Would it? I don't know. Or would it just run down and die of "heat death"? The description sounds like God is actually going to step away from His creation at some point in the future, and when He does, everything will fly apart like an atomic bomb went off. This is described here:
[2Pe 3:10 KJV] But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Note that the verse doesn't say "God will go away and everything will fly apart," but "God will come and everything will fly apart."
Reread, I think you'll catch your mistake.
So the verse actually says the opposite of what you are saying. God will actively destroy the heavens and earth that He made to function correctly without constant manipulation.
Does He answer prayer? Wouldn't that be considered to be manipulation? In such instance, if we went back to our alternating current (plugged in AC) and direct current (batteries DC), it'd be akin to getting plugged in, if we went with the hands-off thought. The issue is whether these 'hands-on' theologian are right, or the ones who say 'hands off' are correct and it boils down to how we read scripture. Reread your scripture, if it said what you thought it did, It'd have more weight.
But in either case, it seems like God is moving from a position relating to His creation to another position relating to His creation (in to out or out to in), and thus not everything is literally "in" Him.
Here is a point where we can see eye to eye: God is involved/relational to His creation, but isn't living 'in' it as best as I grasp scripture: Act 17:24 He is Spirit. Such intimates something like a different dimension and also intimates that the physical comes from Spirit which often confuses us as physical beings (Scientists thing dark-matter or matter existed always). Yet Acts 17:24 says 'in' Him.
Wrong "it". We were talking about "in Him", not "Him preserving everything". I don't have any argument with God preserving everything. We could probably have a discussion about what that means, and I no doubt could learn something by having that discussion.
I think pouring through
these commentaries will be helpful toward your desire.
I'm not seeing that. God certainly "formed" man personally from the dirt. Then He granted him enough self-direction to make decisions for himself. You agree with that, correct? In other words, God does not make our decisions for us, right? (I would appreciate a yes or no answer on that one.)
Yes, but...
"How free is free?"
We are given responsibility which means independence and a bit like the AC vs. DC discussion. Relationship means 'still plugged in' to a degree, meaning my decisions are functioning only by His sustaining power. A good argument for DC is that God could have pulled the plug just before Eve took the fruit, shooed the serpent from the Garden, and plugged them back in. That it doesn't go down that way suggests that DC is the better analogy. Regardless, it is how we basically grasp Acts 17:24, John 15:5 and similar verses, that informs our opinions. It is an old debate, I'm not sure we'll conclude it here, but be informed by the ongoing thoughts over these specific scriptures.
I can't see that such should drive anyone to think that because we are allowed to make our own decisions that somehow that means that we don't need God to sustain us, even if so little a thing as providing air that we breathe.
It is why I think, for present, that AC vs DC helps and works for analogy.
At the same time, God is capable enough to make a system that actually continues to work (to provide air for us to breathe, etc.) even if He isn't constantly manipulating it. "He set the earth on pillars"/"He hung the earth on nothing" both talk about God setting up the world so that it would be stable, not requiring Him to hold it up. So figuratively we live, move, and have our being "in Him"--we NEED Him to survive--while not physically residing inside Him.
There is a theological need to make sense of our autonomy and also, to remember 'you are
not your own, you were bought with a price' as well as "We being many, form one body, and
each of us belongs to all the others." Living in a nation with a Declaration of Independence often has us thinking of our individual God-given rights. I'm pretty independent and especially as I get older with these 'pesky kids' need to remember we are lights on a hill and supposed to be interacting for the spread of the Gospel.
So, since we were talking about "in Him", and you're equating that to "of Him", doesn't that mean all people are "in Him", and therefore my premise is correct--that there's no great difference between us and the nonbelievers regarding that term? Nor is there any difference between us and a rock, since both are "in/of Him", right? What it seems like to me is that you've made the phrase meaningless by saying it applies to everything.
I think in a continuation just above, we 'can' be independent by choice, but 'take up your cross and follow me' is a call to be 'plugged in' such that I think it is something inbetween the respective views of AC vs DC. It seems, by analogy, both AC and DC.
Would the battery and us be "in Him"? Is it possible for God to make a battery that is not internal to Himself? For instance, the sun. Is it only possible to have a Sun, and a solar system, and a galaxy, etc. that is inside God? Maybe it is, but that sounds...limiting. It sounds like there are a whole bunch of logically useful but physically impossible things for God.
God isn't physical. Whenever I hear 'in' and scripture does use it, it isn't 'inside' as if God were a physical being. A lot of people hate mysteries, but this is one of mine, I have no idea how everything is 'in' Him. I'm not sure Panentheism from a Christian perspective does either. They certainly do not mean 'physically in.'
Can He make a system (world/solar/galactic/universe, etc.) that can function, or not? Can a human actually make a decision, or does God have to manipulate his mind for every decision?
I think you'd agree with me that God certainly has manipulated your and my every decision because we 'no longer live to ourselves' as Scripture says. I'm not sure if analogy will work, but it is like we became DC. Adam and Eve were told they'd surely die and it seems the AC connection is the breaking point. It seems to me the answer, again however crude but serviceable the analogy: that we are both AC and DC. There is every sense that we recharge by the sun, by food, etc. on this planet for the sense that we have to get 'plugged in' to recharge/keep going. It seems Acts 17:24 emphasizes the 'plugged in' idea.
I think you were saying it is impossible for God to make something that is outside Himself, meaning that all that is, is God. I'm not ready to accept that.
That is pantheism. I reject that as well. I also reject any idea that God is physical such that we are 'inside' of Him physically yet when those who are saying we are 'in' Him else we'd combust, they are intimating a physical idea. So, for me, we aren't 'physically' in God in that way.
One day we will not have physical bodies, and will not cease to exist 'in' Christ.
In a nutshell, I'm not sure if the universe would fly apart, just 'how' He sustains. In Him