Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:04 pm
When I was a small child I was kindly indoctrinated with love for God. As I understand the God I was taught about He does not want us to go to Him because we are dead scared not to. Not a matter Hellfire of course, as you will understand ,but a matter of His creation finding its own courageous way back to Him.
I believe that is the case...except that one cannot find her "own way" to God. The Bible makes that clear enough, but even common sense will suggest it to us as well. For if God is God, then it is
HIs way we must come, not ours. The key question is not "what
seems good
to me," but "what IS right,"(according to God, who is never wrong).
To come to God is to come by faith. It's to come His way, on His terms, with a particular disposition toward Him. It's not something we can make up according to our own imaginings or expectations. He's under no obligation to please us, obviously; and if He does so, it's only by his kindness that it is so.
I am surprised you think it is the easier choice to be agnostic. It is much harder to live authentically and admit you know nothing.
I didn't say it was easier. I don't think it really is. But I do think it's much more reasonable than unilaterally declaring oneself an Atheist, even while admitting one has no basis on which to do so. So I would say that agnosticism is a good deal more honest than Atheism.
...unless in childhood we are deprived of them by evil men.
I understand what you are alluding to. And believe me, I'm sympathetic to that. I would tell you just why and how, but that's too personal a thing to share. But I get that.
It's interesting that fathers and father-figures are key to one's attitude toward the idea of God. There's been good research to show that's so. Bad, abusive and absentee fathering are highly correlated to youthful Atheism. It seems that much of our disposition to a divine Father is conditioned by our experiences with an earthly one. From guys like Nietzsche and Freud all the way down to guys like Hitchens and Dawkins, you'll find that most of the major Atheists had difficult relations with their fathers. It's an interesting fact: so interesting, that Atheism has been called "the faith of the fatherless."
But the two, bad male role models and Atheism, are not iron-clad correlated. It is possible for someone who has been betrayed by men to realize that God is a very different kind of Father...the kind every earthly father should have been, but perhaps wasn't. And with that realization, it's possible for somebody who's been badly hurt by evil men to overcome the wound and find the kind of Father he/she has always actually longed to have. I have seen that happen.
It is difficult for the great majority of people to understand the broad history of God from their reading The Bible...Much of the OT is unsuited to the ordinary man who is not a historian of religion, unless it is interpreted for him.
This is true. It takes years of study to grasp even the basics of some of the OT passages...and even some of the NT ones. I've been at it for a long time now, and I don't claim to have all the answers -- not nearly all, in fact. It's a deep, deep book...one can plunge into it and never find the end of its meaning. But therein lies its richness, too.
However, there's a great deal of it that is very readily accessible...so accessible that even a person of limited mental potential, like a child or a simpleton, can grasp the basic message and be saved. And really, it's very gracious of God to have arranged it that way; for were it otherwise, there would be a lot of people who could never find the way to God. But He welcomes all, whether they come in the richness of understanding or the poverty of it.
Indeed, as Jesus said,
“Allow the children to come to Me; do not forbid them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mark 10:14)