[zeek]

Originally Posted by Ohio

Dear Zeek, why would you needle and provoke a brother to that point? What were you saying that so infuriated him? This seems to say more about you than that poor brother in the LC. Perhaps he did not want you to "stop thinking," but to start believing in Jesus, start listening to and trusting the Lord, start reading and obeying His word, and stop your unbelief, stop your doubting, stop your railing.

That I needled or provoked him is your unwarranted assumption. He wasn't angry. If he wanted me to start believing in Jesus, etc. he could have said so, of course that assumes that I had stopped believing in Jesus which I had not.

I'm not censuring anybody. I'm an ex-LCer also and last month I had trouble with my Hot Water Heater, so I went to a HWH forum to discuss it. That was the right place. The same is the case here. You seem to have issues with God and His behavior, rather than the Recovery and its behavior. I feel that forums are the greatest thing about the internet, but you have to find the right forum for your questions.

In the opening post aron stated "The only things I can see to slavishly imitate is to love God, love our neighbor, try to follow the Spirit. Forgive one another as God has forgiven us." Thus, he raised the issue of God which is the issue I am discussing. A fundamental issue pertaining to the so called Lord's Recovery, is whether it's teaching and practices are grounded in reality. In other words, are they true and do they work. Now, we can skate on the surface of the issue, or we can get to the heart of it. Asking the deep theological questions is an attempt to get to the heart of it.

We were discouraged from asking questions in the LC. Questions were of the devil who appears in the shape of a question mark. Do you still believe that? We were discouraged from thinking for ourselves. We were instructed to learn WL's teachings by rote and to chant them. That was supposed to magically work them into our being. The idea seemed to be to bypass rational, critical thought. Is that what you want me to do?

Let me be the first to inform you that you will never get a satisfactory answer for your complaints about God. The Lord commands us to believe, and it's as simple as that. I didn't make the rules, He did. The Bible makes it clear that faith alone in Christ alone is necessary for our salvation.

Is that what they are--complaints? They are questions. I am perplexed how an all-powerful, all-good God could allow evil. Augustine gave an answer that goes some way toward justifying God. God gave us free will so that we could realize a greater good. Natural calamities could also be given to test us and call us to the realization of greater goods like courage and faith. How would courage ever be produced if there were no evils in the world? I can see that. But what of the innocent and the incapacitated who must suffer without comprehending? What greater good is accomplished by allowing a child to suffer pain who is too young to understand or summon faith?

So, you have faith for your salvation. You are taken care of. What about those that don’t and can’t? Does God have a provision for them?

I think it’s interesting the way you put it. “The Lord commands us to believe, and it's as simple as that.” So belief to you is a good work. Obedience to a commandment. We are not saved by grace but by the good work of believing. God doesn’t give grace, he commands us to give faith.


You didn’t make the rules. God is a God of rules or laws. The rules used to be thou shalt not this and thou shalt not that. But now the rule is just do this one thing, believe this one thing and thou shalt be saved.

How is it that a God who is immutable, always the same, changed his covenant from keep the whole OT law to keep this one law? Did he break his contract with the Jews? The work of faith in Christ is all we need to be saved. Is that your graceless Gospel, Ohio.

Why does God, the creator of a universe so vast that it exhausts our imagination, care so much about the belief we carry between our ears Ohio?