The Christians Thread

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There's a misconception about the nature of our relationship with God that I see popping up in other peoples' posts in that "other thread" that I think would be well to set right here since it's a tenet of Christianity. It's the idea that God wants us to praise and worship him because he's somehow egotistical and our worship or following his commands somehow benefits him. But the truth is completely the opposite.

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like.

It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.
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So you see, it's not for His benefit that we worship or believe in him or obey his commandments, but for our own. The purpose of our lives, mortal and immortal, is to be turned into perfect people, not to pad God's ego, as though he needed something from us, but to make us fit to live in a perfect place, because how could heaven be heaven if we all came there with all our hatred and murder and pride and rebellion, etc?

the question of Faith in this sense arises after a man has tried his level best to practise the Christian virtues, and found that he fails, and seen that even if he could he would only be giving back to God what was already God's own.

In other words, he discovers his bankruptcy. Now, once again, what God cares about is not exactly our actions. What he cares about is that we should be creatures of a certain kind or quality— the kind of creatures He intended us to be—creatures related to Himself in a certain way...

As long as a man is thinking of God as an examiner who has set him a sort of paper to do, or as the opposite party in a sort of bargain—as long as he is thinking of claims and counterclaims between himself and God—he is not yet in the right relation to Him.

He is misunderstanding what he is and what God is. And he cannot get into the right relation until he has discovered the fact of our bankruptcy.
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And our bankruptcy means we can't become good except with his help. Not to say that people apart from him don't do good things, there are plenty of examples of charitable atheists. But they're lacking the direction and assistance we need to take that process to its full conclusion, perfection.
 
UnseenWombat said:
So you see, it's not for His benefit that we worship or believe in him or obey his commandments, but for our own. The purpose of our lives, mortal and immortal, is to be turned into perfect people, not to pad God's ego, as though he needed something from us, but to make us fit to live in a perfect place, because how could heaven be heaven if we all came there with all our hatred and murder and pride and rebellion, etc?
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This makes a metric fuckton more sense than the "lol you guys want to suck off an invisible man in the sky so he doesn't set you on fire so you're all 'tards" argument. Jussayin'.
 
UnseenWombat said:
Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like.

It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.

So you see, it's not for His benefit that we worship or believe in him or obey his commandments, but for our own. The purpose of our lives, mortal and immortal, is to be turned into perfect people, not to pad God's ego, as though he needed something from us, but to make us fit to live in a perfect place, because how could heaven be heaven if we all came there with all our hatred and murder and pride and rebellion, etc?
Click to expand...

This is not a very good analogy, because it doesn't account for a number of things that atheists are criticising when they point to God's desire for worship. It is more like if a father thrusts some money into someone's hands - without them asking for it - and providing no way for them to return it that does not result in them going to hell. He then demands the present, also with the threat of eternal punishment looming for those who don't comply. There are a number of conclusions we can draw from this that are extremely damaging to the idea of loving, non-megalomaniacal God, but I'm sure they're sufficiently obvious.

UnseenWombat said:
And our bankruptcy means we can't become good except with his help. Not to say that people apart from him don't do good things, there are plenty of examples of charitable atheists. But they're lacking the direction and assistance we need to take that process to its full conclusion, perfection.
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This is a very vague statement, and so difficult to discuss. What do "direction" and "assistance" mean here? Which Christians are perfect?

Also, you keep pointing out that worship in no way benefits God, but to my mind this only serves to reinforce the idea that in demanding it, God is being self-aggrandising; if he doesn't benefit, why does he want us to waste considerable time and resources honouring him? The Bible itself even describes God as being "jealous".
 
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