I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard well-meaning Christians tell me with absolute certainty, "God doesn't want robots." I could ... oh, I don't know ... go out to a nice dinner or something. Okay, I don't know. But I've heard it a lot. I've heard it with "puppets" instead of "robots". I've heard it with fine words like "God wants reciprocal love, not forced love" or the like. But it's all the same.
Here's my question. Where can I find that? I'm willing to entertain Old or New Testament passages. Of course I don't need the exact words. ("Oh, don't be silly, Stan. They didn't have robots in Bible times.") A reasonable exegesis of a passage would be fine. Something -- anything -- that tells me that God has no interest in love that is offered by choice rather than by warm feelings. Something that says that God only wants love freely offered without any divine intervention. Something to indicate that He does not intervene in this. Because I'm not finding it.
4 comments:
The only way you can read puppets and robots or it's concepts in Scripture is pushing your worldview into the text (eisegesis). It is like putting a square peg in a round hole. You can but it doesn't look good. The square peg is no longer square.
If an Arminian has trouble with man being a robot because God draws a person to Christ, without free will, then in order to be consistent he would have to believe you can lose your salvation because God is a gentleman and will allow you to use your free will to leave. What about heaven? There is no free will there. You will not be allowed to sin and as a result totally programmed to do only good forever.
I agree with Stan that there is no Scriptures or concepts in Scripture that give us these views.
Me, personally ... I would love to be God's "robot", God's "puppet". To do all and only what He wants would be ... literally ... divine.
To me, the accusation of "robots" is a misunderstanding of the concept of regeneration and choice that we find in Scripture.
General note: The claim, "God doesn't want robots!" in reply to this post is not an answer. The question was a biblical question.
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