When we think about Jesus, be he fully hman or fully divine, or fully human and divine, does anyone think God changed after the birth and death of Jesus?
This is a funny question. I'll stay tuned in .....if Jesus is God in the N.T. he's not quite as vicious as his Father in the Old T. but in the Book of Rev. he appears to be a chip of the old block...lol.
Witch
Posted on: 04/29/2010 16:55
crazyheart wrote:
When we think about Jesus, be he fully hman or fully divine, or fully human and divine, does anyone think God changed after the birth and death of Jesus?
Yes... and no.
seeler
Posted on: 04/29/2010 19:53
No, I don't think God changed. I don't think God changes. I think that our understanding of God changed.
crazyheart
Posted on: 04/29/2010 21:48
witch, that answer intrigues me. Tell me more.
Seeler, that is what I was thinking.
Arminius
Posted on: 04/29/2010 22:58
If God is regarded as the totality of being, then a part of that totality, namely the species self-named Homo sapiens sapiens, who has hitherto not been aware of its godliness, became aware of its godliness through Jesus, Buddha, and other sages.
But did this change God?
You bet it did! God cast part of itself out into chaos, and part of that part has come full circle and recognised itself for what it is. The emotional rapture of the realization of godliness and universal at-one-ment in a biological organism is as new to God as it is to those of us who have become thus enlightened.
I and the Father are one.
-Jesus
RichardBott
Posted on: 04/29/2010 23:43
*little smile*
I think God - if God is truly in relationship with creation - is in a constant state of change. Perhaps *is* a constant state of change, rather than being a life-less stasis.
Christ's peace - r
spiritbear
Posted on: 05/01/2010 21:04
In some ways, God may be found in change. So when God changes, God is simply doing what God has always done, so that's really not a change, right? So yes, and no. However, we often see change as fickle, harmful, arbitrary, chaotic and disintegrative, whereas God's change is towards the purposeful, loving, integrative and binding. So it is less an issue of change than one of the type of change involved.
Scripture contains several instances where God and Jesus change their minds. Remember the poor woman who (figuratively) asks for the scraps left at the table? Jesus had originally dismissed her, but the encounter leads him to change his approach. God debates with Abraham about the number of righteous that must be found in Sodom for the city to be saved (even though in the end, none could be found) and is willing to change positions. When humans change their minds, they change their way of dealing with others, and so become different people (because what we are includes how we interact with others). Jesus said, "what is bound on earth is bound in heaven". If we change what is bound on earth (for the better), our experience of God becomes bigger, and possibly in the process God somehow becomes bigger too, along with the ever-expanding universe.
airclean33
Posted on: 05/02/2010 11:19
Hi - Crazyheart I believe God never changes . We must changs to Gods will.If the stars in the sky change there may be a lot of ships that could not find there ports. I know that ships have other ways to sail. What if the poles changed , went west- and east. that could be a problem. God is the Rock. He is and has always been the way. He made me and you. He is are Father.In your flesh do you have more than one father? half way through life does that chang?We may understand God differnt to day . But He Has not changed .He Love us in the Begining and he loves us now.With a Love that we are just begining to understand.From Gen to Rev. This is our God. He Is Abba . Airclean33 To God Be The Glory.
Mendalla
Posted on: 05/02/2010 11:49
airclean33 wrote:
If the stars in the sky change there may be a lot of ships that could not find there ports. I know that ships have other ways to sail. What if the poles changed , went west- and east. that could be a problem.
Except, that the former definitely happens, just on such a long time scale that we don't notice it. The poles shift over time, too, though not as dramatically as you suggest (however, on Uranus the poles are, in fact, perpendicular to those of the other planets). One thing that science has shown us is that change is constant. Particles appear and disappear, the universe expands, stars go through a life cycle not unlike that of living things, life evolves (evolution has never stopped, just ask virus researchers). Existence is not static so how could its fundamental creative force (for that is how I see God) be static?
Mendalla
airclean33
Posted on: 05/02/2010 11:51
Hi Crazyheart-- I wonder If you heard The store of the Queens Yacht.It sailed one night in a storm and when well out to sea. the captian seen a light. He ordered that a message be sent to warn the other ship to give way.From the other light came a message We will not. Send a message we are The Queens Yacht and you will move and give us the right of way. A message came back ,We are The Light House Turn away or hit the rocks, you will Die. God is our Light house. Will we change ? I got this store from a t-v program.Airclean33
footprints165
Posted on: 05/02/2010 11:59
I don't think God changed so much as the way people perceived God changed. God has a face now. He was once flesh and blood. He was a child, an adolescent, an adult, and had we given him the chance he could've been elderly and died like the rest of us. Through Jesus, God existed on our level, and the way we see God is affected by that experience in some way, though how one is affected can differ from person to person.
