god is bigger - trust

summary: "We can't know or understand everything, so don't try to be important by knowing everything, we have to trust God."

God is big, yes? Infinite.
Bigger than we can comprehend or describe (although I love trying) so naturally he will be surprising and we will have to change and learn.
The world is big too, yes? (note that God created the world as a gift to us for our exploration)
We humans are limited in many ways. We have only seen a few billion light years out into space, and there's no guessing how big the universe really is. And on the other end of the spectrum, scientists have identified many levels of particles beyond the atom, electron, gluons, quarks, etc. Hm? How many levels? 30. Yup, you heard that right. We humans are surrounded by vast unknown, and it's pretty scary, to be honest.
But it gets worse.
We can't even figure ourselves out. Perception, psychology, sophism, anger management, relationships, etc. We go to war all the time, we disagree about government types, we can't get along... AHHHH! Even our perceptual abilities are severely limited. I can only see maybe 6 dimensions, [3 spatial, 1 time, 1 material, 1 eletricity or something] not the 11 to 14 that string theories talk about. Not to mention any goverened spiritual dimensions.

So what can we do? Nothing by ourselves. '
We're running around the surface of the earth without a clue as to what's out there.

Good news though: we have God to trust in.
In fact, our main motivation to trust him shouldn't be this fear of the unknown, of our helplessness (I don't think). Think about it, what are we afraid of? The biggness of the world, right? If we understand it, we kind of conquer it. This is one of the ways we humans try to conquer the world on our own.
But guess what? God made the world!!!
Trust him for heavens sakes! This thing we are afraid of, something bigger created the world. And that thing is relationional, it's romantic, it's perfect and infinite...GOD!
He has things planned out, he loves you and has a plan for you. Get in touch with this amazing God!
Stop floudering around, thrasing about trying to conquer the world. Trust!

Again, our main motivation should not be our helplessness, it should be the amazing solidarity and knowledge of God. Don't just run away from what is useless, because how will you know where to run to? Aim towards the positive solution.

Please note that unlike my other posts, I have a queasy feeling in my stomach while writing this. Maybe from extreme hunger, who knows. But anyway, this post did not flow very well. Perhaps I will get on track and rewrite it for the third time.

evil and Gods will

abstract (summary): "evil is the absence of God, so he has the ability to cause it by leaving someplace"

This will be a high-tension controversial theory and I'd like to resolve into something more certain if possible. If bible verses and other thoughts come into your head as you read, I would love to hear them.

Evil is not directly opposed to God, as if we could pick up evil and throw it at him. When God comes in contact with evil, there is no battle (naturally). Evil is only the absence of God, like dark is the absence of light. So when God moves into a dark corner...he lights it up - no questions asked, no battle.

So now regarding the presence of evil and God's absolute soverign will. Everything that happens is part of God's plan, right? But what about evil? Does he make us do evil sometimes?
James 1:13-14 "When tempted, no one should say, 'God is tempting me.' For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each one is temted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed."
Exodus 10:20 "But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go."
Hm. I don't have an acceptable solution to this yet.

Here's one 'solution' which is not really satisfactory. Could God create evil by simply leaving someplace? For instance, could he retract his gracious hand of sanity from Pharaoh's heart, causing him to have a hard heart? This unfortunately makes God very closely connected with evil. Any thoughts on this subject would be appreciated!

More texts: Romans 9 in general.
Romans 1:24,26 "Therefore [because people had rejected God] he gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity the degrading of their bodies with one another." "26Because of this God gave them over to sinful lusts..."

By the way, this close connction of God with evil would seem to lessen his aversion to it. (meaning, why does he punish us for sinning?) Good point. The justice aspect of God is kind of left out. But the emotional part stays. God is still jealous for us, and he still gets ticked off when we leave him. In this way the primary motivation to avoid sinning is not justice, it is Gods love.
Hm, this might be a good thing, eh? But I still don't like it much.

Hopefully there will be more about this soon.