Is God Responsible for His Creations Ruination?

Reflections: Is God Responsible for His Creations Ruination?
©2007 Rock Cowles

The Bible tells us that God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere, all at once). God created the Heavens and the earth, as well as all of His angels, including Lucifer, AKA Satan. Christians say that God cannot tolerate sin, that He cannot even have it in His "pure" presence. Oops. "Can't" means not all powerful. "Outside of His presence means not omnipresent. If He can't get over this, because He does not know how, He is not all knowing. Ouch. With these curiosities in mind, let's investigate further.

God created Satan. He was Lucifer, God's favorite, and His choir director. Lucifer "conspired" against God, in God's presence! Duh-huh. Of course, all-knowing God knew this little tiff would occur, before He even created Satan, right? But, God in His infinite mercy, banished him anyway. La de da.

If sin is defined (as it is in Greek) as missing the mark, an archer's term, did Satan sin when he was just as God created him, but not as God wanted him? How can that be? It looks to me like God missed the mark or sinned first. If God created everything how can anything, including sin, be present that was not created by Him? A real no brainer here. It can't. Which means, either God created sin or God is not the sole creator.

Back to Genesis. Adam was not born, nor was Eve. God created Adam from the clay of the earth, then when He saw/realized Adam was lonely (He didn't see this coming?), He took Adam's rib and created Eve. Here these two innocents were (they were not born into sin) and they had God to thank for this perfect Utopia and their existence. No pain, no sickness, no hunger, no unfulfilled desires. If you had never had a want or a need that went unmet long enough for you to realize you had a want or a need, would you recognize one when you did? How could you when you had no experience (our greatest teacher) to learn from?

Now God said, you can do anything you want, have anything you want, and stay here (In the Garden of Eden) forever and will never die, as long as you do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. ACCCK! Lots of tough questions here! We have already established that if you don't know what a want or need is, it is not something you can conceptualize, just as you would be unable to fathom loss if you had never lost anything. Now if you had never been anywhere but "here", not ever heard of, seen pictures of, or met anyone from anywhere but "here", then "here" is as good and as bad as it gets, and not being able to be "here" would be a punishment vague beyond any cerebral means of retrieval. Okay, crappy darn, here comes another tough aspect. Never in your life have you done without, suffered a loss, made a mistake, felt pain, been punished or seen anyone punished. How could anyone expect you to understand the concepts of obedience or punishment without seeing disobedience first or having to earn something?

Now besides God, the animals, and each other, Adam and Eve had never met anyone. They must have been bored crazy. Along comes Satan, disguised as a serpent, looking like just another of God's creations (which he was, only disguised). Satan teaches them. Did he create the Tree? No. Did he give them lives of entitlement where they could not conceive of the "punishment" God threatened? No. Did Satan threaten them with banishment and death if they failed their first test ever with the world's worst learning curve (One question, "Can you obey?", and if you get it wrong you die (even though you don't really understand death))!? No. And what's funny, in an eternal damnation kind of way, is even if Satan did any of those things, didn't God create Satan just as he was, with complete foreknowledge of the things Satan would do, despite "so called free will"? Satan offered them something God had not, plain and simple. Vision. Knowledge. Enlightenment. He did not tempt them or created the temptation, God did.

It all falls apart. If I told my child, if you ever see a fire (temptation), even though you will have no idea what it is, having never seen one before, don't touch it or you could get burned and die, would I be considered a good parent if the first time my child gazed in wide wonder at a campfire and got close enough to feel the heat on his face I pushed him in? Hell no!

Let's jump to the New Testament and Salvation. You were born into sin. Adam and Eve failed the test, everyone gets punished. However, if we admit we screwed up by getting born, (Bad Mother Teresa! BAD!) and we admit that Jesus is the Son of God, born of a virgin, died on the cross and rose again three days later, we get to go to Heaven, because His blood covers us and washes away our sin. Now some people buy this. Hey! I know Him! Pick me! Pick me! I want to go to Heaven! Don't make me burn in Hell forever for being born! I'm sorry! They are called Christians.

Now the folks that God hasn't succeeded in making feel bad that they were ever born are called heathens, pagans, non-believers, and sometimes even sinners, because they don't have Jesus' blood on their hands. God gave them free will to admit that they lost before they ever opened the starting gate and they refused. God said, "I am going to make you burn in Hell for all eternity if you do not love and worship me.", yet they still refuse. God, being omniscient and omnipotent, made them perfect, with this flaw, knowing they would not take His offer. This is called predestination, meaning some will be saved (the sheep who return to their shepherd), and some will burn in Hell because God created them with minds that work and rebel against tyranny, cruelty, and senseless oppression.

I am agnostic. If, when I was born, someone saturated me with gasoline that would never come off, then followed me around with a lit match my entire life, He would not be my first choice in friends. Even if the Christian bible were inerrant (HA!), there is no God worthy of love and worship in it.

I see Christian faith as being like flying on a glass airplane with no landing gear. You might think you have been chosen and are higher than everyone else and going higher still, but if you looked out all around you, you'd see the real world and realize its not very likely that its going to be pretty when your plane lands.