If God gave humans free will, why does he draw the line at certain things?
Is it conditional free will, because thats not really free, then.
Is this covered in the Bible?
You can't have a decent adventure story without a clear villain. God understands this, so he created Evil for us to side with or combat. Say what you want about Him, but the Creator knows story structure.
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There are many kinds of suicide, as far as I know, the side of it that is frowned upon by christians is considering that life is not Worth living and that things cannot get better. But of course, that assumes that you actually had a saying in those strong feelings that you somehow allowed to be overcomed by them (there is so much chemistry in our brains that you can legitimately ask when our good judgement starts).
The analogy would be the people who are disgusted by overweight fellows, those who see it as a voluntary thing, a kind of weakness (a poster in the forums used the expression "easy greed") that can be seen as a flaw of character. Technically there can be a bunch of reasons to being overweight, but fat people are often bandwagoned as unwilling to fight their weight progression. Saying that suicide is a sin against God assumes lots of things about the mentality of the person, it's really a question of motive (even though the "life is not yours to take" that comes from regular killing is also an element in the equation).
Well, its not. But it is if you're thinking about entering HIS domain of Heaven. God is basically our parent, and he's laying down the law by saying "Yeah, you can do all that shit... But you are NOT doing it in my house, you live under my roof (or cloud, in this case), you live under my rules."
I've also heard that since Life is a Gift, destroying it is like insulting the people who gave it to you. I see that argument as a sentimental oversimplification, but it sort of rhymes with other things subscribed by the scripture. For example, the tale of the talents implies that people are on Earth to partially fructify what God gave to them so any kind of cop out, including self-destruction, would be against what God wants from people.
In those terms, suicide would be still very different depending on the situation, because the same parable mentions that the servitors come from different starting points, letting us to assume that we will be wanted for the things we were given and not in some ratioless objective measure.
Gotcha.
But in regards to suicide, no one asked us if we wanted a gift, or if we wanted to come into anyone's house. We were given no choice.
Not saying i believe in suicide, i dont, i'm just wondering out loud/asking for opinions on arguments i've run across recently on God's perceived unfairness.
Through life we are often responsible for things that weren't our choice, there is nothing particularly surprising about the unsavory idea of having to "deal with it" when it comes to our own responsability in life.
Not sure i follow.
Just saying, what got from what i read, and the gift comment above, is, if you get a crappy present it doesnt mean you have to use it/keep it.
Screwed up way to condone suicide, but, again what business is it of God's?
The "Gift" part is an argumentation that I don't take to the letter, as I said, in the Scripture there is this tale about being responsible with what you have and making the most of it.
I brought up Choice to tune in with your reply, my argument around it is that you aren't solely responsible for things you choose. In some cases saying stuff like "I didn't ask for this Gift" doesn't strip you from responsability, that works in a case to case basis.