[Trapped]

Originally Posted by SerenityLives

with one caveat, with original sin able to enter.

God created and man and women with ability to get original sin, then he drowned the world for sinning, then He impregnated a woman with himself, so he can be born, then he had himself killed to save us all from the sin he gave us in the first place. no capiche

This made my morning. I'm SO glad you wrote this post. This understanding frustrates and stumbles a lot of people, and I'm thrilled there's the opportunity to respond to it. I only have time to respond a little at a time, but I just can't put it off.

I'll just deal with this part first: "God created and man and women with ability to get original sin, then he drowned the world for sinning"

I would say God created man and women with the ability "to sin".

A good way of delineating this is "God is responsible for the FACTS of free will; man is responsible for the ACTS of free will."

I'll give an example which I saw elsewhere. God made our hands, arms, and shoulders so that we could curl our fingers into a fist, extend our elbow, and use our shoulder to move our arm forward just a couple inches so we could do the "fist bump" with another person. The fist bump is a good thing. It connects people, sometimes makes them laugh, is a greeting that acknowledges the other person. God designed our body so we could do that good thing.

And man uses it for that good thing. But it was also man's choice to take that design for good, add some force to it, and use that very same motion to punch people in the face so they could be more easily robbed.

God didn't make people punch each other, God didn't make it impossible for them NOT to punch each other, and God isn't responsible for man's choice. It was MAN's choice to use in an evil way what God created for good. This doesn't mean man was originally created with evil inside him. It means that man was truly given free will to go either way, with no influence, and man made the choice.

BECAUSE man made that choice, God judges. As the creator, God has the full right to judge His creation for the acts of unrighteousness they commit. And boy, do they ever commit acts of unrighteousness.

We may respond, "why didn't God create us in a way that we wouldn't punch each other?" For God to take away the ability to do evil, would mean He would have to remove all the things that give us a way to do good too. To prevent us from punching another person, God would have to remove our joints, our muscles, etc. Then we wouldn't be able to fist bump, to hug, to pet a dog, all those good things that need that mobile design in order to be possible.

I'll get to the rest later.

Edit to add: kids are a good analogy for this too. Parents have children knowing the kids are going to misbehave, sin, etc. But does that absolve the kids of the responsibility and punishment/discipline for their wrongdoing? Of course not. Same with us.