Formica Counter Tops Pt 1

This is one side of an on going conversation. For clarity, basically the issues at hand here are:

1. What is the nature and level of concern / involvement regarding God in the affairs of the individual?

2. What does God owe man, and what does man owe God?

Hope that helps...

Part of being created in the image of God, means that we are created with an inherent need for relationship, both with God and with each other.

The concern of God with man then is generally in regard to those things that move us toward the restoration of a once harmonious relationship.

In other words, since the relation is spiritual, the aspects of man’s life and activities that God is concerned with are those aspects that affect man’s spiritual condition, the how and the why, but not the activity itself. (I also happen to think that if more people could adopt this view our generosity in extending shame could be replaced with healing and restoration)

That said, God recognizes and shows concern for the need of man to have satisfaction and purpose by and through his activities as is evidenced in God creating the Garden of Eden and then moving man into it with the charge of tending to the garden.

On a grander scale the day-to-day activities in person's life may play some part in regard to the final outcome of overall events, but for us to understand the complexity of that would require the finite to understand the infinite, which we have acknowledged man cannot do.

It seems to me however that given a man's limited power to change much of anything and rather limited perspective regarding the larger picture about what should in fact even be changed, these things are pretty much irrelevant.

It might just be wiser to accept them and move on rather than pondering them and going no further for lack of resolution that wouldn't be found anyway.

So now, let's step back just a bit. After placing Adam in the garden, Adam's first task is to name all of the animals. At the outset this might seem cruel, that God would have each set of animals, complete with mate, parade before Adam to drive home the fact that what God had done for all of the other animals he had not done for Adam. Adam might even be fair to call it cruel?

Here I will note that the greatest lessons in life often come at the greatest price. It is the only way to understand them in the depth that would make them truly effective.

The simple provision of these things, void of the experience of discovery trends to degrade and devalue them to the recipient, and thus it's a disservice to do so.

That said then it's not at all cruel when we consider that what is happening here is what I believe happens often in our own lives though we fail to comprehend it, or simply lack the patience to. Here it's spelled out for us or we might miss it once more, God recognizes Adam's need although Adam has not recognized it himself.

Certainly God could have simply resolved it right then and there, just as we often ask him to do for us at our whim, but there is apparently a need to make man aware of what it is he needs and the depth in which he needs it.

Only after that then happens does God resolve Adam's need for relationship on that level, and so too may be true in the difficulties of our own lives.

I could elaborate much more on all of this, but for our conversation (this part of it at least) this is sufficient I believe.

As for what God might owe to man, and what man may owe to God, God has already provided, and man must choose to accept and in turn provide as well. At its root it is simply love and the desire to be in relationship each with the other.

There are some other points to be addressed, and now that this much is laid out, hopefully (for your sake) it will be shorter.