I don’t mean to nitpick, but this assumes that God is bound in time, which I don’t believe. Since that doesn’t really matter for purposes of this discussion, I will assume that what you have stated is correct.
Why is this true? Sometimes the right decision is not the easy or pleasant one. God’s nature is such that he must act in certain ways. Have you never made the correct decision, but regretted having to make it? I have. The real problem is that man makes decisions that God definitely regrets. You have assumed that prayer is only about God’s decisions, which I don’t think is true.
This is a very limited definition of prayer. What about prayer seeking direction, or asking God what He wants in a given situation?
Assuming we are just talking about petitions, just because I don’t like a situation does not mean that it is not optimal or that it is not what should have been ordained by the Lord. You have elevated man’s perception of a situation to be the ultimate authority as to what is optimal, or what God should have ordained. What if a person makes a bad choice and God allows him or her to suffer the consequences? What if God allows the person to be put in difficult circumstances for a reason that transcends the person’s ease, comfort and pleasure? In the time that I have come to know God, I am convinced that God cares far, far more about my character than he does about my ease, comfort and pleasure. I could give you many personal examples of times when I thought my circumstances were not optimal, and later discovered they were.
I am not sure what the point previously arrived at was, but I don’t see this point, either. How does answering a prayer equate to God regretting a past decision? What if God says, “if you ask for “A” you will get it, but if you don’t ask for “A” you won’t get it.” You ask, and so you receive. In this case, there is no regret, simply a condition.
God often uses adverse circumstances to get our attention, to grow us up, and to strengthen our ability to obey him and to be a comfort or source of wisdom to others. “Unpleasant” does not necessarily mean “bad.” As Joseph said to his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” Genesis 50:20
How does that work? Does God tell you what to do? If so, how?
When a baby dies, which of the above applies?
Are you worshipping the God that told Abraham to kill his son Isaac?
And Abraham was all set to do it - what sort of father was he?
Why does God put Job through such pain?
If man is supposed to have free will, why kill the priests of another religion? Why slaughter Sodom and Gomorrah?
I’m sorry if these are hard questions, but this is your religion.
For me it has worked in a number of ways. Sometimes, I get a very strong impression (for lack of a better word) that something is the right thing to do. I wish I could explain it better, but if you haven’t experienced it, words can’t really describe it fully. It is sort of like an idea that is attached to a very heavy anchor. When it hits bottom, you don’t need anyone to tell you what it was, you just know.
Sometimes, God gives me direction by changing my mind. I have been in situations where there were multiple options, one clearly the best from a practical standpoint, and after praying, I simply didn’t want to take the obvious path. There were no lightning bolts or fireworks, but I just, against all human reason, didn’t want to do it. Instead, I would want to make a different choice, and although completely illogical at the time, it would turn out to be better than what I had thought was the best choice. These changes often take days, weeks or months of prayer, not a two minute “God give me wisdom” prayer.
Sometimes, when praying for direction, God will change my circumstances. Opportunities will close, or new ones will open. Sometimes He will give me insight into things I had not thought about that I need to know. Sometimes, I will see or remember a principle in the Bible that closes off certain options. Sometimes, God will use something other people say that just sticks in my mind and won’t go away until I deal with it. I have never had God speak to me audibly or through a talking mule or anything as dramatic, but I have seen many times where God brought about a change in my thinking or gave me understanding about things that caused me to take make a particular decision.
Maybe some, maybe all, maybe none. My first general thought about this is what many will say is a cop-out, but I don’t think it is at all. God is Big. He is really, really Big. He is bigger than we can comprehend or apprehend or conceive. His ways are completely and absolutely bigger than ours. Our logic is foolish to Him, and our intelligence is nonexistent. That is the backdrop for all my perspectives on your questions.
