is all powerful). God created the world sinless and good (God is holy and loving), God is in control of everything (God is sovereign). The fall occured only because God allowed it. The CRC seems to use this idea to make God blameless of sin being in this world. This is the heart of the problem. How can God be all powerful but not be the sole reason for sin being in this world?

The added problem with saying that God allowed/enabled/created sin, is to accept the idea that God wants little susie to get raped every night from her drunk violent father until one night he kills her. We cannot accept this because God is a Loving God, a Just God or at least that is what we want God to be. Here we come to another place where I had to make a decision. My decision was one that aspires hope for this world and for little susie's death. My choice is for God to be loving AND all powerful.

my struggle was... why is there 'sin'? Why does little susie have that constant pain and suffering? Couldn't this loving God that is all powerful come up with a better way for us to live? A thought is... yeah, a world that has no sin. Often, people respond to a world that has no sin as a bad place to live because we don't have the choice to choose God. First, I have trouble believing that God would put susie in that situation so that her father could have the choice of God or his little daughter. Second. "Free-will is something that is good; a gift from God. Without it we would all be robots." Bull Shit. what do we call heaven than? Somehow this connection gets lost when people think about free-will being what makes our relationship with the creator real. The all powerful creator, could have... and potentially did... create a world with no free-will that is good. Heaven.

This realization did not push me into belief of heaven, but just for our creator to have the ability to create a place i had always heard was 'robot-like'. This is not an acceptable reason for sin to be a good thing; "so we can value God more". I believe if heaven exists, we will value the creator very much there.

Damn it. this is getting too long. I will pause here. re-read. re-think. re-organize.

Base premises (or whatever the plural for premise is)

Okay, so it has been four score and hella time since i have posted on this thing but here is the story. someone recently got me interested in blogspot again, and so i found my old blog and began reading through some of my old posts. How awesome this tool is for recording our transitions and movements through this world. With that said i explain my gameplan for returning to posting. I intend to respond to where i left off. before my most recent trivial post, i posed some serious questions about this world, primarily pertaining to religion. Well, in my head, i have come to some conclusions for these posts. My intent here is to explain my worldview, how i came to it and why i have gotten here.

Now, i should also say that this is not set in stone. i guess my first premise in my "worldview" is that we are always learning/growing, and strengthening our "position" (if you will). I don't expect many to read these, but i ask that if you have questions or struggles with anything that i post, that you comment. I am in no way stuck to my beliefs and in all honesty I am not entirely happy with how it all works out in my head. i welcome someone to prove me wrong and show me a way to a happier (or just different) point of view. I will try my best to comprehend (as my developing brain can handle) and add to my thoughts what you comment.

One last thing. I will try to keep these posts relatively short. I don't want anyone intimidated or frustrated with the time necessary to dedicate to reading these.

Okay here is where I begin. 88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

I will begin with the beginning. (seems like a good place to start). There are a few things I have "chosen" to believe. These things I believe are not provable and debate on them just leads to circles, frustration, and eventually 'thought defeat'.

I believe in a God, a Creator of all things, the all powerful. - this goes into more of my childhood and up-bringing. it is much more comfortable for me to accept the idea of something/someone being at the beginning than the opposite, which seems at a glimpse so desolate and scary. Also, looking through history it seems that many cultures have set foundational priciples on this belief. Whether it be for proof, political reasons, or just plain moral, I really don't care. I feel, at least, that my hope for this world is greater when this belief is accepted.

This Creator did not/has not changed. - This is a widely accepted belief of the CRC, which made me question it. However, it would be quite pointless to discuss a God that would change all of the time. Think about it, that is true.

I believe that Creator to be good. - Not all "good" as the CRC tends to shove. The Creator was willing to create wrong/evil/pain for the strength of a "greater good" (this is not what you are thinking and I will explain it more later). These are huge ideas and I will probably warrant much of many posts explaining what these mean. Long story short, I chose to believe that this Creator choses for the world to be as shitty as it is (if you question my struggles with this world's shittiness and haven't read my previous posts, i urge you to read, to gain an empathy for my position on this world being insanely shitty).

Well that is all you get for this post. 1. this post has to be a reasonable length, 2. i want to develope my thoughts into words better 3. hopefully this leaves you with some questions, and myself as well, which will keep you, the reader, interested as well as myself, the writer. 4. tomorrow morning at 8:30 work begins again and that is in 7 hours from now, so only 6 for sleeping.

Again, give me support, rip me down, ask me a question, just let this be a discussion. I want to learn from this, hopefully you can help me do that and maybe learn a little yourself. :)

night