The deaths of most of the apostles are church tradition (myth). The bible only talks about one or maybe two of their deaths.
There’s a passage usually quoted by people who hold the view Johnny is presenting there, “Whom He loves, He chastizes.” You can tell my opinion of that theology by my unwillingness to take the time to look up where it’s found and give you a cite. Rather, I’ve seen it presented that He tends to test the people who are closest to Him more rigorously, kind of like a teacher challenging an “A” student with advanced placement work. Myself, I don’t see any really good answer to The Problem of Pain (AKA The Problem of Evil, the technical term for the question “Why do bad things happen to good people?” While Johnny has a point that that poor cancer-ridden nun is now healed and in a place where she can be happy and fulfilled, and will experience that far longer than her agony from cancer, it still doesn’t answer the question of why give her/let her contract/refuse to heal her from cancer in the first place. And I’ll be honest here (I went to say I’d be frank, but he’s a moderator ;)) – when the only answer I have to give is, “I don’t know” then that is what I need to say. God doesn’t need my excuses.
I will reflect on my own grandfather’s death – he was 80, still vibrant and active in retirement , when he came home one evening, sat down on the couch, complained of a severe chest pain, and died a few minutes later of a massive heart attack. The doctor ordered an autopsy for some reason, and it revealed an unsuspected cancer that would have disabled and debilitated him, destroying his spirit – I knew and loved the man; I can testify that he could not have stood to be handicapped by a slow lingering death from cancer. And I do not have an answer why that poor nun died as she did.
Um, it’s core to Christian doctrine that Jesus willingly underwent the whole schmear – incarnation as a helpless baby, growing up as boy and man, 3 years of ministry, then the sacrifice of Himself on the Cross, in order to redeem the world, to reunite God and man. Whether you see this as some perverse sense of substitutionary retributive justice or the playing out of a cosmic drama doesn’t matter – it’s a compelling story nonetheless. Remember Jesus’s prayer at Gethsemane: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup [i.e., the death by torture He knew was coming next] pass from me. Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” (It’s also very interesting, and little known, that the Mount of Olives, on whose lower slopes the Garden of Gethsemane was located, was on the edge of town. All Jesus needed to do was to get up, leave the garden by a side entrance, and slip around the side of Olivet, and he’d be in the wilderness where Roman troops and Jewish political leaders could never find him. He chose not to do that.
Yep. Ignoring that Judas killed himself, all but one of the other eleven, plus Matthias, Paul, and James the Just, the brother of Jesus, were all put to death. At least according to early legend. I’m handicapped by not being able to locate my little paperback that gives short legendary biographies of the Apostles, but Thomas, for example, was killed in India by order of King Gundophares. Peter was crucified upside down in Rome, and Andrew somewhere in the general area of Turkey by being crucified on an X-shaped cross (hence St. Andrew’s Cross, the emblem of Scotland). Paul was beheaded, as was James bar Zebedee, the only one whose death is recorded in the Bible (Acts 12:2). His brother John, however, lived to a ripe old age, dying peacefully in about A.D. 100 in Ephesus.
Or just add an alternative: “lord, lunatic, liar or legend”. It scans well, and I maintained the alliteration; I give it a 9.
Back for a few minutes from lunch. Maybe the cancer the nun suffered was her cross? Even lazarus (spl) who jesus raised from the dead still died later in life!How big is the cross with your name on it or mine? We will all be given a cross to bear beleivers and non beleivers at some point in our lives. If its cancer or heart disease or any other disease this cross will be carried by all. How can a loving God allow this to happen? I do not no the ways of God does anyone? If you beleive that he created everything than how can our simple minds match that of the creator? Sorry back to work
This reminds me that most Christians regard Judas as a villain for betraying Jesus, but there are those who view his betrayal as fulfilling his obligation to Jesus, to get the whole crucifiction and ascension thing rolling.
Not that I believe any of it, but it seems to fit better that way.
Man, was that ever a freudian typo - “crucifiction”? I meant crucifixion!
LOL!!
It may have been an independent typo, but the (horrible) pun Crucifiction was in one of Heinlein’s later books, attributed to Lazarus Long (of course), after time travelers went looking fo the Crucifixion in vain.
Of course, the Creator of that world had no sons… 
The suffering and pain accompanying death may be cruel, and for that matter gravity may be cruel, but somehow it never occurred to me that God ought to protect people from death or gravity.
God is to protect people from the possibility that coercion is the ultimate prevailing organizational principle, and all human affairs horrid little zero-sum contests with losers and winners.
All the peace love and communal grooving in the world isn’t going to stop your knee from hurting if you fall down and bash it on the rocks. Not even if every living human fervently internalizes the teachings of the Sermon on the Plains & the Sermon on the Mount.
Perhaps in the ages before modern medicine, people saw physical suffering and illness differently, I don’t know. But to me “suffering” in the relevant spiritual sense is all about the human situation and human possibility, and the possibility of things being different politically and socially, “how things are”. That whole “hell is other people” thing, and the possibility of fixing how we are with each other, no more wars, injustice, poverty, all that stuff.
So you do not know the answer? How do you account for this statement in your OP?
I am suspicious of your motives for posting here, if you cannot even keep your own story straight. Which is it? Unknowable, or so simple a child in school can answer it? Did you really intend to debate, as you have stated, or simply to proseletyze?
As has been noted, Jesus is supposed to have willingly chosen his cross, while your average mortal doesn’t have any choice in the matter, making this a completely inappropriate comparison. In the one case, Jesus is committing suicide, and God is allowing it. In the other, God is pushing nuns in front of busses. Not the same thing at all.
