The Horrors of Evolution (Evolution)

by edinburgh4 , Friday, September 05, 2008, 23:36 (5921 days ago) @ edinburgh4

Imagine if our economy ran not on money and oil but on love and justice. In a situation where there is evil, love has an opportunity to demonstrate its extent. Unexpressed love is not a good thing love desires to show itself. The film Titanic was one of the most popular of all time because in it a guy gets to articulate the richest kind of love: - Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.John 15:13 - Those who receive a large measure of love and let it sink in begin to overflow with it. They know they are loved when they are at their very worst so they have total security. In this place of safety they are free to express love for others knowing they do not need to receive love in return because they are always loved. - So by allowing people to fall God can express a more robust love than the kind that only loves its own. I experience this kind of love and can testify that it is a good thing. The Bible promises me eternal life. In eternity I will be able to love God with a richer love than I would have had I not been exposed to and involved in evil. So by temporarily allowing evil God sees a greater quality of love formed in some people. - One preacher expressed it in this way: God will be glorified by every life. Some lives will display the glory of his justice; that he does not let evil go unpunished. Others will display the glory of his mercy; that he loves each person so much he is willing to take the punishment they diverse on himself. - He gives us a free choice at every point if we do good or evil. He even gives us a conscience to warn us in advance what the verdict will be on the day of judgement. The conscience has no power to make us do right or wrong it just commends or convicts us. - The Bible says that judged by the standard of God's law all would be condemned: - for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Romans 3:23 - but goes on to say: - and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
Romans 3:24
 
So God has the right to punish us for the wrong we choose to do. We are predisposed to do wrong, yet when we do wrong we know we did so by choice. If I tell a lie I can't blame God and say he made me do it. If a girl has sex outside of marriage because she is raped she is not is not in the wrong she is being wronged. - However God offers each of us a new life as a free gift if we are willing to accept that this is what we need. God is looking not for people who think they are OK but for those who are desperate to change but know they are helpless to do so on their own. He knows when these people receive mercy they produce love. - When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Matt 9:11-13 - This world offers me an opportunity to receive and give a kind of love I could not in the perfect world. God is using this world to form in me the kind of love he wants to see in me for himself and others in eternity. - Phil