I think morality is a "shell game".

Its really about spiritual state.

This problem always exists - hopefully NotReady will drop in to this thread.

Argument from analogy is somewhat fraught, nonetheless you introduced a distintion between put together and mix. Sure you can put them together - I'd stretch the analogy and say that's what people want to do when they want to remain imperfect yet enter into a union with God. You can put them together as much as you like - they won't mix (which is what God wants - the actual union).

It's not that God can't associate with sinners-- He is doing that right now in some way. I don't even think that it is an issue of compatibility, either. I think this life is a process of perfection (or maturation) that inevitably weeds out the bad apples. Think of death as the final rite of initiation-- some will graduate, and others will be annihilated, and yet others go to hell.

It's like this: suppose you want to start a community. So you are just going to choose people. You are going to choose friends and neighbors and children and so on. All of you are going to live together in the same area. You will barbecue together and police your community together and so on.

Are you going to just take anybody for fellowship? Are you going to go looking for a roommate among the dregs, buskers and bums?

Or are you going to qualify them in some way?

There is a very interesting verse in the creation story:

God kicked them out because He didn't want them to "graduate" yet. They couldn't have eternal life just yet. They simply can't be trusted in this neighborhood, in this community, and they are not going to pass the background check.

Look again at what He says:

This "us" represents this particular community. The man has become like the adversary, and he "knows" evil. Man is created in "our" image and "our" likeness, therefore, he is meant to be one of us, but has become just like one of us.

So, we are at one remove from God's presence right now. But suppose that you have it your way, and God let's you fellowship with Him and the angels. I could easily dream up all kinds of scenarios-- none good. You might wind up like Adam, who took everything he had for granted, so much so that he couldn't even bring himself to act in an apologetic fashion before his creator after he broke a cardinal rule.

You would be exactly like Adam, in fact, because Adam didn't have a "childhood" either. He never grew up either.

Think of what Jesus meant when He said that "you must be born again." This second birth (which is a spiritual birth) indicates the beginning of spiritual growth and maturation. It must be toward some cause or goal, no?

So, anyway, that's just the way I read it: that God is looking to add to His number, but He's protecting the neighborhood, and being careful with who He lets in.

I feel like its because we created god in our own image. Thats why we feel he created us in his own image too I think.

Zombie thread.

Ask the question again but not from the premise that there may or may not be a god, but that there definitely is no god. As a parent, it's easy for me to imagine why the system of sins and atonement evolved, I also have children I need to be able to control.

OrP, not sure if your objections had been answered itt (sort of doubt it), but from skimming it I noticed that you refer to "orthodox" christianity. Do you indeed mean orthodox christianity (as opposed to, say, protestantism) or do you just mean "mainstream"?

Furthermore, it appears your OP is somewhat unclear about what you mean with "associating with" and "have a relationship with". Obv. god has a relationship with us. That's the basic tenent of a personal god - that he is with us, cares about us blabla. In the eucharistic meal, god is even "in" us.

When you phrase the question in terms of "why does god need us to purify", it seems you're stuck in a neo-platonistic/scholastic and an anselmian feudal conception (god needing satisfation and all that). I dont know if they are still mainstream in orthodox (or any) theology. Perhaps you can clarify?

Yeah, I mean mainstream (I avoid that term because in the U.S. "mainstream" or mainline Protestantism refers to the now more liberal Protestant denominations like the Presbyterians, Episcopalians (insofar as they are Protestant), United Methodist, etc.). Generally speaking, I distinguish between these two either by capitalizing "Orthodox," or by making it clear contextually.

I was trying here to find language that isn't already theologically significant so as to as to be mostly neutral about what it means to have a relationship with god.

I don't know if the issue is that I'm stuck here as that I think orthodox (or mainstream) Christian theology is. However, the issue I'm getting at here isn't so much the exact mechanism of the atonement is supposed to work as why it is necessary in the first case. More exactly, why it is necessary for people who are seemingly good people? Anyway, to illustrate what I was talking about, here is a recent post from NotReady in a different thread:

The bolded is what interests me. Why is it good for God to be so unyielding in his judgement of people's worth, but not so for humans? Let's say I married someone, and then said that if she sinned once I would divorce her. That seems unreasonable and wrong to me.

Ya. The bolded is a kind of toned-down version of Anselms argument in Cur Deus ****. What the bolded is missing to make it a (at least internally) consistent argument is something to the effect that God resides in an orderly universe (perhaps that was implied). If so, and given that god as the creator deserves respect and reverence, a sin against god disrupts natural order. Anselm develops that further by noting that a sin against god is always an essentially infinite transgression which in return needs a similarily infinte atonement. Thus: Enter the Son.

However, I don't see why the answer can't be much simpler. Further above the example of water and oil was given. You noted that water and oil can in fact coexist next to each other. True. I'd argue that this would be the analogy of gods relation to us now.

However, if you now question why one would need atonement (or salvation or whatever term you want to use) as the live-and-let-live state of affairs of water and oil seems to work just fine, the christian will scratch his head and note that to him, the idea of heaven is categorially different from earth. In the analogy of water and oil: heaven is defined as the place where water and oil blend. Or in other words: Why do we need salvation? Because we don't want heaven to be like earth.

And that process of salvation/atonement is not necessarily thought of as a process initialized by god (as in: He wields the whip). If you conceptualize it as "burning shame" or some such, you get to atonement, whithout god "doing" it, while still being the reason for it, all the while it being something you cannot not want, once you get in the presence of the overwhelming love that is god yadayada blah (which happens only after death).