Babies die for a lot of reasons, most of which are the byproduct and outworking of the fact that we live in a fallen world. As to any particular baby, who can say what the cause is? Suppose that God knows that a particular baby would grow up to be another Hitler and would kill millions? If God allows the baby to die, has he done a bad thing or a good thing? I have seen it argued on this board that Hitler is proof positive that God is bad. If God had chosen to kill Hitler as a baby, would God then have been bad for killing a child? No one would have known the child would have grown up to be such a force of evil. What if the child would otherwise have died a horrific, painful death? My point is that God takes more into consideration than we do or can. For any child or person’s death, we simply cannot know all of the details, issues or possibilities. Hopefully, it is clear that I am not stating that all babies who die would be horrible people or die to spare themselves pain or agony. To objectively and honestly criticize God for such choices, we would have to know what his reasoning was (assuming we could understand it). Obviously, God lets some people who are going to be evil and horrible live.
I know that suggesting that something is not knowable will be considered very unsatifactory to those who think everything must have a logical answer. I don’t profess to have all of the answers, and I don’t say the above as a way of saying “you can’t prove me wrong because it is unknowable.” I simply believe there are many things that we cannot know.
For our purposes here, I will say yes. Herein, however, I have to put in my usual disclaimer that not everyone takes the book of Genesis to be a literal history.
I believe that Abraham knew that God would provide a sacrifice that was not his son. Abraham knew God very, very well, and therefore knew that God would provide a sacrifice if Abraham trusted Him.
Genesis 22:
7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”
Notice that Abraham said God “will provide,” not that God “has already provided.” I interpret the story of Abraham and Isaac to be a picture of God’s sacrifice of His own Son. Unlike what He required of Abraham however, God did allow his Son to be sacrificed for the salvation of all. God paid the price for us if we only accept it. If Abraham had killed Isaac instead of accepting the ram that God provided, he would have sinned terribly. I think that is the point of the story.
First of all, God did not put Job through pain, Satan did. God allowed it, but he did not cause it. It is easy to blame everything on God, and to forget that there is an opposing force at work in this world. Note the last verse in Job chapter 1.
22 In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
What I believe Job understood is that God owns everything in the universe. He owns the earth, the oceans, the trees. He owns me. My wife, my house, my job, my cars, my portfolios all belong to Him. He has given them to me. If He chooses to take them, can I declare evil the God who loved me enough to allow me to have them for a time? If he chooses to use my life by giving me great riches and influence, or if He chooses to use my life by showing His grace in my extreme suffering or duress, can I declare one is good and the other bad? God gave me life. He can do as He chooses. Whether I like it is of no consequence. Job understood this. When his wife told him to “Curse God and die” he declared her a “fool.”
What if God chose to allow Job to suffer because God knew it would be written about, and that even centuries later, many would still be receiving comfort as a result of reading Job’s account. Many would believe in God because of Job’s account. Are these sufficient reasons? Perhaps they are part of the reason, perhaps not. If you can understand God, you can understand the reason. Notice that what Satan took away, God gave back to Job seven times over. If Job, who underwent the suffering, refused to sin by charging God with wrongdoing, who am I to charge God with wrongdoing on Job’s behalf?
I don’t believe that man has unfettered free will. The Bible has a number of stories where God directly caused people to think and act in certain ways. I could better give my perspective of the killing of priests if I knew your exact reference, but I will give some general thoughts.
God is holy. He is holy like water is wet. It is His unchangeable nature. God is patient and longsuffering, but unlike some others on this board who doubtlessly have superior intellect, I believe that God is not indefinitely obligated to tolerate sin. Free will is man’s ability to choose good or evil. It is not man’s ability to do so without experiencing the consequences. Sometimes those consequences are a natural result of good or bad choices. Sometimes the consequences are directly ordained by God. The Bible says that “wages of sin is death.” Death is a natural consequence of sin. That is true whether death is brought about by old age, cancer, sword or divine retribution.
Divine retribution is not a popular idea, but maybe that is because we don’t have all knowledge. Assume for a moment that those who choose to wilfully deny God are doomed to spend eternity apart from Him, and that such a separation will be very bleak. If God destroys a society that steadfastly chooses to wilfully deny him, then He in turn cuts off the number of offspring born to this society, and thereby reduces the number of people who would otherwise have spent eternity separated from Him. If you would have been one of the offspring, you would gratefully accept such a tradeoff. I am not saying this is absolutely the case, I am simply suggesting that there may be reasons which we, as humans do not understand. That we don’t know all of the issues surrounding a decision does not in turn make that decision evil.
