Free will is there because God loves us so much, he lets us choose our salvation. Otherwise, if we don't enter into God freely, we don't enter into God.

Yep. I'm flesh. I guess that makes me "the word." That give me the right to carry out judgments.

All humans then, are "the word" made flesh. That is why we judge people, carry out judgement on people, punish people, put them to death for their crimes etc. We are the word. We have been made flesh.

Nope, free will exists because God wants to be free and God lives and manifests in all who/that exists. God gives himself free will.

You cannot have freedom if you are a slave master.

No we are not, Jesus is the word in flesh. In the beginning there was God and the word. God made the word flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus is the only word of God, the only begotten child of our father who art in heaven.

When it comes to God there are no "slaves". All free will is, is the ability to do what you want, you're not a puppet. With free will comes consequences. Good actions produce good results, weather you see them or not they are there.

Says WHO? We are also flesh. If God is "in" us, then we are the word made flesh. Jesus was A HUMAN. We are humans.

The biblical God couldn't carry a plan in a bucket!

The whole biblical story is nothing but a cannon of fables that claims that God's plans are always going haywire.

This God supposedly created a heaven which as supposed to be "perfect", yet his every own angels didn't agree. Supposedly a third of his angels rebelled against his supposedly "perfect" heaven and he cast them out into a place called hell where they continue to hate him and cause his creation havoc.

We're supposed to believe that this was "God's Plan?"

Sounds like a plan that went haywire to me!

Then this God creates humans that he would like to have obey his every whim. But supposedly these humans that he created were not interested in obeying him, and they did something he disapproved of.

Yet another plan of God's that went all wrong and not the way God had originally planned for it to go. Unless you're going to suggest that God is so devious and cruel that he actually PLANNED things to be this way when he created humans to begin with?

But that, my friend, would be a truly nasty God! Moreover, that would imply that humans never truly had a choice anyway.

So you really have no choice but to confess that this God's plans never work out.

Then God tries to give these people commandments and to get them to obey him some more. But once AGAIN, his plans FAIL, and he ends up having to flush all these sinning souls over to the Satan's side of the board!

Oh, yes! Let's not forget this whole thing is a GAME being played between God and the fallen angels. The fallen angels are doing everything in their power to turn every soul that God creates away from God and are evidently WINNING BIG TIME!

God losing all the souls he creates, and the very game of life itself to Satan and his demonic angels.

God supposedly saved Noah and his family from the flood, but this is a contradiction too since the Bible claims that no mortal man is without sin and all sin is on equal footing. So Satan and his demonic angels actually WON THE GAME, but God decides to hold out for another shot at it using the offspring of Noah's family (a second incest creation by the way) Since all of humanity would need to be the offspring of Noah's family.

(by the way, the modern scientific genome project shows that this could not have occurred during the history of humankind, so this isn't even a workable fable. Like Greek Mythology it must be dismissed on the grounds of being clearly false)

In any case, God finally GIVES IN to Satan and his demonic angels by confessing that they are indeed right, they can win every soul that God creates, and so God decides to send his only begotten son to die to pay for the sins of men.

In other words, God pays off Satan and his demonic angels in an tempt to BUY a few souls. Because he obviously can't win them fairly using his own rules.

This would be a God who's plans not only all went sour, but he finally had to pay off the demons using his own son as a sacrifice just to be permitted to keep a few souls that aren't even worthy of his grace on their own merit!

Was that's God's plan?

Why would any God have planned out such an absurd fate for his very own creation?

These fables demand that this God lose the VAST MAJORITY of souls that he creates over to the Satanic demonic angels that he couldn't deal with in the first place.

This would be a picture of a truly pathetic God in so many ways.

If that's what our creator is like, then we should all be sorely disappointed. Even if we managed to be salvaged from his totally inept attempts at creation, we'd still just end up in the servitude of a totally inept God.

Atheism sure seems like a far better picture to me.

Of course, Eastern Mysticism beats them BOTH!

Eastern Mysticism allows for a truly intelligent God who never loses a single solitary soul. What could be better than that?

No, you're wrong. You better go back and re-read your books.

According to the Biblical picture of God, "Only Gods Will" shall be done in heaven. Therefore there can be no such things as "FREE WILL" in heaven. Only God's will is done in heaven.

So it's entirely about slavery, or "assimilation". There can be no free will in heaven. Free will is completely forbidden according to the biblical picture of God.

Exactly. Once Jesus is recognized as a Mahayana Buddhist, all of these things become crystal clear and we are no longer in the dark.

No, you're wrong. You better go back and re-read your books.

According to the Biblical picture of God, "Only Gods Will" shall be done in heaven. Therefore there can be no such things as "FREE WILL" in heaven. Only God's will is done in heaven.