How the Martians in Stranger in a Strange Land might be another nice literary example. Thing how much pain many would be spared if we could discorporate to a known afterlife.
I’d think he was one of the horde of Messiahs running around. When he got nabbed about three days after coming to the big city, I wouldn’t think he was a very good one. I’d be familiar with the real Messianiac prophecies, and be darn sure he didn’t fit. Since no one took enough notice at the time of the earthquakes and walking dead supposedly associated with the resurrection, I don’t think I would have paid any attention after he was dead - executions were a sheckel a dozen back then.
From a slightly broader perspective, that the prophecies about the second coming not coming true wouldn’t have helped either. All in all, I would have stayed Jewish, just like my ancestors and the overwhelming majority of people on the scene did.
As for people worshipping, do the millions of Hindus mean that they are right? Given the breakdown of world religions, a whole bunch of you, by definition, have to be worshipping a lie. I happen to think all of you are.
Just as an aside, that “This is news to me” was attached to the disciples dying horrible deaths, not God’s responsibility for Jesus’s situation.
Anyway; He may have willingly done these things, but that doesn’t remove the responsibility from God. If you’ll allow me to use an analogy, imagine that i’m an incredibly rich and powerful person who’s totally above the law. Imagine that, through some act of mine which was deliberate, a friend of mine loses his arm. His wife is (obviously) distraught, and asks me to help with this unfortunate situation. I decide that to help, I will provide plans for her to break into a hospital and steal an artificial limb for him, and arrange matters so that she’s able to do so. While she’s successful, I make sure that she is arrested for her crime.
Am I responsible for my friend’s wife’s actions? Well, I did cause the initial problem. I can easily afford to replace my friend’s limb out of my own pocket, entirely legally. And using the vast funds avaliable to me, I could even buy a time machine (stay with me, this analogy’s getting weird) and go back to change my decision that resulted in my friend losing his arm. Now, just as in the biblical situation, it was entirely my friend’s wife’s decision to act as she did; she could have backed out of the robbery at any time. She chose of her own free will to act in a way harmful to her in order to help another; like Jesus. Nevertheless; I caused the situation, I planned the method for her to resolve the situation, yet I could rectify it with no damage to me or anyone else, and I could even stop the entire situation from occurring. Surely I hold some large responsibility for what occurs, despite her free choice in acting as she does?
Thanks for the information. I’d hate to be God’s Employee of the Month. No wonder there are few prophets running around these days.
The snag with your analogy is that Jesus is God – to be specific, the Word of God by which all things were created, the active principle in the Godhead, God the Son, Second Person of the Holy Trinity. So He Himself took on the punishment – as God – and paid Man’s debt – because He was also truly Man.
To rework your analogy – it’s not just you, one person, who is the multibillionaire: it’s you, your wife, and your only son, on whom you dote, all three of you in total agreement on everything. You told the man’s wife she could steal the artificial limb,but you’d advise against it – or she could trust you three to come up with an answer. And it’s your son who goes and claims that he, not she stole the limb, knowing that he will go to prison for it. What he doesn’t know at that time is that you were the largest contributor to the Governor’s election campaign, and your intervention not only gets your son a full pardon after 3 days, but also pardons for all the criminals he met in prison whom he is convinced are sorry for their crime, and willing to trust him to help them get a fresh start in life.
(Admittedly, some of them are running around afterwards pretending they have a hotline to you, and that you really hate gays and abortions, and are opposed to stem cell research, etc. But that’s grist for a different argument.)
Since my latest post yesterday I have not heard too many comments on what your cross or mine will look like, and that the cross or suffering awaits all of us. Do you think that God already knows how much pain and suffering each individual can endure? This may help to explain why some die from heart attacks, some by cancer, some in their sleep or other ways. I would say a test since it is not our constitutional right to enter heaven. Also from science does the dna of man help to verify that there is a higher being or not? It is said that God created man and that man will rule over every other creature on earth. Lets look at our own dna. Over 98% monkey, the rest is dog, dragon fly, daffodil and then human. To the smart people out there who will say we are super monkeys, then show me where is the missing link? I would really like intelligent conversation on these questions. I am sorry that I cannot spend alot of time on this board but I do read every answer usually in the evening.
Johnny M If you want to discuss evolution, start a new thread.
johnny, I don’t think you’ll get too many more comments if you don’t engage on the comments and questions that have already been posted.
I would suggest to you that a lack of intelligent conversation is due to you, not others on this board. Conversation requires an exchanging of comments; instead, you have posed a topic and questions, other have responded, and then you’ve *commented * on a few of the general ideas that have been brought up.
You will not be able to convince us of your point of view if you do not address our concerns with it.
The problem remains though that the multibillionaire could just fix it himself, easily. He’s still the creator of the situation, and he could undo it, either through fixing the problem or by making the problem never exist in the first place. All the upsides of what occur could be performed by God without *any * of the suffering or confusion. There’s still the question of evil, in other words. Not one that I can see resolved any time soon, but more than that I can’t see any plausible explanation that might be true. If we take the resurrection as fact, as pretty much all Christians do, then I not only don’t believe in God, I don’t see how others can.
(Admittedly, some of them are running around afterwards pretending they have a hotline to you, and that you really hate gays and abortions, and are opposed to stem cell research, etc. But that’s grist for a different argument.)
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Just curious; is it really your position that Jesus was unaware of the entirety of God’s plan during the execution of it? I was under the impression that he was supposed to have predicted his own ressurection.
Personally I think both analogies lack something becuase they reduce God’s role in this. God is the rich man, the Governor, the judge, the jury, and the executioner all rolled into one. He could forgive everybody straight out without dabbling in torture and human sacrifice along the way, if he wanted to.