Trinity: same or separate?
Q: If God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit (ie trinity) - are they the same person or three separate beings which form one person?
neither 'same' nor 'separate'
A: This gets right to the heart of the Christian faith. And it's not easy to understand - God is infinite, and we're finite, so we'll never plumb the depths of everything there is to know about him. But the New Testament does give us a clear answer - John's gospel especially. It's worth making the time to read what John chs. 14-17 have to say.
more »The problem comes with the words 'same' and 'separate' - neither of these is right. Father, Son and Spirit are distinct persons - they are distinct centres of consciousness (loving, willing, acting, knowing). But they coexist together - their unity is so tight that they dwell in one another, and act in harmony with one another. They are both "three persons" and yet "one God".
[To put it another way: 'same' implies they aren't distinct; 'separate' implies they aren't united in that tight way the Bible describes. Neither is true.]
Three important things follow from this:
1) When you read the pages of the New Testament and come to understand more and more of who Christ is, you can be sure that you are also coming to understand who God the Father is (e.g. John 1:18, John 14:9);
2) Christ is the only person who can bring us human beings into relationship with the Father, since he is the only person who is both fully human (as we are) and fully God (as the Father is);
3) If you do have that relationship with the Father, then you have all of God living within you (John 14:23, Romans 5:5) and you live in God (John 17:21) - isn't that amazing!
{adapted|from an answer by JHH}
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Making Satan?
Q: Why did God make Satan?
How did it start?
A: This question turns on how the world started. God made everything, and God made everything good to start with - Satan didn't start off evil, God created him good. The problem is that it didn't stay that way.
more »The Bible is a very practical book - it is written for us, so it tells us things we need to know. We aren't given a detailed pre-history of how Satan rebelled against God - when he first turns up on the pages of the Bible he has already gone bad. The Bible is more concerned to tell us the story of how we, as humans, rebelled against God - and how we can get right with him again.
Whose fault?
Q: Are things like climate change and earthquakes caused by human sin?
Yes & No
A: The short answer: Yes - and no - and yes again. Let me explain...
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a) Yes
The world we live in is not the world as God originally intended it to be. There were no natural disasters in Genesis 1. But the human race choose to rebel against God - and that had consequences. We now live in a world under curse. We are out of kilter with God, and our world is out of kilter with us. Ultimately everything wrong in our world traces back to sin.
b) No
But - you can't jump from the general to the particular. Our world is generally under curse because of sin. That doesn't mean that every bad thing that happens is a direct judgement on some particular sin. Jesus makes that point in Luke 13. A tower had fallen on some people. Others came to Jesus and asked if the victims had been especially bad sinners. Jesus said "No" - but then warned everybody to repent, or they would perish too! The world is generally under curse and judgement. But you can't always link a particular sin with a particular judgement.
c) Yes again.
But then again, sometimes you can. We live in a world with real consequences. And all to often we ignore them - we use the world in foolish or risky or uninformed ways. If we build houses on a flood plain they may well get flooded. If we build houses under a volcano they may well get melted. If we build houses on a fault line they may well get shaken to bits. One way sin works in us, is to encourage us to grab the short term gains - and forget about whether there are any long term pains. This was Adam and Eve's temptation in the garden. It the temptation loan companies use to lure us into debt. It's a factor in nearly every personal sin. It's a factor at for whole communities too. Climate change is an example of the community side of sin. It's not down to any one individual. No one sin has caused climate change. But it is the result of millions and billions of little choices, all building on each other. Little touches of greed, carelessness, laziness, exploitation of the world. And ignorance. As a race, we've turned away from God, and so cut ourselves off from his wisdom about how to take care of our world. So things go wrong.
Climate change and earthquakes - are they caused by sin? Yes - and no - and yes again.
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Tsunamis?
Q: If God owns the world,why does he allow tsunamis?
Not as God intended
A: This is a big question, so be aware that I can only give a taster of an answer within a couple of paragraphs. Basically, this world is not the way God intended it to be. God made the world good originally, and one day Jesus will return to make it good again. Right now it is far from good in many ways.
more »In a nutshell, we live in a world that was made good, but is now broken. Or, in more biblical language, our world is fallen, because of sin. We've told God we don't want him in charge, and God has taken us at our word. In a sense he's taken half a step back from our world, to let us see what living a life without God as God is like. Our world is full of sin, and it's also under a foretaste of God's judgement against sin.
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