Raised in a family that was intermittently transient (living in renovated school bus/rv etc) in order to travel and preach. I was very devout growing up, probably terrifyingly so to anyone who wasn’t in my family. For one thing, I was told and believed that I was a prophet from a young age. I didn’t really believe anyone who claimed to not be a Christian was being honest- the standard line was that “atheists” and so on secretly believed, but didn’t want to stop sinning (or something- the details were a little blurry).
One day, while living with a cult in West Texas, I was riding back to our campsite in the back of a pickup (with a bandana tied around my face to cut the dust), and it occurred to me that, if God were omnipotent, then he always has the option to do something else but get the same effect. So if he wanted to not kill Jesus, but still arrange things so that people had to acknowledge/accept him to avoid hell, then he could.
Omnipotence means you only ever do things because you wanted to do them.
Why this hit me like a ton of bricks, but the idea of billions of ignorant people burning for eternity didn’t, I don’t know. But everything else came tumbling down from that. Cue the lying, the (several years later) inadvertent reveal, sleep deprivation, harassment, years of eggshell conversation, my family skipping important events in my life, etc. etc.
Raised in a family that was intermittently transient (living in renovated school bus/rv etc) in order to travel and preach. I was very devout growing up, probably terrifyingly so to anyone who wasn’t in my family. For one thing, I was told and believed that I was a prophet from a young age. I didn’t really believe anyone who claimed to not be a Christian was being honest- the standard line was that “atheists” and so on secretly believed, but didn’t want to stop sinning (or something- the details were a little blurry).
One day, while living with a cult in West Texas, I was riding back to our campsite in the back of a pickup (with a bandana tied around my face to cut the dust), and it occurred to me that, if God were omnipotent, then he always has the option to do something else but get the same effect. So if he wanted to not kill Jesus, but still arrange things so that people had to acknowledge/accept him to avoid hell, then he could.
Omnipotence means you only ever do things because you wanted to do them.
Why this hit me like a ton of bricks, but the idea of billions of ignorant people burning for eternity didn’t, I don’t know. But everything else came tumbling down from that. Cue the lying, the (several years later) inadvertent reveal, sleep deprivation, harassment, years of eggshell conversation, my family skipping important events in my life, etc. etc.
Good times.