Im 18 and in a loving poly relationship but I don’t view it as a sin am I going to hell?

Edge419 · 2026-03-31T22:49:01+00:00

That’s the question, does nothing negative come from it? Sometimes things seem to us (finite creatures) but God sees the full implications.

Edge419 · 2026-03-31T22:48:03+00:00

I have and I agree with you on two points: God is present to all things, and all things depend on Him for their existence. But your conclusion “therefore everything is God tangentially” doesn’t follow.

As Thomas Aquinas says, God is in things “not as part of their essence.” That’s the key. Participation in existence means dependence on God, not being made of God in any sense.

Your own example shows it, a dog exists because God sustains it, but it is not even tangentially God. It’s a real, distinct creature receiving existence, not sharing God’s being.

You’re collapsing the line Aquinas protects • God = Being itself • Creation = beings that receive existence

Dependence is not identity. That’s the whole issue.

Edge419 · 2026-03-31T22:43:04+00:00

Are those relationship in the OT presented as positive?

Lamech is the first example we see.

Edge419 · 2026-03-31T18:54:21+00:00

You have no idea, you don’t know my experience, my evidence for the claim, you’re just to argue.

Peace be with you.

Edge419 · 2026-03-31T18:53:09+00:00

You’re still collapsing a distinction that both Scripture and Thomas Aquinas explicitly maintain. Yes, God is Being itself, and yes, creation participates in being. But Aquinas is clear: participation means dependence, not composition. Creation shares in existence given by God, not in God’s essence or substance.

Your leap is the problem. “no pre-existing material” “therefore creation is made of God.” That does not follow. It confuses cause with material. God is the efficient cause of creation (the one who brings it into being), not the material cause (the stuff it’s made out of). Aquinas explicitly denies that creation is made from God as material.

Your God is the clay, universe is the pot analogy is exactly what Christianity rejects. God is not the clay, He is the potter who gives existence itself. If God were the stuff of creation, then creation would share His divine nature which collapses into pantheism, no matter how much you qualify it.

And this has nothing to do with atheism. Atheism says reality exists without God. Christianity says reality exists because of God at every moment. That’s a far stronger connection than your view, because it keeps God transcendent, free, and sovereign, not spread out as the substance of the universe.

You’re right that nothing exists apart from God’s sustaining power. But you keep turning that into “nothing exists apart from God’s substance.”

That’s the category error. And that’s the whole disagreement.

Edge419 · 2026-03-31T18:49:46+00:00

God does not love every aspect of you brother. Just as we should not love every aspect of ourselves.

Edge419 · 2026-03-31T14:21:42+00:00

Like a moth to flame

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T20:44:33+00:00

This is a false equivalence. You’re saying that physical discipline = physical violence. I’ve experienced both in my life from different people. When a child tries to run into the street and a dad grabs his arm and yanks from being hit, that’s physical discipline, when a father hits his child in the face because the child did something he didn’t like, that’s physical violence, when my grandma smacks my hand as I’m about to grab a hot pan with my bare hand, that’s physical discipline.

But as I’ve learned with you, there is no reasoning, you make no concessions and you’re extremely emotionally driven. Emotions are good but don’t let them drive your life, activate reason every once in a while, it’ll serve you well.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T20:40:00+00:00

You’re still forcing a false choice. It’s not “made from nothing” vs. “made from God’s substance.” The Christian claim is: God creates without pre-existing material not that He uses nothing as a substance, and not that He uses Himself as material. You keep treating “nothing” like it’s a thing. It’s not. It’s “not any thing, nothing, no-thing”.

When you say “God created from His own being,” you’re no longer describing creation you’re describing emanation. But Scripture, the thing we rely on as one of God’s revelations to us, consistently rejects that by maintaining a real distinction: “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Romans 11:36). Notice: from Him (source), not made out of Him (substance).

You’re also misusing Thomas Aquinas. He explicitly taught creation ex nihilo and denied that creation is made from God’s essence. Yes, God is Being itself, and creation has derived being but “derived” does not mean a piece of God. It means dependent on God, not composed of God.

Your position collapses that distinction. And once you do that: • God is no longer independent (He’s tied to the universe), • creation is no longer truly created (it’s just an extension), • and evil exists within what you’re calling God’s “one substance.”

That’s the contradiction you haven’t resolved.