Another possibility is that God does it because He will not tolerate the evil any longer and He knows the people in question will never change. When man declares punishment against evil, man rejoices and calls it justice. When God does punishes evil, man criticizes. If Osmam Bin Laden were captured and were tried, convicted and put to death, we would say that is justice. Why can’t a holy God, with infinitely higher standards do the same?
What is the exact problem with the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah? In the whole of the two cities, the presence of only ten good men would have saved them, and yet they did not even have one. Perhaps the problem many have with the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah is that they disagree with God’s pronouncement that the people were evil. Who of us is in a position to call God a liar? By what authority would we do so? By what standard would we decide what is evil? What historical evidence would we offer?
Now, just so we are clear, I am not suggesting that it is ok for people to go out and kill priests (or anyone for that matter) because they have different beliefs. I am only saying that I believe God has the authority, based on who He is and what He knows to make decisions that seem harsh to us, but may actually be merciful, or that at the very least are just. People should not take it upon themselves to be God’s hand in these matters. People who blow up abortion clinics or kill in the name of religion are doing evil, IMHO, so hopefully you will not think this means I advocate people killing, maiming or telling others what they must do or believe. We all make our own choices, as God makes His. We may choose to seek God’s advice, but He will never, ever seek ours.
Hard questions are the best, I think. I hope that my answers have given you something to consider, but if at any point it appears that I am saying “this is the answer,” please understand that they are my opinions and nothing more. I know God. I talked to him this morning. But I don’t know everything about God or even a fraction of who He really is or what He is really like. Hopefully, I am coming to know Him better as time goes on, but my perceptions of God have changed over time and will continue to change if God allows me a long life. Others on this Board who know God have very different opinions. They may be right, and I may be wrong. We may all be wrong. God’s ways and thoughts, after all, are not ours.
I do know that with regard to prayer, it is probably the single most effective use of my time. It has literally changed my life for the better, not just because I get stuff or people I know get stuff (although sometimes that happens), but because it is a process by which God changes my attitudes and desires and shows me more of what He is like, and exposes more of what I am like. I used not to like God very much, but the more I talk to Him, and the more He talks to me, the more I like Him.
Then why do so many devout Christians ask God for favors in their prayers?
The prayer can be altruistic (“Please, God, don’t let my brother die” “Please, God, end this cruel war”), or it can be overtly selfish (“Please, God, give me a new Ferrari”), or it can even be about ones religious experiences (“Please, God, grant me the wisdom to know You better”) – but in any of these cases, it’s still a request to God to do or change something deliberately. If God doesn’t interfere with human affairs, why make requests in your prayers at all?
Do you ever get an answer this way without praying?
If so, how do you tell God apart from subconsciously mulling things over?
Has an idea, brought to you this way, ever turned out badly?
Do you mean the situation ‘changed’ several times?
Then how do you know it was your prayer?
After all, if you pray continually, you can always say that prayer was ultimately responsible.
And His morality is far better than ours?
If you heard a voice (presumably God’s) in your head telling you to kill people, would you do it?
After all, His purpose is incomprehensible to us…
So a sinner can be punished by killing an innocent baby?
You must have a LOT of faith in God to believe He is merciful, then.
Well we know that God lets mass murderers live and succeed in their evil. So presumably that isn’t why babies die in His world.
And God has arranged the World this way because?
Why does God not explain Himself?
Why do the ‘completely innocent’ babies die, causing terrible grief to their families?
What is God trying to acieve?
Well the evidence is that God (if He exists) is not all-loving.
Indeed. Is it not a morality lesson either?
You don’t quote Genesis 22, v10:
And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
I’m sorry, but this clearly shows that Abraham thought God wanted a sacrifice of Isaac.
It also shows that Abraham was ready to kill an innocent if he thought God wanted it.
So your interpretation is simply wrong.
What sort of religious lesson is this?
But God created Satan!
God allowed a faithful worshipper to be horribly treated.
I’ll try to come back to more of your interesting points later.
I hasten to add that you come across as a caring, thoughtful person.
I do not understand why your Holy Book contains so much unpleasantness, nor why God allows so much unhappiness in His creation.
