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Old 04-20-2015, 12:05 PM   #51
OBW
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Default Re: The 'Lonely Triune God' LSM's Oxymoron - TOMES

I find this "God needs us because he is lonely" to be somewhat contrived. In Nigel's article, he quotes Lee as asserting that when he said that it was not good for the man to be alone, it was because he was also alone.

Huh? Why this assertion? I know that there are some who will assert that we can now read old scripture and find metaphor. But the metaphors that we know to be there are as we know something that is eventually stated as true, and then realize that there is a pattern leading toward it. Or types and metaphors about it in the earlier writing.

But the interpreted metaphor should not be the source of our conclusion. On what basis is Lee's declaration that God was lonely and needs man true? Surely not just because God said it about man. Sort of like when my grandmother would ask someone if they wanted something that was right in front of them. That was her backward way of asking for it herself. God is not so strange as that.

Maybe it is that the descriptions of the church as a bride is the metaphor rather than the literal. If in this life, marriage is to become "one flesh," then maybe the marriage to the bride is to restore man to his unhindered unity with God as existed before the fall.

I don't say this to be contrary to Lee. I say this because the metaphorical bride and wedding feast is just that — metaphor. And what is a meta for? (over-stated pun intended) It is to describe something else. A metaphor is not the truth that wags reality. It is the picture which describes some aspect of reality by reference to something that it actually is not.

It seems that looking to the first chapters of Genesis to declare that "not good that the man should be alone" means that God is alone is nothing short of an answer in search of evidence. God's realm is, by choice, everywhere outside of the fallen state of man. He is the ruler of everything else. And he started as the ruler of man. But man could choose to reject that authority and did so. Due to God's restraint, he is excluded from earth. Through our obedience, he has a place on earth. Upon the restoration of man, he is once again ruler of all.

Some will assert that God is always ruler of all. And that is true. But he has also relinquished some rule in time. Not in a way in which he is impotent. But in a way in which he is self-restrained. He gave us the option of obedience or death. And our ancestors chose death. And we each do it in our own lives.

But we also have the opportunity to choose life. And with that choosing comes a reuniting with God, eventually to the extent that it is as it was before the fall.

But we are busy trying to figure out how the sea will turn to blood and how this square (in 2D) or pyramid-like (in 3D) city will come down to earth, and who will be the nations relative to the citizens of that city rather than taking the time now to obey (what the literal or metaphorical Adam and Eve did not do) and live.

God has a purpose. And it was not to make man the "center and the meaning of the universe." Neither was it to cure God's own loneliness. Both of those make man into . . . well . . . the center and the meaning of the universe. And we like that. We like be exalted. But I can't find it to be true. Just asserted as such.
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I think . . . . I think I am . . . . therefore I am, I think — Edge
OR . . . . You may be right, I may be crazy — Joel
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