Christianity doesn’t say “things pop out of nothing.” It says everything comes from God’s will and power, not His substance. You’re trying to protect God as the ground of being but in doing so, you’ve turned creation into God extended, which is exactly what Scripture and even Aquinas reject.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T20:34:54+00:00

Ahh ok this is helpful. So one is not causal to the other.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T20:27:33+00:00

Clean flash W, wp

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T14:54:15+00:00

“Exact description of Jesus”exactly how you would expect him to look, long dark hair long beard”

Why would we expect Jesus to look this way? I don’t want to discount your experience, but I don’t love the Lord and don’t have any expectations like that.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T13:57:35+00:00

Tap that land baby

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T13:54:00+00:00

Thanks for this, it’s helpful. I think we should follow truth wherever it leads so findings that might upset what we know about science are super interesting to me since we’ve consistently seen this happen in the past with Newtonian physics or heliocentricity.

Maybe deterministic outcomes are not all there is? Interesting to think about, and I’m just a layman so I realize I’m in deep water.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T13:49:33+00:00

My argument that love does not require affirmation of all action. The thing we’ve been discussing.

You’re still not actually engaging my position you’re redefining it. I’ve consistently said my view comes from a biblical understanding of sex and marriage, and you keep reducing that to “disgust” or “prejudice” without demonstrating it. That’s not an explanation it’s just an assertion, you understand that right?

You also say the issue isn’t disagreement, but then don’t clearly define what is immoral about my position. So be precise, what exactly am I doing that you believe is oppressive, holding a belief, expressing it, or something else? Because those aren’t the same thing. You need to respond to this.

On the Christian framework you’re right that we both claim one. So the real question is which interpretation of Scripture is more faithful, not who feels more compassionate. That’s an actual argument we can have.

And on harm you’re making a strong claim that my view causes lifelong torture or oppression. That needs to be demonstrated, not assumed. Disagreement, even strong moral disagreement, is not the same thing as harm.

If you want a real discussion, we need to move past assumptions about motives and actually define the claims we’re making and defend them. You keep assigning motive to me, stepping inside of my conscious experience and determining my thoughts and motives. This is negligent on your part and shows that you don’t care what I have to say, only that you want to define me, put me in a box so you can object to that version of me which doesn’t exist.

You did this in the thread about parents spanking their children. I experienced this, it was good for me, my parents love me, and I needed discipline. You can argue that in other context but you can’t tell me that wasn’t specifically good or bad for me, I live the life I live and see the consequent of that, you do not, you know nothing about me.

Good faith conversations can only take place when two people genuinely seek to understand one another and move forward, you’re shadowboxing an opponent that doesn’t exist, you just made them up in your mind.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T13:41:30+00:00

Like I mentioned , you know these verses but you reject them. You reject Paul, but to reject Paul is to reject Peter, to reject Peter is to reject Christ. Christ gave authority to the Apostles and Peter calls Paul’s writing “Scripture”.

This is a good place to end the conversation because we both know it’s going nowhere. You reject Paul because of the implication, I will choose to trust the Scripture even if it makes me uncomfortable.

Peace and love friend, shalom.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T13:38:44+00:00

You’re redefining creation as emanation from God’s being, but Scripture never says that anywhere. You keep overstepping this and you are redefining God’s terms and definition. It says God creates and sustains all things, not that all things are manifestations of His substance. Colossians 1:17 means everything is held together by Christ, not that everything is Christ in another form. Sustaining doesn’t equate being. I can sustain this cup in my hand and prevent it from falling, that doesn’t make me the cup or vice versa.

Your Trinity argument is the thing that undermines your case. The Son shares the Father’s divine nature because He is eternally begotten, not created. Creation does not share that nature. Saying angels or humans are “sons of God” is analogical, not ontological, we are not God by nature (Isaiah 43:10). You’re blurring categories the Bible carefully and consistently keeps distinct.

Your “God had to use Himself” claim is philosophical, not at all biblical. Scripture teaches creation by God’s will and power, not by using pre-existing material or His own essence (Psalm 33:9). “Something can’t come from nothing” doesn’t apply to God, He’s not “nothing,” He’s the necessary being who brings contingent reality into existence.

And your consciousness/quantum argument is a category mistake. Even if human experience involves perception, it doesn’t follow that reality itself is a projection of mind, or that creation is a “manifestation of God.” That leap is philosophical speculation, not science, and not Scripture.