SG
Posted on: 05/02/2010 12:09
For me, God is alive and tuned in and thus must change or have the potential to. If God is still speaking, still trying to draw us near... then God is ever changing. I believe ancients saw that. I do not believe in a tuned out of switched off God, though it was spoken because that suited our needs.
If God did not change or would not change or be open to the potential, it would not be God for ancients or for me. If God cannot process and be changed by Moses or Jesus.... Rwanda, Hurricane Katrina, Haiti, the Holocaust.... what kind of God is that?
Ancients saw change and potential for change and I see change and potential for change. When God does not immediately kill people in the Garden for eating the fruit.... Abraham is allowed to look in the city of Sodom, time and time again with Moses, Ezekiel getting to use cow dung instead of peoples, when the Gentile woman speaks to Jesus....
Ancient people believed God grieved Saul as King. I believe God grieves Hitler and Amin.... and I believe that God greives when prophets or those who can lead us in better ways are killed from Jesus to Gandhi to MLK Jr. to Harvey Milk ...
Motheroffive
Posted on: 05/02/2010 12:11
Isn't the idea of God changing the premise behind process theology?
Arminius
Posted on: 05/02/2010 12:42
RichardBott wrote:
*little smile*
I think God - if God is truly in relationship with creation - is in a constant state of change. Perhaps *is* a constant state of change, rather than being a life-less stasis.
Christ's peace - r
Yes, Richard, if change is the only constant, and God is the only constant, the God must be constantly changing.
boltupright
Posted on: 05/02/2010 13:34
If God doesn't change & the description of God within scripture referance constantly gives two distinctly different descriptive referance with regards to God & His "character", what does this actually tell us?
Either there is referance of two different gods, due to the constant spiritual struggle for the heart of mankind, or there is just One God who is both characters.
The scriptures would dictate that there is only One God, yet there has always been contradictions in scripture, within old testament referance with regards to the "Father God" Who this man we call "Jesus" described to us with His words & actions.
Actions that were proof for all who witnessed, that He was indeed a "Son" in Whom our Father was well pleased.
Just as satan would come before our King & spew the scriptures as flaming darts with hopes to ensnare, as I believe that satan was influencing old testament law & scripture from the very start.
I believe it all comes down to Spiritual enlightenment through the same baptism that this man we call "Jesus" has fulfilled.
This is what I believe is Key to discerning what is of God the Father, & what is of the god of this world.
There are some things in this world that are corruptable, & then there are things that just cannot be corrupted.
Bolt
Panentheism
Posted on: 05/02/2010 13:42
How a question is asked presumes an anwer - Richard gives a good answer - there is a diplor nature of God, as in relational relaity - there is a consistency to God in being love and the aim of every moment of actualized beauty and is reponsive to what ever happens in this moment thus changed - not either/or - both/and and that is true of all things that exist -
Think of it this way: we respond to what is out of what we are, and that is change and constant- our identity is becoming yet we are who we are in every moment- difference is God is eternal and we are not.
Witch
Posted on: 05/02/2010 20:44
airclean33 wrote:
Hi Crazyheart-- I wonder If you heard The store of the Queens Yacht.It sailed one night in a storm and when well out to sea. the captian seen a light. He ordered that a message be sent to warn the other ship to give way.From the other light came a message We will not. Send a message we are The Queens Yacht and you will move and give us the right of way. A message came back ,We are The Light House Turn away or hit the rocks, you will Die. God is our Light house. Will we change ? I got this store from a t-v program.Airclean33
If the analogy is fake, can the mesage it illustrates be true?
MistsOfSpring
Posted on: 05/02/2010 22:14
I haven't fully formed these ideas yet, although I've considered them for years. I started thinking from the question "Does God need us?" and went down this path...
I believe that God (in whatever form God might take on) is in everything and everyone. As such, that means that everyone and everything is a part of God. We think, act, live, etc. in ways that can increase or decrease our personal growth, but as part of God we also affect the total around us that we are a part of, if that makes any sense. We each have the opportunity in our lives to BE God in the world...or not...and most of us manage to do it well some of the time and not so well at other times. I think that it's possible that God IS changed through not only Jesus but everyone and everything that happens, and I think that the main change would be growing in infiniteness (is that a word?) It's sort of like how the universe keeps expanding...WE expand God.
smimik
Posted on: 05/02/2010 22:23
I would say, not.
