The question seems to postulate a loving God and I find no evidence of any such thing Those who insist there is one might visit the cancer wards in a children’s hospital some time.
The question assumes that any human being is actually innocent.
I’m not sure that’s a valid assumption from the Bible’s point of view.
Well, you have to understand that God gave those kids cancer because he loves them so much.
Sort of like why an abusive husband breaks his wife’s jaw. Because he loves her “so much.”
When you get right down to it, God’s a lot like Ike Turner.
God doesn’t ‘give’ anybody any malady.
That’s like saying God gave Ryan White the HIV virus.
Hmm, I think cancer is more of an ‘act of god’ sort of disease, right? It’s not like most kids are engaging in a lot of cancer-causing behaivor, for the most part. It just happens.
Plus, when you’re dealing with an entity that could have prevented the disease, with presumably little or no effort, the question becomes akin to what sort of person refrains from throwing a drowning man a rope. The parable of the Good Samaratin equates loving thy neighbor with actively aiding and caring for him, reducing his wordly ails without asking for recognition or compensation. This is not a standard God holds himself to.
“When God gives you AIDS, make lemon-AIDS!” – Sarah Silverman
So tell me…what age should God allow cancer to start forming? Ten? Twenty? Thirty?
I can only speak for myself, but “never” would be nice.
If he didn’t, who did?
If I may, I’d like to ask you athiests and agnostics a question…
What do you think the cause is for cancer?
Hmmm… I seem to recall something about people condemning the Illinois (IIRC) governor a year or so back for having commuted a whole lot of sentences owing to issues in how they were imposed on the condemned. The proper balance of justice and mercy is, I think, always debatable, even when you’re talking about God doing it. And all I can do about the problem of evil in the world is to repeat my earlier post, “I don’t know.” I have a hunch that the idea that humans must be free to make real choices, and deal with the consequences, is for some reason so precious to Him that from His perspective it’s worth what it has cost. But I would not be prepared to defend that in reasoned debate.
As for Jesus, the Chalcedonian formulary is key: He was “truly God and truly man.” Not 50:50 Hercules-like demigod, not one pretending to be the other, but totally and simultaneously both. (Paradox? Yep. File it with the Trinity under “How the heck do you explain that?”, OK?)
As for what Jesus knew and when, there’s a real issue of figuring this out. Mark represents Him as fairly much a human in the prophetic tradition; John, while retaining His humanity, casts Him as transcendent and, if not omniscient, at least “megalo-iscient.” Perhaps the key is in Paul’s exhortation to humility using Jesus as example, in Philippians 2:
The technical term for Jesus’s lack of divine omniscience while a human is kenosis, “emptying,” meaning that the Eternal Son of God gave up the majority of His divine knowledge in order to be truly a human being. If He were omniscient, He would not experience what humans experience.
Against this, however, we have His repeated prophecies of what fate was in store for Him, and even His own resurrection.
My own reconciliation of these apparently-conflicting concepts is that Jesus knew God’s plan for Him, not in any divine knowledge or revelation way, but in exactly the same way as any devout Christian knows God’s plan for him/herself – He or she is prepared to do God’s will, and trust God in faith that He will keep the faithful person safe (or with no lasting loss) and bring him/her through it OK. Jesus didn’t “know” the details of the Crucifixion and Resurrection ahead of time in the way that an omniscient God knows exactly what’s happening in the core of Rigel right now. What He “knew” was what God expected of Him, what He could trust God to bring off, and most especially that He could put His full trust in God. That is knowledge available to every human being if he or she chooses to avail him/herself of it. And Jesus, truly man, had that sort of near-unshakeable faith – as do some people.
It’s a different sort of certitude from factual knowledge. It’s like asking the question, “Are you more certain of the distance of Jupiter from the Sun or the love of the person you trust the most?” This is not merely comparing apples with oranges, but apples with the hue of orange paint.
(All this presentation, by the way, is stated as if factual. Of course, it is either the consensus view of Christendom, the beliefs of that faction of Christians to which I belong, or my own personal views, and I trust I’ve been clear, at least implicitly, which it is that I’m presenting.)
Cells dividing more than the normal amount without dying, and spreading that mutation to other cells? (I could easily be wrong; i’m no expert).
May I pose a question to you in turn? What part of the universe does God not play a part in?
That sounds like the answer I would give.
What’s your definition of ‘part’? Are you referring to peoples’ lives?
You want wisdom from the totally ignorant? I can do that. I suppose it’s some kind of cellular mutation or alteration that is able to either spread itself to neighboring cells or reproduce cells containing the alteration from available raw materials. Either way, it seems like something that any halfway-decent God would be able to habitually cure the instant before it occured, in every case, without the “infected” ever noticing that they were about to have a disease. This goes triple for cases where the infected is not deliberately inundating themselves with cancer-causing substances.
Polycarp, that was a very deep and thoughful response, and I do appreciate you answering so carefully. However my point was that, since one way or another Jesus clearly had at least overpowering faith and possibly absolute knowledge that his suffering would be, though intense, temporary and followed by unending praise and glory…it’s slightly disingenuous to analogise him with a character that believes they will be spending a very long time in prison when in actuality they will be released shortly.
By “part” I am meaning literally everything, so I suppose technically it’s two questions; What about the universe has God not interacted with at any point? And what could God never interact with at any point?
If we follow that line of reasoning, why wouldn’t God stop a heart attack from happening in the thirty year old professional athlete? Or perhaps alter that child who’s got Down’s Syndrome before they are born?
Hell, if we are going that far, why doesn’t God nudge that pedestrian off the sidewalk before he becomes a victim of the drunk that just left the bar down the street?
I can’t answer these questions.
Well, to be entirely fair, there’s a point past which an ever-helpful God would begin infringing on we mortals’ free will, and I think that plucking guys off the sidewalk might be past that point.
And I can answer these questions: there is definitely not an all-powerful, all-knowing God that considers reducing the suffering of most/all living humans to be a goal worth achieving.
Because death is not the worst thing to happen in the world. Eternal damnation is. Similarly, chemo isn’t the worst torture in existence; Hell is. In fact, who knows; those on the other side (i.e. in Heaven) may view terrestrial immortality as a terrible burden.
A broken finger isn’t as bad as chemotherapy. So if yours is broken, you won’t suffer?
Of course, the existence of greater torture and suffering doesn’t have anything at all to do with wether God can/should alleviate those sufferings that we mortals do endure. Unless you’re implying that being aided by god in small, unnoticeable ways will cause you to be sent to hell? (If so, I would praying for aid be regarded as flirting with damnation?)
Whether God should make people live forever is a separate issue entirely. Presuming that heaven is nicer than earth, and hell is not, a God that focussed on maximizing happiness should therefore kill all the good people, and make the evil immortal. (As noted, it’s not about happiness.)