Avenues

Proverbs 1:7
Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools depise wisdom and discipline.

This verse reminds me of the age old debate that christians part take in daily on whether not GOD will blast you into oblivion for sinning or if this huge GOD of grace and love is so forgiving as not to punish us for transgressions. Now something you should know about me is that I like to play devil's advocate, others call it indecive, I would rather call it diplomacy but I refuse to believe that there is just one avenue to derive an answer to any question, or one group of people that hold the answer to any certain problem. I think that God has created this vast world to scatter knowledge too and fro and in order to solve our problems, we as a people must piece together what we know indivdually in order to defeat challenge after challenge.Diplomacy is the reason this Earth still spins, why we've manage not to allow one of the many nuclear bombs into unsteady hands, and why the southeatern United States still exist. For in 1961 the Earth stood still and held its breath as Russian missles took aim at the United States and American missles pointed towards Russia after the Bay of Pigs. Diplomacy lifted us from our bitter disgust for each other to a mutal respect for humanity which dwindled by strings at the moment. My point is that we should all seek each other to find the answers to these complexing problems we are facing and will face, and if we only did this more, mankind would have already left its footprint on Mars, feed the staving world, or cured cancer.I think I've said enough about how I arrived at my poistion, I guess its time to reveal my position. God is scary! He's the force that struck people dead for committing one sin in the old testament, he wiped out entire armies for mentioning Isreal in the same sentence with war, and made his own follwers kill their animals in the name of himself. That sounds like a brutal GOD, but it also sounds like a GOD who can't be in the presence of sin, A GOD full of love and jealousy,and it also sounds like a GOD that has done whatever possible for a spieces that continue to turn their back on him. I also believe this jealous GOD was well aware of the brutality he had to inflict in order to continue a relationship with us sinful people. So he decided to commit a brutal act upon himself by making a human version of GOD and humiliating this version, beating this version and then hanging him on a piece of wood, included with that and the fact that papa Adam and moma Eve gave us free will. I believe that the Lord is not a punishing GOD but I do believe he is JUST. I believe he is like my mother who never traveled to the switch tree out of malice but because she wanted a better life for me. I believe GOD gives us AVENUES, I believe GOD predetermine paths for us and we choose the AVENUE in which we want to travel. If you choose promiscuity over studying then you may recieve an STD before a college degree. If you choose to hang with drug dealers rather than committing to your team and coaches, then you may recieve a Federal Indictment instead of D1 sports scholarship. If your hostile to people instead of being helpful, you might find a bullet before love. Life is full of AVENUES and the only way to choose the correct ones is by fearing the Lord in every decision and as the decisions become harder your fear shall increase because your knowledge will. For the Lord is with us and not against us! God Bless You and God Bless These Great States of America