The birth and death of Jesus as a man, was His plan.
Comments
stardust
Posted on: 04/29/2010 16:57
Ch
This is a funny question. I'll stay tuned in .....if Jesus is God in the N.T. he's not quite as vicious as his Father in the Old T. but in the Book of Rev. he appears to be a chip of the old block...lol.
Witch
Posted on: 04/29/2010 16:55
When we think about Jesus, be he fully hman or fully divine, or fully human and divine, does anyone think God changed after the birth and death of Jesus?
Yes... and no.
seeler
Posted on: 04/29/2010 19:53
No, I don't think God changed. I don't think God changes. I think that our understanding of God changed.
crazyheart
Posted on: 04/29/2010 21:48
witch, that answer intrigues me. Tell me more.
Seeler, that is what I was thinking.
Arminius
Posted on: 04/29/2010 22:58
If God is regarded as the totality of being, then a part of that totality, namely the species self-named Homo sapiens sapiens, who has hitherto not been aware of its godliness, became aware of its godliness through Jesus, Buddha, and other sages.
But did this change God?
You bet it did! God cast part of itself out into chaos, and part of that part has come full circle and recognised itself for what it is. The emotional rapture of the realization of godliness and universal at-one-ment in a biological organism is as new to God as it is to those of us who have become thus enlightened.
I and the Father are one.
-Jesus
RichardBott
Posted on: 04/29/2010 23:43
*little smile*
I think God - if God is truly in relationship with creation - is in a constant state of change. Perhaps *is* a constant state of change, rather than being a life-less stasis.
Christ's peace - r
spiritbear
Posted on: 05/01/2010 21:04
In some ways, God may be found in change. So when God changes, God is simply doing what God has always done, so that's really not a change, right? So yes, and no. However, we often see change as fickle, harmful, arbitrary, chaotic and disintegrative, whereas God's change is towards the purposeful, loving, integrative and binding. So it is less an issue of change than one of the type of change involved.
Scripture contains several instances where God and Jesus change their minds. Remember the poor woman who (figuratively) asks for the scraps left at the table? Jesus had originally dismissed her, but the encounter leads him to change his approach. God debates with Abraham about the number of righteous that must be found in Sodom for the city to be saved (even though in the end, none could be found) and is willing to change positions. When humans change their minds, they change their way of dealing with others, and so become different people (because what we are includes how we interact with others). Jesus said, "what is bound on earth is bound in heaven". If we change what is bound on earth (for the better), our experience of God becomes bigger, and possibly in the process God somehow becomes bigger too, along with the ever-expanding universe.
airclean33
Posted on: 05/02/2010 11:19
Hi - Crazyheart I believe God never changes . We must changs to Gods will.If the stars in the sky change there may be a lot of ships that could not find there ports. I know that ships have other ways to sail. What if the poles changed , went west- and east. that could be a problem. God is the Rock. He is and has always been the way. He made me and you. He is are Father.In your flesh do you have more than one father? half way through life does that chang?We may understand God differnt to day . But He Has not changed .He Love us in the Begining and he loves us now.With a Love that we are just begining to understand.From Gen to Rev. This is our God. He Is Abba . Airclean33 To God Be The Glory.
Mendalla
Posted on: 05/02/2010 11:49
If the stars in the sky change there may be a lot of ships that could not find there ports. I know that ships have other ways to sail. What if the poles changed , went west- and east. that could be a problem.
Except, that the former definitely happens, just on such a long time scale that we don't notice it. The poles shift over time, too, though not as dramatically as you suggest (however, on Uranus the poles are, in fact, perpendicular to those of the other planets). One thing that science has shown us is that change is constant. Particles appear and disappear, the universe expands, stars go through a life cycle not unlike that of living things, life evolves (evolution has never stopped, just ask virus researchers). Existence is not static so how could its fundamental creative force (for that is how I see God) be static?
Mendalla
airclean33
Posted on: 05/02/2010 11:51
Hi Crazyheart-- I wonder If you heard The store of the Queens Yacht.It sailed one night in a storm and when well out to sea. the captian seen a light. He ordered that a message be sent to warn the other ship to give way.From the other light came a message We will not. Send a message we are The Queens Yacht and you will move and give us the right of way. A message came back ,We are The Light House Turn away or hit the rocks, you will Die. God is our Light house. Will we change ? I got this store from a t-v program.Airclean33
footprints165
Posted on: 05/02/2010 11:59
I don't think God changed so much as the way people perceived God changed. God has a face now. He was once flesh and blood. He was a child, an adolescent, an adult, and had we given him the chance he could've been elderly and died like the rest of us. Through Jesus, God existed on our level, and the way we see God is affected by that experience in some way, though how one is affected can differ from person to person.