Not the way I am talking about, no. I have certainly gotten ideas without praying, and it is certainly possible to get them without praying at the time, but I personally have not had the strong impression I am talking about outside of prayer.
As to how I know that it is not just my subconscious, I have learned, or more accurately I am learning, the difference. Here is a lame example, but maybe it will help this make sense. I have a dog. It barks a lot, and inevitably when it starts barking, I go to make sure everything is alright. In doing so, I have learned that my dog has a particular bark when it sees another dog outside of its fence. When I hear that bark, I instantly know what it is. The more you pray, and the more you know God, the more you are able to identify when it is him talking. If I thought that God told me to do something that contradicted what he has said in the Bible, I know that what I am hearing is not God, but is something else.
I have had ideas like this that turned out well, but were painful, but I haven’t had one that turned out badly, that I recall. Paul followed God’s commands and was beheaded for it. Did that turn out badly? Paul didn’t think so, but obviously the outside observer would disagree. I use Paul to say that just because I haven’t had such direction turn out badly, that does not mean that God is obligated only to give me direction that will make me happy.
If I understand what you are saying, I do not mean that the situation changed, but that my mind changed. It was not changed by logic or reason, it simply changed over the course of time that I spent in prayer. When I have my heart set on something, it takes time for God to change my mind, and often God will begin by pointing out things in me (and trust me there are many) that he is not pleased with. As I change, my thoughts and desires change and I am better able to see what God thinks, without trying to filter it through my own desires.
As to how I know that it was prayer and not just me, my answer is twofold:
First, I can’t always say something was a matter of prayer. There is faith involved. In the beginning I was quick to credit God with things that upon reflection were not God at all, but were in fact the opposite of what God had tried to tell me.
Second, if you have talked to someone often, you get used to hearing their voice and you get used to hearing the kind of things they say. Then you are increasingly able to recognize something said is reliably from them. For example, my wife and I talk all the time. I know, to a certain extent, how she thinks. If, to take an absurd example, someone said, “your wife told me to tell you to kick that darn varmint of a flea-ridden dog out out of the house before I get home,” I would know that message did not come from my wife. That is not the way she talks, and that is certainly not the way she thinks.
In the same way, the more I talk to God, listen to God, and read the Bible, the more I get a feel for how God talks and how he thinks. There are still times where I am unsure and I am learning to wait to make sure if I have doubts as to whether what I am thinking is from God or whether it is just me.
God does not talk to me all of the time. In fact, at least as He deals with me, God is not a conversationalist. Often he will say one discreet thing and that is it. For example, he may say “Apologize to Bob.” Once he does, I can almost guarantee you that he will say nothing else to me until I have apologized to Bob. You are correct that one could always say prayer is responsible, but I don’t. It depends on what it is. There are times I know I need to apologize to Bob just because I was raised that way, and there are times I know because God tells me by giving me a very strong impression (which is a terrible description). For such things, the cause is not something I dwell on. If I know something is the right thing to do, hopefully I will simply do it.
I have learned that if it is God telling me to apologize to Bob, that every time I try to pray, my sole thought will be “apologize to Bob.” It will be that way for a week, a month or a year, or however long it takes me to do it. I have had that happen when I didn’t think I owed Bob an apology, at all. In fact, I thought he owed me an apology. Often, God asks me to do things that I would rather not do. Can I prove to you absolutely those things are not just my own independent thoughts? No. But if you are in a relationship like that, and you have experienced it often enough, you know it for what it is.
I don’t think of God as having morality. God is good in its purest form. He is incapable of being tempted and is perfect in every respect. If that is morality, then yes, it is incomprehensibly better than ours.
If I heard a voice in my head telling me to kill someone I would not do it, and the reason is because I know that God would never tell me to do such a thing. His word says “thall shalt not murder,” so I know he would not tell me to murder someone. God does not always share his purposes, and in fact usually doesn’t, but his purposes never contradict his word, which I believe is contained in the Bible.
I don’t personally believe that God kills innocent babies to punish people, although I don’t think it is my place to say that he could never do that. God owns us. If a carpenter takes a tree and uses it to carve a beautiful fireplace mantle and another tree he chops up to use as firewood, who is the tree to complain?
