If God is Omniscient, then why would there ever be a need to test humankind?

[The Language Police]

Just give me ONE credible reason why God would test anyone if he is omniscient.

And if you say "Because He's God and he can", then you are NOT answering the question, you are just espousing an idiocy to avoid thinking about a tough question.

In fact if that IS your answer please DON'T answer.

All other thoughtful responses are welcome, though I know I'll get all sorts of mental feces.

[Someone who cares]

If I know very well my child can go to college, study, pass exams and graduate, why should they bother going, can't they just give them the diploma? I know they can do it.

[Really Now?]

"All other thoughtful responses are welcome, though I know I'll get all sorts of mental feces."

First, why demand a respectful and descent answer and that add in that attack, before anyone can even address the question. Why should I even bother?

Yet, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and answer your question, although I am still offended.

Your question makes sense, yet I say "why should God act on his omnipotence, because he is omnipotent?" Doesn't that make God a slave. Like a strong ox whose only purpose is to move strong objects. I don't think it is testing, but just letting things be. Now some may say this is cruel for a God who can change things, but why is that so?

I don't get why people say that people need God, but then also question why God doesn't answer those needs. Or fix the needs before they are requested.

[MSB]

i agree.

I don't t hink the Higher Power does test us.

I don't believe we have anything to prove, or that proving ourselves is desired or necessary.

[petsnakes]

He tests for a few different reasons.

1) He tests to see if you love Him with all your heart, soul, and strength. But like you said He's omniscient so what would He need to see that? He's not testing to see if you do, He's putting you through a test to show that you don't and hopefully change your attitude. He already knows you don't love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. He's just letting you know that He knows. Because the first time you start cursing at God, even just in thought you become convicted and realize you don't love Him as you should.

2) He tests your faith and your commitment to your salvation. Christianity, according to the modern church should be easy. Say a prayer, and be saved. End of story. Christianity according to the Bible is HARD. It's not "I said the sinners prayer and now I'm saved no matter what happens" You can't say a prayer, ask Jesus into your heart and continue on in a life that is totally opposed to everything about God.

3) He tests you to mature you in the faith. He tested the nation of Israel for 40 years while it wandered around in the desert. He put them through trial upon trial not as punishment but to strengthen and mature their faith. And yes, the vast majority of them died going through those trials.

But God didn't kill them "because He's God and He can" He killed them because they hardened their hearts and began to complain. Against Moses, God's chosen agent, and against God Himself. They began to doubt that God would deliver them despite witnessing God moving on their behalf time after time.

[MK6]

His testing is a revelation to us or Satan, - not God.

Besides, Jesus dying on the cross is Love in action. So it really seems necessary to God that he not only thinks, - but also does.

That in no-way detracts from his omniscience.

[Mel-am Meru]

exactly!
if god knows everyones heart why does he have to test.....

he foresees things all the time and acts accordingly....
yet he acts as if he doesn't know a person's heart....hmmm

[Eye of Amalek]

Where did you hear or read that God is testing you? Or is that the way you feel being born as everyone who has to live in a world of insanity?

This is what I discovered and is not a belief. The meaning of life is a journey by God in order to answer the very question you are asking, one in which you have to ultimately answer yourself.

The first phase of God's journey is evolution. It is initiated from a totally unconscious God, as if an infinite Ocean were in a state likened to deep sleep. This unconscious God speaks the First Word "Who am I?� This question disrupts the limitless, undivided, absolute vacuum, and its reverberations create individualized souls, compared to drops or bubbles within the Ocean. By speaking the First Word, God establishes the process of Creation, in which he assumes evolving forms to gain increasing consciousness.

Individuality is the vehicle of this quest. Evolution marks a series of temporary answers to "Who am I?" The soul traverses a multitude of forms, beginning with simple gases and proceeding slowly through inanimate stone and mineral forms. These early evolutionary stages obviously have only the most rudimentary consciousness and cannot provide a satisfactory answer to God's original question.

The original query thus provides a continuing momentum for the drop soul to develop new forms, each with greater consciousness, including the many plant and animal beings. Every evolutionary kingdom reveals new dimensions of consciousness and experience. Each also offers opportunities to gain different kinds of awareness. For example, when the soul identifies itself with varied species of fish, it experiences the world as a creature living in water, conversely, as a bird, it enriches its consciousness by flying through air.

When the drop soul finally evolves to human form, consciousness is fully developed, but an individual is still not aware of the potential of his or her consciousness.

So the original "Who am I?" imperative persists and inaugurates the second phase: reincarnation. Since consciousness is fully developed, there is no longer a need for evolving new forms. The individual's experience, gathered in early stages of evolution, is now humanized and expressed in countless lifetimes. The impulses gained in sub-human forms can play themselves out in the broader context of intelligence, emotions, choices, diverse setting and interactions with people.

But obviously no single lifetime can bear the burden of "humanizing" the entire evolutionary inheritance randomly or simultaneously. There must be a method for re-experiencing the pre-human legacy in manageable segments. The soul thus experiences alternately a series of opposites, organized according to themes. Accordingly, in different lives, the soul becomes male and female, rich and poor, vigorous and weak, beautiful and ugly. Through exploring the potential of these many opposites, one eventually exhausts all possible human identities and, therefore, has fully learned the entire range of human experience.

Here begins the third phase: involution, the process by which the soul returns to the full awareness of the Divine Force, which created him. As Meher Baba puts it, "When the consciousness of the soul is ripe for disentanglement from the gross world (the everyday world of matter and forms), it enters the spiritual path and turns inward."

Like evolution, involution has certain states and stages, consisting of "planes" and "realms." But individuality continues along this spiritual path. In fact, the book, “God Speaks,� quotes the Sufi saying "There are as many ways to God as there are souls...."

Each new plane denotes a state of being that differs from the states that preceded it. The first three planes are within the subtle world or domain of energy, "pran." There follows the fourth plane, the threshold of the mental world, where misuse of great power for personal desire can lead to disintegration of consciousness.

The fifth and sixth planes represent true sainthood, which is understood to be increasing intimacy with God as the Beloved. On the sixth plane, the mind itself becomes the inner eye that sees God everywhere and in everything. "The loving of God and the longing for His union," says Meher Baba "is fully demonstrated in the sixth plane of consciousness."

The seventh plane marks true and lasting freedom. Impressions go. Duality goes. The drops burst and again become the Ocean. God answers his question of "Who am I?" with "I am God." The Infinite has returned to the original starting point. He now knows, however, with full consciousness and full awareness that he was, is and always will be infinite, including infinite bliss, infinite power and infinite knowledge. And, he realizes that the entire journey has been an illusory dream, the purpose of which was the full awakening of his soul.

[Royal Pain in the @ss]

God knows it all - past, present, future, and beyond the limits of time altogether. He already knows who's been sleeping, who's awake, who's been bad or good, for goodness' sake, lol.

Tests are for our perfection. How is anything to be perfected unless it's tried and has grown from it? How are we to gain strength when nothing is hard? How are we to strengthen our patience when it's not tested? It's when our limits are put to the test that we grow and our spiritual qualities strengthen.

God doesn't need tests, we do.