Implications of the Biblical Interventionist God

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ninj said:
The Oxford Dictionary describes trolling as making “a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them”.

Yes. Time for me to leave this and any other thread begun by this one. DNFT
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Still fun to read though if simply for the idiocy.
 
I have so many experiences that felt like interventions that it is easier for me to believe in an occasionally interventionist Holy Mystery than not to. Otherwise I had extraordinary luck throughout my life.

I lump people who deny even the possibility of an interventionist holy mystery with the doctors who denied the experiences of women. Too many people refuse to accept the possibility of other people having experiences they did not have.
 
IF there is a Holy Mystery/God, then it would make sense that it would intervene at some level.

I think the question is what form that takes. Is it a micro-management where it constantly intervenes and tinkers? Is it a macro-level thing where they "break in" at critical points?

jimkenney12 said:
I lump people who deny even the possibility of an interventionist holy mystery with the doctors who denied the experiences of women. Too many people refuse to accept the possibility of other people having experiences they did not have.
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People's experiences can be accepted as legitimate without admitting the existence of a metaphysical cause. Too often, something attributed to "Holy Mystery" turns out to have a more mundane explanation down the road. Someone being healed seemingly magically does not automatically become proof "God" did it. So, I will not fault someone, especially someone in the sciences, for taking at least an agnostic (in the philosophical "metaphysics are matters of faith and may not be empirically or rationally provable" sense) approach to these things.
 
No magical healings for me. Occasional visions. Mostly unlikely events that shape my path in life.
 
paradox3 said:
Some very surprising coincidences for me. But I believe these things speak to an interconnectedness we are often too busy to see.
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That's kind of my view, too. Things are connected on a very deep level that I don't think we see. If there is a God, that God must be at, or connected to, the heart of that "web of all existence" (which is getting into process territory).
 
I, too, have had a few inexplicable visions. But the interpretation of that sort of brain activity is totally subjective and couldn't ever be considered proof.

My brain cannot interpret my visions as proof of an Interventionist God. It just can't do it, period, full stop.

But there is:
paradox3 said:
But I believe these things speak to an interconnectedness we are often too busy to see.
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and that rings true to me.

Look at a tree, and see that the limbs and branches mirror the form of both the root systems below, AND human lungs. They breathe out, we breathe in, in a beautiful symbiosis.

And yet, jim, with all due respect,

jimkenney12 said:
Otherwise I had extraordinary luck throughout my life.
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Sure. But to ascribe that to any sort of divine intervention is to imply that others were not deserving of that sort of "extraordinary luck". What if the only sort of luck a person has is bad luck?

To me, as soon as we start ascribing any aspect of our life and health to divine intervention, even if you want to tart it up and call Her Holy Mystery, you are completely violating the entire theology of Job, and the eternal question of why bad things happen to good people (and vice versa).
 
BetteTheRed said:
What if the only sort of luck a person has is bad luck?
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Divine wrath? That's certainly how some would interpret it, and not just in Christianity. The idea of bad fortune being the result of pissing off someone goes back to pagan traditions.

I don't buy it myself. "Luck" is just circumstances going for or against you and is as much perception as reality. Someone who has a car crash and wins the lottery on the same day might talk about "good" or "bad" luck depending on their temperament (optimist vs. pessimist for instance) and other personality factors. If one person dies in that crash and another lives, was the former having "bad luck" and the latter having "good luck"? Both are mostly a matter of physics and timing when push comes to shove.
 
One example of extraordinary luck: one summer day our family and two nephews went to Galaxyland or whatever it was called at the time at West Edmonton Mall. We entered under the Mindbender. I said out loud that it was one ride no one would get me on. To show love and compassion for a nephew whose life was tough at that time, I ended up reluctantly going on the ride with him before we left. That was a very important lesson for me to not tempt fate. I needed several chiropractic treatments when I got home.

Genetics and life style are mainly responsible for my good health. Hard work and ability and gifts are responsible for my material well being. The luck is in chance events and encounters that shaped my life and view of life and the world. Not everyone would regard my good luck as good luck.

My luck is not in material goods or health but in a meaningful life lived with a sense of being in the embrace of the holy mystery
 
I just realized there are at least two understandings of interventionist. One is where God controls everything and the other is where God influences some people to make decisions and to choose particular actions and helps make the yeses to invitations succeed. The relationships to me seem to be two way relationships where both sides say yes to the relationship. Sometimes the yes is reluctant.

