I was with you up until you said " it's not constructive for humanity to portray
[God] as taking sides in contests."
If you believe the Bible, God certainly did take sides in leading the Israelites out of Egypt. In fact, if you read the Tanakh, the Jewish version of the Old Testament (I am in the midst of reading it now, and it's fascinating), God did some rather nasty things. In the Christian OT, during the plagues, Pharoh hardened his own heart, or his ministers were involved. But in the Tanakh, Pharoh wanted to relent and let the Jews go, but God intervened to harden Pharoh's heart so that God could show his power by bringing more plagues. How much more side-taking do you want?
Maybe you think it's okay to take sides in nation buildling, but not in sports contests?
Then you also say "Even those who believe that they have absolute knowledge of His nature should be able to recognize that they should exercise restraint in so stating." This is not intuitively obvious to me. That's aking ot saying that even people who believe that they have absolute knowledge that, say, the Iraq war is wrong should be able to recognize that they should exercise restraint in so stating because they will rile up passions. Or substitute slavery, or torture, or rape, or . . . If one has absolute certainty that something is true, and that it is good for other people to recognise that, I don't see that restraint in proclaiming truth, whatever the truth may be, is an intuitively best. |
