That was the big question asked to all ministers on 9/12 how can a loving God allow innocent people to die? The answer is so simple that a child in school can answer it. If you are a christian and beleive that Jesus Christ is the son of God than just look at a cross. Here the greatest evil in the history of mankind was preformed, diocide. Was there anyone more innocent than Jesus? Yet out of this great evil came the greatest good a loving God would ever give mankind ,eternal salvation. For all christians of the world this is our faith. For God allows evil to happen so a greater good can come out of it. How many people in this country were praying to on 9/11? It did not last long though. Some people as my old grandfather used to say “have to be hit between the eyes with a 2 x 4 in order to understand something” beleive me God will hit you with a 2 x 4 it if you choose to get your attention. I can 100% honestly say without hesitation that when the next attack happens it will make 9/11 look like a walk in the park. At that point you will see greatness. Yes my grammer and spelling may not be good but the message is clear.
So, you are saying that God allows bad things happen so that we can become closer to Him?
Isn’t that sort of like a parent not preventing bad things from happening to his or her child so that the kid can come running to Mommy, because that makes Mommy feel good? Or maybe is it closer to Mommy causing the bad things to happen (since God is omnipotent)? Sort of a Munchausen-by-proxy type thing?
Well, if it is coming anyway, why doesn’t he just get it over with?
I must be awfully hard headed because when that 2 by 4 hit I didn’t feel God at all… It just looked like a bunch of religious wackos to me; wackos who believed they were in the service of Allah. Are you telling me they were actually doing Jehovah’s work? Man, this stuff gets complicated.
Injustice. One of my problems with this line of apologetics is why is it that a select few should pay in torture and terror for society’s tuition.
the 2x4 that i was refering to was not the events of 9/11. It was refering to all the things that happen in everyones own personal life. Everyone one this board has experienced there own tragedy one way or another and how have you dealt with it?
Just so I understand…
If I’m not Christian, I don’t have to worry about any of this?
OK, thanks. I feel better now.
FTR, most, not some, of my best friends are Christian.
I would expect an alleged benevolent, omnipotent being to have other means to get a point across whitout causing unjust, wholesale suffering and murdering, something like arranging the stars to spell “behave!, mmmkey?”
Isn’t the whole point of the book of Job that sometimes life is shitty and there is no real reason for why it happens or to whom it happens to?
Why? Because rain falls upon the just and unjust alike. Or because God doesn’t want the world to become overpopulated. Take your pick.
This is pretty much answered in the story of Job. When asked why he allows such terrible maladies to befall a just man God answers Job “Look, you primitive knucklehead, do you understand how the universe was created? No. So don’t presume to question what I do because it’s beyond your capabilities to comprehend.”
Maybe God was just covering for the fact that he made a bet and didn’t want to fess up. I’m not claiming this to be the truth but there’s some belief that we simply can’t undertand the way God’s mind works.
Marc
I have come to terms with the fact that bad things happen to good people. What I still wonder about is, why do good things happen to bad people? It seems that if there was a god, wreaking collateral damage to the righteous while he performed his greater good deeds, I would expect he would avoid doling out the goodies to people who rejected his commandments. Yet the evil often reap great earthly rewards inconsistent with their rejection of the almighty. Am I to believe that god bestows earthly rewards on the wicked, in the service of a greater good as well? I find that very unjust, and on that basis I can only conclude a just god does not exist.
johnny M, wouldn’t you agree that a god that could achieve his ends with any method but chooses to use evil, is partially evil? Or, are we to conclude that god is not capable of achieving his ends without evil?
We are taught that man was made in God’s image, and that we are all sinners. Wouldn’t that mean that God is a sinner, and partly evil?
Furthermore, how can a loving God allow people to feel the emotional confusion of questioning God’s judgement?
Why should God fix the world when we’re perfectly capable of fixing it ourselves?
"…[A]lthough they were great and wonderful men, yet they were men, and each one of them had no more opportunity than the present offers, for their enterprises were neither more just nor easier than this, nor was God more their friend than He is yours.
“With us there is great justice, because that war is just which is necessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in them. Here there is the greatest willingness, and where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great if you will only follow those men to whom I have directed your attention. Further than this, how extraordinarily the ways of God have been manifested beyond example: the sea is divided, a cloud has led the way, the rock has poured forth water, it has rained manna, everything has contributed to your greatness; you ought to do the rest. God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.”
– Niccolo Macchiavelli,The Prince, ch. 26
With a nod to the late Cyril M. Kornbluth for basing a story on that passage
I was thinking more of Irenaeus, as interpreted by Jack many episodes back.
Why would God need to sacrifice Himself to Himself in order to make Himself change a rule that He made up in the first place?
Ronnie James, NOOOOOOOOO!
How on earth was that the greatest evil?
- The people committing the execution did not believe they were killing a god; if anything, they were more innocent than Jesus, who refused to provide them with evidence of his divinity.
- Jesus knew what was going to happen and willingly went along with the process.
- Jesus’s dad knew what was going to happen and did nothing to stop it.
- Jesus knew the laws and knew he was breaking the laws and knew what the punishment would be for that.
Compare that to, say, a baby who dies of AIDS, a disease created by God in a manner that allows it to infect babies.
- The perpetrator of this crime knows exactly what He’s doing.
- The victim doesn’t know what’s going to happen and doesn’t go along willingly with the process.
- The parents know what’s going to happen but are powerless ot prevent the process.
- The baby doesn’t know the cause of the disease, the effect of the disease, or the actions by which he or she will get the disease, and does nothing that causes his or her death to occur.
On what basis was killing Jesus worse than God’s killing of infants?
God did nothing to prevent mass murder in order to convince the survivors to pay Him homage? That’s really sick.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if someone like you convinces me that their God is real, they’ll have a much harder time convincing me that their God isn’t thoroughly evil.
Daniel
And what would He need with a starship?