If we bring down God to our own level, we can make God out to be just like us, and I believe that personally is a faulty standard. Making God like an old grandpa.
I hear you, and that's what I meant by hoping not to offend the hearer.
I'm not bringing God down to our level. But rather, God allowed himself to feel the same emotions he had given to man.
The OT is like the book of the earthy. Everything is based on carnal nature.
It is the darkness before the dawn.
God is absolutely Love, but he also knows what it is to Hate.
That does not mean God is hateful, it simply means he knows what it is because it is an attribute of God.
Now hate can be used two ways. You can hate sin and this is positive, or you can hate the sinner and this is negative.
I hear this:
2Co 1:19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us,
even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus,
was not yea and nay, but
in him was yea.
Everything that comes from God is a positive. yea.
When used rightly it all works for good.
When used wrongly it becomes negative. nay.
This ability to use these qualities according to how we understand them, can either be yea or nay.
These are what makes man in the image and likeness of God.
Our ability to reason. Our ability to determine how these qualities should be used.
God created in man a mind of his own.
In this mind is both good and evil. The wheat and the tares if you will.
Where do thorns, thistles and tares come from?
The bible tells us in the parable of the wheat and tares that an enemy hath sown them.
But where did the seeds of these come from?
Do they just naturally grow from the earth or are they planted?
Serious question.. I have to look it up because I don't know.
Thorns, spines, and prickles
In plant morphology, thorns, spines, and prickles, and in general spinose structures, are hard,
rigid extensions or modifications of leaves, roots, stems or buds with sharp, stiff ends, and generally serve the same function: physically deterring animals from eating the plant material.
Extensions or modifications.. well that explains it.
The first thing that came to mind was concerning adding things:
Deu 4:2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish
ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.
Deu 12:32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.
Rev 22:18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
The first thing Eve did was "add" to what God had told them concerning the tree of knowledge.
Gen 3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which
is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it,
neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
Why is this important? This "touching" became an extension or a modification to God's word. It became a thorn or a tare.
Starting in Exodus and all through Leviticus, the act of "touching" things unclean could lead to death.
Lev 5:2 Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether
it be a carcase of an unclean beast, or a carcase of unclean cattle, or the carcase of unclean creeping things, and
if it be hidden from him; he also shall be unclean, and guilty.
Lev 5:3 Or if he touch the uncleanness of man, whatsoever uncleanness
it be that a man shall be defiled withal, and it be hid from him; when he knoweth
of it, then he shall be guilty.
So then man himself is the enemy which by extension or modification of God's word, sabotages himself.
And then teaches others to do the same. So the tares multiply along with the wheat.
And the more we add, the more tares are created.
We do this.
@MatthewG Thank You for your patience.
Hugs
