No thoughtful religious person I know believes that God involves Himself in athletic contests, and they’re all either embarassed or infuriated by the sight of praying athletes before a game (at least if those athletes are praying for victory) or athletes thanking God for victory after a game.
As to believing that God intervenes in disasters and selects particular people for survival, the religious believers I know would say that even if this is true (and they don’t generally believe it is), we couldn’t know.
If you need to know to put my post in context, I’m a believer (Christian, and more specifically, Catholic).
I know you’re looking for the believer’s explanation of this kind of belief, but I don’t think all, or maybe even most, religious people share the belief you’re describing.
We don’t generally believe that God does this, and we also don’t think that we can “justify,” or even understand, what God does.
Many Christians would say that the only effective prayer is the prayer for the abilty to accept God’s will. Of course, prayer for divine intervention is entirely understandable.
When you’re plummeting out of the sky in a burning fuselage, or even dying of terminal cancer, that’s not much of a prayer, is it? What’s the point of that supposed to be? If you weren’t already living your life in acceptance of God’s will as a Christian, what the hell have you been doing the whole time?
Thanks for the link. I found the article to be very facinating and it gave me quite a bit to contemplate. This is why I posted my question here at SD instead of a religous site, more information … less preaching. Good job my friend.
Good point. If it were an ancient Sun God my opinion would be that he wouldn’t care. However I was taught that God considers each and every one of us as his children. If scripture portrays us that way I would think that yes, God does care about each of us.
Now I realize there is a few hundred million people on earth so it boggles the mind that even God could care for each of us as an individual, but if God is really “all knowing and all seeing” then it would reason that he could care for and know us each as individuals.
The gist of it seems to be that God is sovereign and has elected some to perish and others to be saved, and that all of this glorifies him, and that everyone really deserves eternal torment but the amazing thing is that some can receive grace and avoid the torment.
Part of the reason for suffering here is that if God corrected everything, there would be no need to seek Him, there ironically be no need for Him in our hearts, or no need for a transition to His Kingdom. God would be doing all the protecting and no one would know Him and that would make Him very sad as we are His children and we are very much on His heart. God wants to be with us and know us and us Him. Going deeper, in our world with things other then Love, we would never learn that Love is the way we desire to live. We would be children who never learn never advance. God would have our world full of hate, injustice and war yet it would seem perfectly fine to us. God needs us to learn that a world of Love for all is what we want, and the way we learn is in this world where we can try different ways and see where they lead.
God tries to draw us by Love, and if that works - great, but if not God will use any other thing to get us back on track, including death. God knows who would benefit from being saved from this plane and who would ultimately benefit from dieing in it.
An act of God is a term often used for natural disasters. I have often heard people say about a devastating time in their life, looking back it was the best possible thing for them and they credit God for it.
But you are right many don’t ‘blame/credit’ God for the bad, but it is not scriptural, Job credits God for all the good and bad stuff, Paul also thanks God for the trial that he went through, etc. God lets bad things happen if it can be useful. The reason many don’t is that many can’t see God working the good in the disaster.
God cares about His children’s interest and may intervene in a sports event, such as giving His child some amazing ability (perhaps to show them their potential) , or maybe not, again what ever His child needs to move forward in Love (the child’s relationship with God). Either way God is interested in His children’s lives and wanting His children to know Him more.
kanicbird, so suffering is for our benefit so that we may seek and find God’s love through our trials and tribulations.
Awesome.
Isn’t that a bit like me throwing my kid into a boiling hot bath (on purpose), then through me tending to his 3rd degree burns, him finding out how much I truly love him, because rather than running from my abuse, in anguish, he sought my care, allowing me to apply a salve and change his dressings while his scars healed?