I cannot believe in or respect a god who controls everything. I do believe in and respect a divinity that engages with us respectfully. i believe there were times when I said no and my life is probably less than what it might have been if I had heard the invitation and said yes.
 
jimkenney12 said:
the other is where God influences some people to make decisions and to choose particular actions and helps make the yeses to invitations succeed. The relationships to me seem to be two way relationships where both sides say yes to the relationship. Sometimes the yes is reluctant.
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Do the invitations to connectedness from the Web of Life require a divine intelligence?
 
jimkenney12 said:
I just realized there are at least two understandings of interventionist. One is where God controls everything and the other is where God influences some people to make decisions and to choose particular actions and helps make the yeses to invitations succeed. The relationships to me seem to be two way relationships where both sides say yes to the relationship. Sometimes the yes is reluctant.

I cannot believe in or respect a god who controls everything. I do believe in and respect a divinity that engages with us respectfully. i believe there were times when I said no and my life is probably less than what it might have been if I had heard the invitation and said yes.
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Really, this is a pretty good description of "open and relational theology", the broader term that encompasses process and some other post-modern theologies. The bolded part in particular. It is ultimately the theology that makes the most sense to me rather than the more restrictive, controlling, authoritarian deity we see in some branches of Christianity.
 
Of course then there are the "elect". One would expect they are favored on earth, but no, rewards are for later.
 
Waterfall said:
Of course then there are the "elect". One would expect they are favored on earth, but no, rewards are for later.
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Which isn't really an applicable concept in the kind of theology Jim is talking about. There are no elect in an open/relational theology. God's relationship is to all of Creation and anyone can be "invited" (to use Jim's term) into helping God's plan. The key thing in these theologies is that God needs relationship with the world in order to accomplish their plan. It is not about an afterlife, but about moving the world in a good direction.

And some do argue that the "elect" are favoured on Earth, which is part of the problem with the concept. It is used by some to elevate themselves or diminish others.
 
Mendalla said:
Which isn't really an applicable concept in the kind of theology Jim is talking about. There are no elect in an open/relational theology. God's relationship is to all of Creation and anyone can be "invited" (to use Jim's term) into helping God's plan. The key thing in these theologies is that God needs relationship with the world in order to accomplish their plan. It is not about an afterlife, but about moving the world in a good direction.

And some do argue that the "elect" are favoured on Earth, which is part of the problem with the concept. It is used by some to elevate themselves or diminish others.
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It may not be the kind of theology Jim is speaking of, but the OP is about an interventionist God.
Being chosen by election is predetermined by God , thus an intervention.
 
Waterfall said:
It may not be the kind of theology Jim is speaking of, but the OP is about an interventionist God.
Being chosen by election is predetermined by God , thus an intervention.
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Yes, but Jim's "invitation" is also technically an intervention. The real question is how and to what degree God intervenes.
 
Mendalla said:
And some do argue that the "elect" are favoured on Earth, which is part of the problem with the concept. It is used by some to elevate themselves or diminish others.
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The problem may just be ours, not Gods.
Everyone seems to be searching for the God that makes sense and acceptable. But I have to wonder, if we are made, God could have made everyone perfect forever, but God didnt.( Adam and Eve supposedly started perfect)...The elect are spoken of within the Bible...
Things sound wonderful when we humans create our own reasonings about God, but were only guessing or dismissing.
I don't like the idea of the elect myself, but it's out there.
 
In daily life, there are two kinds of elect. There are those who get special privileges at the whim of those with power to grant those privileges. Then there are those who are chosen for their suitability for a task, often to their detriment in some way. Consider those volunteers who keep getting asked to take on tasks, even when it starts to exhaust them.
 
For example, Bette the Red, an atheist, leads faith study groups in a church as well as providing other leadership. This almost certainly required an invitation process of some kind. It might be that the holy mystery is the web of connection. That invitational process could be labelled an intervention.
 
jimkenney12 said:
In daily life, there are two kinds of elect. There are those who get special privileges at the whim of those with power to grant those privileges. Then there are those who are chosen for their suitability for a task, often to their detriment in some way. Consider those volunteers who keep getting asked to take on tasks, even when it starts to exhaust them.
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This is why some decide to eliminate those attempting to vote so as the bend the rules according to their articulation of great desires. It got Trump into vast chaos ... inclusive of a weighted Justice System in a supreme instance of loosing it!

What's the chance in a quantum filed? Is articulation prone to warp? The fabric loams ... looms? Sometimes gloom age ... as in the gloaming! It may be a Celtic vision ... difficult dream?
 
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