thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-09, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Tris! You asked the two most important questions and I completely overlooked getting back to you:
evil - how can it come from free will?...He appears to have left me without the free will to fly. So presumably some restriction on free will is okay. Why didn't he restrict my ability to stab people in the head, instead of my ability to fly?
I don't know.
Clearly, our choices in life are restricted by all sorts of circumstances. But it seems that we are always free to choose between doing good and going evil. Clearly it's important to God that we are free to make that choice. But I've never seen an explanation of why that makes sense to me.
I still don't understand why an all powerful being required some incarnation of himself to live as us and die for us.
Again, there are many answers and little certainty on this question. But one way I like to think of it is that Christ died for me in the same way I tie my two-year-old daughter's shoes for her: She can't do it by herself, not yet, and the only way to teach her is to do it and show her how. Remember that Christ did not only die for us: He rose from the dead for us as well.
The death on the cross is Christ's answer to everyone who ever railed at the heavens and said, "Who are you to tell us what's right and wrong? You haven't been down here! You haven't suffered like us! You don't understand!"
The resurrection is Christ's answer to everyone who ever groaned, "It's all useless—we can try and try, but we're all just dust in the end."
When Christ says, "Pick up your cross and follow me!," He is not only urging self-sacrifice. He is like a commander leading his troops through fierce fire to victory, like a pioneer blazing a trail straight through death and out the other side.
