Theo-Thoughts

I mentioned the outlines of an online exchange I'd had with Steven Riddle to my pastor, concerning testing in Genesis and reconciling it with God's love.

He acknowledged that Genesis portrays things as I'd said but added, "God and humans are deeply intertwined in history, shown most powerfully by Christ's death for us."

Asked why God created imperfect creatures he said simply that "only God is perfect so how could it be otherwise?"

Not surprisingly he emphasized freedom, that God wanted to make free creatures and the only way to do so would be to have a test in order that we might choose. I asked how one might look at freedom positively given its results in history and, more importantly, the catastrophic possibility of hell?

He asked if I'd ever known a family in which the parents were extremely controlling, in which the children were micro-managed and manipulated. He said that invariably, at age 30, those children do not have a good relationship with their parents, do not love their parents. Whereas those parents who give their children a certain measure of freedom, parents who are not into any sort of mind-control (he said "getting into their heads"), will, when their children are 30, much more likely be genuinely loved by them.
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At morning Mass today, a different priest mentioned how it may seem unfair that God looks at the state of our souls at our death, as if it's a crapshoot whether we'll be saved or not (depending on whether we'd mortally sinned and been to Confession in time, etc...).

"Shouldn't God just measure the good of our life versus the evil and make a determination on the whole," he said, "like the scales of justice? It can seem like luck to some, like the roll of the dice, as far as whether you're in a state of mortal sin or not at the precise moment of death. But that's not the way to look at it at all. God doesn't make mistakes. A person's actions may look good on the exterior, but if he falls in the last moments of life it's because God, who knows hearts, sees that that person's whole life was not about love of God but about mere external appearances. The whole of the life is reflected in that last moment. God doesn't make mistakes."