Babies die all of the time, so we know that God allows it. Sometimes they die because they are murdered, sometimes because of disease, or any number of reasons. We know that God does not condone murder, although for the most part he allows humans the right to choose whether to sin. If a baby is murdered, we can therefore absolutely know that it was not God’s will, but that he nonetheless allowed it. When people sin, those around them often suffer, not because God sends suffering as punishment, but because that is the nature of sin. God has appointed to each of us the time that we will live. To some it is 100 years, to some 5 minutes. None of us knows what leads God to make such decisions, but he does.
Here is why I think that God is merciful. First, we may not always agree with his choices, but he provides comfort to those who seek it from him. Second, God has promised that for those who love him, he will work out all of our circumstances for good. Third, God has prepared a place of eternal joy in which we can live if we only ask and believe. There is no amount of suffering here on earth that can compare to what God has prepared for us. Does that take faith to believe? Absolutely. Without faith it is impossible to please God.
I disagree with you a little here. The fact that some mass murderers live does not mean that God does not prevent others from living past a childhood. The point I was trying to make is that we rarely, if ever, know why things turn out the way they do. It is easy to say that we should therefore assume that God is evil, but I think that to make such a determination, we would have to know all of the facts. To assume God is evil takes faith, just as it does to assume that God is good.
Only God knows the complete answer to this, IMHO. I think that part of the answer lies in God’s desire for us to know and experience love, and to do that we need to be able to choose. We all know that if we have children, at some point in their lives, they are going to experience pain and to cause someone pain. That pain may be in rejection or it may be because they die and leave those who love them behind. It may be because they are jerks. Is it therefore evil to decide to bring a baby in this world knowing that it will both suffer pain and cause pain? I don’t think having children is evil. Neither do I think the solution is to curtail their freedoms so that they cannot make choices. For those who think God should not have allowed man to make mistakes, I wonder if they curtail their children’s freedoms to the point that their children are not allowed to make mistakes.
Do you explain why you do the things you do to squirrels? I don’t think we could truly understand God’s big picture any more than a squirrel could understand why we do the things we do. This is not meant to suggest that God’s sees us as animals, because he doesn’t. Babies die, just as old people, young people and middle aged people die. We ultimately die because there is sin in the world. That is the nature of the world, and people die because they are in the world and subject to its natural laws. One of those laws is described by the bible as the “law of sin and death.” I don’t think that God sits around waiting to punish us every time we do wrong. I don’t think he punishes people by killing babies.
As Jesus said, God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends the rain upon the just and the unjust. (Matt. 5:45) While God certainly has the ability to abrogate natural law (he does it all the time), God is not obligated to do so, and I personally believe (although I can’t prove it) that he only does so when it suits his specific purposes. We will all die, but God has chosen to give us eternal life after our physical death on earth.
This seems to me to be as much a statement of faith as it is a statement of fact. I don’t think we have all of the evidence. To reach a conclusion without all of the evidence, you have to assume that either: (a) the remaining evidence would prove that God is not all-loving or (b) the remaining evidence would explain the previous evidence and would prove that God is indeed all-loving. Either assumption is an expression of faith.
After reading what you wrote, and studying it a bit, I have to agree with you that my interpretation was wrong.
Hebrews 11 says:
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac; he who had received the promises was offering up his only son, 18 about whom it had been said, In Isaac your seed will be called. 19 He considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead, from which he also got him back as an illustration.
If you read the entire story of Abraham, you will see that God asked Abraham to do things, and Abraham did them. Then God blessed his obedience. Abraham had a habit of trusting God and obeying God. God promised that he would have a son, Isaac, and that Isaac would have descendents. (Genesis 17). Abraham knew that God would not break his word. Therefore, when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham knew that God would not allow Isaac to be killed before he fulfilled God’s promise of descendants. Hebrews 11 describes it as Abraham having faith that if he killed Isaac, God would have resurrected him. What I said is different (depending on how you interpret the passage quoted above), and obviously, to the extent it conflicts with the Bible, you should follow the Bible’s interpretation. The lesson of the story is to trust God, and to obey God. I still interpret the story to be a picture of Christ’s sacrifice. The ram represents Christ, who was sent by God to take our place.