So it's entirely about slavery, or "assimilation". There can be no free will in heaven. Free will is completely forbidden according to the biblical picture of God.

I had not even thought of it that way Abra, but you are right. This wonderful and perfect "heaven"...that everyone is so excited about going to, could not conceivably allow any individual to have their own free will.

Even here on earth, Christians have looked upon "free will" as merely the choice between "God" and the Devil, nothing more.

Then, if you do choose God, your reward is to go to heaven and live as a mindless drone obeying only your Lord (and master) and doing only and always his will, and hopefully you are very happy to do so because the only alternative is to be cast out and be tortured and burned in hell.

I am not entirely surprised that a third of the angels followed Lucifer in the rebellion.

Of course all of those stories are simply symbolic and not even meant to be literal truth.

Of course the stories are symbolic, and in that sense they have *some* merit as metaphors, but certainly not as a verbatim cannon of the precise directives and laws of any God.

If we allow Satan to be the illusion of ego, and God to be the true self, that solves everything.

In fact, that even makes sense in terms of going to a "heaven". If God is nothing other than our true self, then of course it makes sense that in even only "God's will" will be done. Because in heaven no one would view themselves as an "ego" and everyone would be following the will of their true self.

The Eastern Mystics have this all figured out in some depth. They don't claim to have the exact precise answers to everything, they confess that it's a "mystery" and this is why they call it "Mysticism". Just the same, they have it figure out a darn sight better than the Hebrews did. The Hebrews took the same basic seed of an idea of mysticism and tried to turn it into a carbon copy of the Greek Zeus.

That's all that happened there. So the Eastern Mystics is where we should turn if we seek true wisdom, not to the ancient Hebrews.

but i thought we were all the children of god? will that be denied now as well?

why can't wisdom be learned from both parties? surely both must have something to offer or neither would have survived so long...
and if the biblical aspects are subject to interpretation and therefore metaphorical, why not argue the variable meaning rather than just that it is nonsense?
an agreeable consensus may be found that allows both parties security in their understandings

The way I have always thought of "God's Will" is that when your head and heart are in true alignment (the right place,) with "Love/God," (Which is a place of divine love) then your will is the same as God's will. There is no conflict.

God's will is the will of divine love. At least that is what I believe. The will of a living universe is the will of love, as love is the power and the fabric that holds the universe together.

Faith comes in when you follow the law of divine love even when you do not have divine wisdom. We are limited in our divine wisdom because we do not have the capacity to understand how the universe works and we don't understand the laws of the universe.

Divine wisdom would be knowing why the things that seem unfair really are fair according to the law of causality. We cannot possibly see and understand why some things happen, so we scream and cry that things are unfair and we blame it on "the devil."

I do not have enough divine wisdom to know why bad things happen to good people, but I do have faith that it is all according to the will of what we call "God" which to me is a divine and creative consciousness of love that binds the universe and manifests as living things.

The laws are automatic and they insure that there are consequences for our thoughts and actions.

My will is God's will. I have faith in the laws.

I do prefer to argue for the variable meanings. However, what usually happens, especially on these forums, is that the hardcore verbatim fundamentalists will come along demanding very specific interpretations and conclusions.

Attempting to argue variable meanings with them is impossible because they refuse to bend from their strict verbatim approach (which is never consistent I might add). So what I argue with them is that their verbatim approach is nonsense (i.e. cannot be made to make sense)

But yes, in general if the biblical writings are viewed abstractly in a metaphorical sense they can actually be made to agree with other religions. There's really quite a bit of compatibility between Eastern Mysticism and the biblical stories once a rigid verbatim approach is dropped.

In fact if the rigid verbatim approach is dropped these two wildly different religion could potentially have many things in common. But clearly that approach isn't going to result in viewing the biblical cannon as the "verbatim laws of God". So that's not going to work for a strict Christian fundamentalist who is attempting to hold the Bible up as the strict verbatim laws of God.

That depends on whether you want to ignore "the fallacy of equivocation" or you do not want to ignore that fallacy.

Same thing, that depends if you can tell the fallacy of equivocation or you cannot tell it if it bit you on the leg.

Same thing, if you know what the fallacy of equivocation is, but you can't tell it, you can't recognize it at all, and you think it's the same thing as a spotted skin-disease on a male leprechaun, or a kangaroo meatmarket.

Only if your will is not with God. If your will is with the will of God, how would doing the will of God not be doing your will using your free will?

Jesus is God's word in flesh. We are the temple of God. Know ye not that your body is the temple of God and the holy spirit dwelleth inside you? We are God's creation, we are not the word.