SG
Posted on: 05/02/2010 12:09
For me, God is alive and tuned in and thus must change or have the potential to. If God is still speaking, still trying to draw us near... then God is ever changing. I believe ancients saw that. I do not believe in a tuned out of switched off God, though it was spoken because that suited our needs.
If God did not change or would not change or be open to the potential, it would not be God for ancients or for me. If God cannot process and be changed by Moses or Jesus.... Rwanda, Hurricane Katrina, Haiti, the Holocaust.... what kind of God is that?
Ancients saw change and potential for change and I see change and potential for change. When God does not immediately kill people in the Garden for eating the fruit.... Abraham is allowed to look in the city of Sodom, time and time again with Moses, Ezekiel getting to use cow dung instead of peoples, when the Gentile woman speaks to Jesus....
Ancient people believed God grieved Saul as King. I believe God grieves Hitler and Amin.... and I believe that God greives when prophets or those who can lead us in better ways are killed from Jesus to Gandhi to MLK Jr. to Harvey Milk ...
Motheroffive
Posted on: 05/02/2010 12:11
Isn't the idea of God changing the premise behind process theology?
Arminius
Posted on: 05/02/2010 12:42
*little smile*
I think God - if God is truly in relationship with creation - is in a constant state of change. Perhaps *is* a constant state of change, rather than being a life-less stasis.
Christ's peace - r
Yes, Richard, if change is the only constant, and God is the only constant, the God must be constantly changing.
boltupright
Posted on: 05/02/2010 13:34
If God doesn't change & the description of God within scripture referance constantly gives two distinctly different descriptive referance with regards to God & His "character", what does this actually tell us?
Either there is referance of two different gods, due to the constant spiritual struggle for the heart of mankind, or there is just One God who is both characters.
The scriptures would dictate that there is only One God, yet there has always been contradictions in scripture, within old testament referance with regards to the "Father God" Who this man we call "Jesus" described to us with His words & actions.
Actions that were proof for all who witnessed, that He was indeed a "Son" in Whom our Father was well pleased.
Just as satan would come before our King & spew the scriptures as flaming darts with hopes to ensnare, as I believe that satan was influencing old testament law & scripture from the very start.
I believe it all comes down to Spiritual enlightenment through the same baptism that this man we call "Jesus" has fulfilled.
This is what I believe is Key to discerning what is of God the Father, & what is of the god of this world.
There are some things in this world that are corruptable, & then there are things that just cannot be corrupted.
Bolt
Panentheism
Posted on: 05/02/2010 13:42
How a question is asked presumes an anwer - Richard gives a good answer - there is a diplor nature of God, as in relational relaity - there is a consistency to God in being love and the aim of every moment of actualized beauty and is reponsive to what ever happens in this moment thus changed - not either/or - both/and and that is true of all things that exist -
Think of it this way: we respond to what is out of what we are, and that is change and constant- our identity is becoming yet we are who we are in every moment- difference is God is eternal and we are not.
Witch
Posted on: 05/02/2010 20:44
Hi Crazyheart-- I wonder If you heard The store of the Queens Yacht.It sailed one night in a storm and when well out to sea. the captian seen a light. He ordered that a message be sent to warn the other ship to give way.From the other light came a message We will not. Send a message we are The Queens Yacht and you will move and give us the right of way. A message came back ,We are The Light House Turn away or hit the rocks, you will Die. God is our Light house. Will we change ? I got this store from a t-v program.Airclean33
If the analogy is fake, can the mesage it illustrates be true?
MistsOfSpring
Posted on: 05/02/2010 22:14
I haven't fully formed these ideas yet, although I've considered them for years. I started thinking from the question "Does God need us?" and went down this path...
I believe that God (in whatever form God might take on) is in everything and everyone. As such, that means that everyone and everything is a part of God. We think, act, live, etc. in ways that can increase or decrease our personal growth, but as part of God we also affect the total around us that we are a part of, if that makes any sense. We each have the opportunity in our lives to BE God in the world...or not...and most of us manage to do it well some of the time and not so well at other times. I think that it's possible that God IS changed through not only Jesus but everyone and everything that happens, and I think that the main change would be growing in infiniteness (is that a word?) It's sort of like how the universe keeps expanding...WE expand God.
smimik
Posted on: 05/02/2010 22:23
I would say, not.
The birth and death of Jesus as a man, was His plan.
Mike