Even if God created Satan, he did not make Satan’s choices. Satan did. I think this comes full circle to why did God make things the way he did. Or to put it another way, why would God allow bad things to happen? This is one of those cosmic questions to which humans don’t know the answer, but to give humans the power to choose, they must have a choice. I don’t see this as being as problematic as some. The alternative is for God to have created automatons. There is a price to pay for choice, but I am glad to have been given the privilege of choosing.
I think that God has allowed Satan to continue for a time, and has allowed man and angels to choose sides. You get to spend eternity with whichever side you choose.
Yes, he did. God has all knowledge and can make the hard choices like that. IIRC Job is the oldest of the old testament books, and some consider it to be allegorical, but I interpret it to be literal, so I won’t take the easy way out. The Bible teaches that (1) God is sovereign and (2) God owns us. This will probably mark me out as a crazy person, but I would rather live a life of suffering and be included in God’s plan for me and my generation, whatever that is, than to have a life of ease that is completely wasted.
Paul was used like that. He suffered greatly, but like Job, he did not complain. By tradition, all of the disciples except for John (and Judas of course) were executed for their belief in Christ, yet James said that we should count it all joy when we endure trials and temptations. The ultimate example of the response to suffering was Jesus, who modeled perfect obedience.
God always rewards us for obedience. Sometimes he rewards us here, sometimes we have to wait until we get to heaven to be rewarded. I personally believe that those who have endured great suffering on earth, but who were faithful to God, will be rewarded throughout eternity beyond their wildest expectations.
There is certainly suffering in the world, and the Bible is realistic about that. To my mind, the question is whether the suffering in any individual life will serve a purpose, or whether it will simply be suffering. The answer to that question is up to each of us. I think I have given my limited perspective as to why above, but I am sure that I will ask God for the answer to the question of suffering when I get to heaven.
Thanks for the compliment by the way. I hope you don’t mind if I quote you when I am dragged to the Pit.
how do you tell if God exists? (separate thread probably)
how do you know if He wants your prayers? (what happens to show that?)
does He answer your prayers? (how do you tell conicidence from Deity?)
Yes, I understand about the dog. I note that his communication is clear, and can be checked (e.g. you go outside and see the other dog).
But you say you can only confirm if God is speaking to you by referring to the Bible.
We’ve discussed Abraham already, where a faithful worshipper thinks God wants him to sacrifice his son.
God also destroys all inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, the priests of Baal and the entire first-born generation of Egypt.
Apparently this is all acceptable behaviour to Him.
You posted:
So if your hear a voice in your head saying that a city is evil and must be destroyed, would you try to do it?
Of course I know you wouldn’t dream of doing any such repulsive act, but I am extremely puzzled by the contradictions between Jesus’ non-violence and wise words, and the actions of the Old Testament God.
How can killing an entire generation of Egyptians be morally perfect?
Wern’t some of them innocent?
But I don’t want to be owned, let alone by someone like that.
And if the carpenter cuts down a tree just to scare someone, is that acceptable?
But He killed as above. (And far more casualties in the Flood.) Were all those Egyptians evil? Why didn’t God let ordinary people know what terrible choice they faced, so they could appeal to the Pharoah?
Why does God allow innocent babies to be murdered?
How is this perfect morality?
Why does God allocate us a fixed time to live? Don’t our moral decisions make any difference?
Why does He let any live? Why doesn’t He give them a short life, to prevent suffering?
No, events as discussed above show that evil happens and you say God could have prevented it. I’m not saying God is evil - just there is no evidence that He cares.
All you have is your personal faith, which, alas, is not helpful to me.
I hope you don’t mind such a strong challenge to your views.
It is absolutely nothing personal!
This is Great Debates, and I do genuinely have a problem reconciling the Old and New Testaments.
Ahem… interesting as the debate currently is, let’s take care not to hijack the thread.
So, how do you differentiate between what is God’s will, and what he allows to happen but is not in his will? As you’re defining it, his will is what the outcome is and what happens not according to his will is the rough spots he has to get through to get to the will. Right?
