Mike Gascoigne
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For those who believe in a God who created the world and populated it with life-forms through millions of years of death and destruction (natural selection, survival of the fittest, etc.,) there can be real problems with the nature and character of God. How can a holy, pure, righteous and loving God create a world where animals tear each other apart for food, and humans go to war and do all sorts of horrible things to each other in the struggle for territory and dominance? If this is the natural created order, and the world has been in its present corrupted state from the beginning, then God himself must be corrupt and there is no point praising him or asking him for salvation. Instead we should be asking how God himself can be saved.
The only way out of this bizarre theology is to believe what the Bible teaches, that God created a perfect world, but man has corrupted it through rebellion, an event known as the "fall".
For those who reject the theology of a perfect creation, and prefer to continue believing in an originally corrupt world, there is a way out of the dilemma, but it's even more bizarre. It's like this:
First there was Super-God. He was holy, pure, righteous and loving, and he created God. But God rebelled against Super-God and became corrupt, and lost his immortality, but still had the power of creation. While in his corrupted state, God created the world, also in a corrupted state, but sometime after the creation, he repented of his sin and prayed to Super-God for salvation, which was granted. God's salvation was total and complete, and his immortality was restored, unlike the salvation given to man where we are set free from the ultimate consequences of sin but continue to live with its temporal consequences until we die and are raised again at the Last Day. God's salvation was so complete, it was as if he had never sinned in the first place, and he was elevated to a state where he could be worshipped by humans, and could give them salvation. But the world that he had created remained in its corrupted state, as it is to this day.
If you can have God and Super-God, why not have a few more levels? It could end up like Greek mythology where you have an elaborate hierarchy of gods which were probably invented by the philosophers in their attempts to find a First Cause of everything.
Best to stick to the safe and sure teaching that we have in the Bible. There is only one True God, who created a perfect world and the first sinless humans, but they rebelled and came under the sentence of death, and the world that they inhabited became corrupted. Then God gave us salvation through his son Jesus Christ (the physical manifestation of himself), who suffered and died on the cross for our sins and was raised again, and we who believe will also be raised at the Last Day.
The only way out of this bizarre theology is to believe what the Bible teaches, that God created a perfect world, but man has corrupted it through rebellion, an event known as the "fall".
For those who reject the theology of a perfect creation, and prefer to continue believing in an originally corrupt world, there is a way out of the dilemma, but it's even more bizarre. It's like this:
First there was Super-God. He was holy, pure, righteous and loving, and he created God. But God rebelled against Super-God and became corrupt, and lost his immortality, but still had the power of creation. While in his corrupted state, God created the world, also in a corrupted state, but sometime after the creation, he repented of his sin and prayed to Super-God for salvation, which was granted. God's salvation was total and complete, and his immortality was restored, unlike the salvation given to man where we are set free from the ultimate consequences of sin but continue to live with its temporal consequences until we die and are raised again at the Last Day. God's salvation was so complete, it was as if he had never sinned in the first place, and he was elevated to a state where he could be worshipped by humans, and could give them salvation. But the world that he had created remained in its corrupted state, as it is to this day.
If you can have God and Super-God, why not have a few more levels? It could end up like Greek mythology where you have an elaborate hierarchy of gods which were probably invented by the philosophers in their attempts to find a First Cause of everything.
Best to stick to the safe and sure teaching that we have in the Bible. There is only one True God, who created a perfect world and the first sinless humans, but they rebelled and came under the sentence of death, and the world that they inhabited became corrupted. Then God gave us salvation through his son Jesus Christ (the physical manifestation of himself), who suffered and died on the cross for our sins and was raised again, and we who believe will also be raised at the Last Day.