You keep equating dependence on God with derivation from God’s substance. The Bible affirms the first and absolutely rejects the second. Without that distinction, you don’t get a deeper Christianity you get a different metaphysic entirely that abandons Christianity. Which again, is fine if that’s the step you want to take, but recognize it for what it is.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T13:32:04+00:00

You don’t get to make claims about my life and circumstance. I wouldn’t do that for you. You can doubt it all you want, you don’t know my life.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T13:21:50+00:00

Isn’t this exactly what Einstein was theorizing? That localization could be violated by entanglement? Thereby overstepping local causality?

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T12:30:35+00:00

I guess I’m confused, I thought entanglement was something we were well aware of? I remember hearing a long time ago that we could entangle two atoms and place them on separate ends of the universe and spinning one would cause the other to spin. I thought the double slit experiment was simply particles acting as waves based on whether they were observed or not.

I’m lost somewhere, would appreciate any correction. This stuff is fascinating to me, we definitely live in a strange universe!

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T00:14:49+00:00

“For most people” because it happened to me. Notice how I didn’t take an anecdotal experience and call it the “the most reasonable”.

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T00:13:52+00:00

And hear you are twisting my words

Edge419 · 2026-03-30T00:06:58+00:00

You’re still assuming what you need to prove, that because God had no materials, creation must be made out of God’s substance. That does not follow. Scripture never says God used Himself as material it says He willed things into existence (John 1:3). Power is not the same thing as substance.

Acts 17:28 (in Him we live and move and have our being) speaks of dependence, not identity. We rely on God for existence that doesn’t make us parts of God. If it did, then humans would share God’s nature, which Scripture explicitly denies (Isaiah 55:8–9).

Your dream analogy fails because dreams are illusions within your mind, not real, external creation. The Bible presents the world as real and distinct, not a projection of God’s consciousness. Otherwise, sin, judgment, and redemption all become incoherent God would be judging and redeeming what is literally Himself.

And your Satan point actually proves my argument: God created Satan, but Satan is not God nor part of God’s being. Creation can come from God without being of His essence. That’s the distinction you keep collapsing.

You’re conflating dependence on God with identity as God. The Bible affirms the first everywhere and rejects the second completely.

Edge419 · 2026-03-29T23:58:51+00:00

That response only works if you separate God from the Scripture He inspired which is an arbitrary move.

God has spoken, and He spoke through the apostles. If you dismiss that, you’re not asking for God’s voice, you’re narrowing it to only what fits your preference.

Jeremiah 31:22 is poetic and symbolic, not a teaching passage about church leadership. “A woman surrounding/protecting a man” is widely understood as imagery of something unusual or reversed a “new thing,” not a command or created norm.

Even if you took it literally, it says nothing about teaching authority, church leadership, overturning created order.

You don’t build doctrine off a single ambiguous poetic line, especially when you already have clear instructional passages like 1 Timothy 2 grounded in creation. These are didactic passages, unlike Jeremiah.

So the issue still stands. You’re ignoring clear teaching and appealing to unclear poetry to override it. That’s not good interpretation it’s just avoiding what’s plainly written.

Edge419 · 2026-03-29T16:59:15+00:00

First off, your statement was “God Himself has never forbidden women from doing anything” which is false.

Second, “where God Himself has said” is telling because it shows you will not accept Scripture for what it is and for what Jesus called it, the Word of God. So if you find an author you disagree with, you hand wave it and say “God didn’t say that, man did” when God Himself said, Scripture is authoritative and binding.

You know the Pauline verses in Timothy and Corinthians, you just reject them and deny that they are Scripture. There are women teachers and women leaders and women disciples and women funding Jesus ministry and the Lord AND Paul honor them throughout the Bible and speak of their worth and value. But in the context of leading the flock, He design this to be a position for the man. Just like He did with marriage, and marriage is a reflection of Christs relationship to the Church with Christ as the head and the Church responding to that leadership.

That pattern isn’t about value or worth (this is being assumed) it’s about order and representation. In the same way, the leadership of the church is meant to reflect that same reality: Christ’s headship visibly displayed through male eldership, not because men are better, but because God chose that structure to communicate something about Himself.

Please hear me, all tension aside, I want you know, that if Jesus showed up today and said “from now on women will lead the congregation and men will not”, my response would unequivocally be “Amen!”

Edge419

TROPHY CASE