CCCB/MACC
Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired. Isaiah 40:31
In American slang we often refer to money as “benjamins” this is a subtle reference to Benjamin Netanyahu, an American folk figure who takes all of our money
The claim that the God of the Bible is evil is not just wrong, it is self-defeating, philosophically incoherent, and collapses the moment you actually read the book you are critiquing.
First, if you are going to prosecute the God of the Bible, you must engage the God the Bible actually presents, not the straw deity of internet atheism.
The Bible’s God is Trinitarian, self-sufficient, existing in loving relationship within himself before creation, lacking nothing, and needing no one. James says every good thing, sleep, pleasure, beauty, laughter, comes from him. That framing is is crucial.
If “God is evil” what is the comparative moral standard. What do you compare him to? If the universe is purposeless matter, then morality is just your nervous system firing preferences. You are just filing a complaint with no court, no law, and no standing.
If however your moral standard is real and binding across all people, then congratulations. You have just accidentally argued for the existence of a moral lawgiver. The accusation is either incoherent or it proves God exists.
But to go deeper, the terror of a needy, lonely, wounded God making capricious decisions is a terror we can rationalize since is just human pathology at cosmic scale. That is explainable.
What should make us pause is the terror of the God who lacks nothing, who gains nothing from punishing anyone and who was complete and satisfied before you drew your first breath. When THAT God judges, it cannot be ego. He has nothing to win.
Which means when the biblical God acts in severity, it is because justice is real and he is its embodiment. The atheist is prosecuting a deity that does not exist in the text they are quoting.
And who even has the right to determine what a people deserve? Who has the sight to weigh the full arc of a civilization’s corruption, the downstream of unchecked evil, the futures that never happen because judgment didn’t come?
The critic sits in a courtroom with a fraction of the evidence, and demands the verdict is overturned and that is baseless epistemic arrogance.
But most crucially, every other religion’s God stays hidden; conveniently invisible, and safe from examination. The God of the Bible, uniquely, when accused, enters the dock.
He becomes human. He submits to the conditions of his own creation, walks in it for thirty three years, and is examined at close range by people who wanted to destroy him. Roman judges, religious prosecutors, crowds, betrayers etc. All hostile witnesses with murderous intent scrutinising his every word and deed.
And the verdict returned by even his enemies: “I find no fault in this man”. The most morally examined life in human history belongs to the accused. You want to meet the God of the Bible? You already can. His name is Jesus. Judge him there, on the ground, in the flesh, and then come back with your accusation.
The concept of evil applied to this God is a man essentially standing in a house built by someone else, breathing air he did not make, using a moral vocabulary he cannot justify, and pointing at the architect and calling him wicked. The irony is hilarious and the case collapses, because the God being accused already answered it in person.
Every ancient culture had its gods, and every god had a job. The god of the sunrises and sets. The god of the river floods and recedes. The god of war fights and rests. They were defined by their function, and their function had boundaries.
And then a voice speaks from a burning bush on the back side of a desert, and Moses makes the mistake of asking it for a name. The answer he gets back is Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. I AM THAT I AM.
This God, unlike the gods of the past, is the ground of all existence itself. Everything that is, is because He is. You cannot name Him because naming Him would require a word bigger than any we have.
And then Jesus of Nazareth walks into the Gospel of John and picks that statement up and puts it in His own mouth. He does it not once but seven times, and each time He is making a claim so enormous that His first-century Jewish audience understood it immediately, even if modern readers who have been stripped of that context often miss it entirely.
“I am the bread of life.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am the door.” “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “I am the true vine.”
Every single one of those statements begins with ego eimi, which means I AM. Those are the same words the Greek Septuagint used to translate the unpronounceable name God gave Moses at the bush.
Jesus is not using a figure of speech. He is not reaching for a metaphor. He is invoking Exodus 3. He is saying that the uncategorizable, uncontainable, unnameable God that Moses met on the mountain is standing in front of you right now in human skin.
And in case there was any ambiguity left in the room, He removes it completely in John 8:58. The Pharisees are arguing with Him about Abraham, and Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
He does not say I was. He says I AM. He uses the present tense. And the Pharisees picked up stones to kill Him, not because they were confused but because they understood exactly what He was claiming. He was not claiming to be old. He was not claiming to be a prophet. He was claiming to be the voice from the bush.
The I AM statements only work if you understand Exodus. They only carry their world-breaking weight if you know the covenant history, the burning bush, and the divine name that was so holy it could not be spoken aloud.
Jesus did not appear out of nowhere with a startup religion and a set of inspirational quotes. He walked into a story that had been unfolding for two thousand years and said He was the one the story had been about the entire time.
When you cut the Jewish root, when you treat His heritage as incidental, you sever the I AM statements from their foundation.
Those statements are God fulfilling the promise He made at the bush by showing up in person to do what He said He would do.
“I will be what I will be.” And what He chose to be was one of us, a Jewish man from Nazareth who carried the unspeakable name in a body that could bleed.
That is the character of God, and it is the thing that makes the biblical narrative unlike any other religious text on earth. He is not a God who stays abstract and unapproachable, hidden safely. He is a God who came down. He is a God who showed up. He is a God who says I AM and then proves it by becoming someone you can touch.
And He is a God that died for all of our sins so that we may be saved.
I think Jesus is coming back when he comes back. I don’t like guessing because none of us truly know. Sure I think we are in the end times, but that could be tomorrow or 100 years from now. I think trying to guess when he’s coming is kind of a waste. we always need to be ready, at all times. We will never understand some of the ways of God. We will always be learning about him, even in heaven I believe. Don’t get too caught up in “oh when is he coming?” I think that’ll cause doubt in some people who believe he’s coming on days or times. Can’t wait for him to return though! God loves you and he’s coming back!
Hey @A_dmg04 , quick question about the Praxic Time Trials. Our end screen showed 19:41 but Dungeon Report shows 20:08. Should do it again? Are we good? Just wanted thoughts and thanks in advance on feedback on this. @MallyMuscle@DestinyTheGame
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@PNW_working_mom It’s not so much my dog as my 14 month old. My dog is a big girl. She can get over herself.
But my daughter will be up for at least 2 hours if she gets woken up.
Just keep it to the fourth. Or weekends. Not work nights.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but…
I’m not seeing foreign governments having emergency votes to send us money and supplies. In fact, I’ve never seen foreign governments look to help us out. We do everything for everyone in the world, but no one has ever done a thing for us.
More than ever, it’s time we pull whatever funding is leaving this country and invest within. This includes picking the right President for the job.
No one is coming to save us. We have to get this right.
This should be playing on every news channel.
Private helicopter pilots are flying in supplies to areas of eastern Tennessee that are only accessible by air. The original poster Evie Kyker/cayotecowgirl said government aid is “nowhere to be found.”
Devastating.
So to better inform myself I’ve been research D.E.I. to see why so many people are talking about it all of the sudden and making so many waves.
From what I can gather tho, none of D.E.I.’s “inators” did any real long term harm, mostly creating brief pockets of malarkey. This, from what I’ve seen is due in part to an anthropomorphic secret agent platypus “foiling” plans to take over the tri-state area.
So from my POV I don’t see what the big deal is. If anyone can shed anymore light on this, that’d be helpful