Yes. Another thing to keep in mind when the Bible accounts don’t work for whatever reason, is to read modern accounts of how people today relate to God. Stories did not end two thousand years ago. They are ongoing.
Well yea of course there are different people with different backgrounds and different opinions. We are here to share our own.
My comment wasn’t regarding whether or not a bear poops in the buckwheat. I wanted to give AZslim a chance to share their beliefs beyond quips. AZslim’s conclusion is false, but with no arguments to examine, it is impossible to determine if the problem is an unsound argument or an invalid premise.
Idk I feel like many arguments have been made and the thread got derailed and obfuscated. No one even really knows what we are discussing anymore lol
Somehow we went from the question of why does God allow the devil to continue to exist to baby raping in the afterlife.
As we already off topic I’ll just throw it out there that “The Good Place” is a guilty pleasure. I especially like the episode The Trolley Experiment.
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Haha exactly
Did the Devil cause the earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia?
If so, why didn’t God stop him?
If not, why did God decide to be such a jerk?
Why pray for survivors when God could have stopped the whole thing in the first place?
If He caused people to survive, did that take away their free will?
No where is Satan described as controlling forces on that scale. About the most credited to him would be things like the gust of wind that flattened the tent Job’s family was feasting in.
As for the rest, my last long post tried to deal with the simplistic idea that bad things happen to people because they are bad, which is the flip side of the equally simplistic idea that God should or would flatly protect the faithful from suffering.
This was addressed here:
Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them – do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Luke 13:3-5
The reverse would be true too, why should anyone suppose that those who survived the tower falling on them be considered better than those who didn’t? The problem isn’t dying – that’s pretty much a given for us all no matter if it happens dramatically, comically or quietly in bed – but perishing which is a spiritual matter.
In Mahayana Buddhism, “General punishment” is what falls upon the people as a whole, while individual punishment is what strikes only the individual.
“Inconspicuous punishment” is karmic retribution that is not immediately recognizable, and “conspicuous punishment” is retribution that appears in clearly recognizable form.
Doers of evil can appear to get away with their evil deeds, but the negative karma (sin) created, topples them in future existence.
A country can as a whole be a slanderer of the Supreme Law, and as a country they can eventually suffer retribution. Likewise a country embracing the True Law, can manifest peace where all beings enjoy themselves in harmony and peace.
A slanderous nation will suffer,“internal strife and foreign invasion.”
This is the law of cause and effect.
The Law is strict and never fails, yet there is also the principle of “Lessening of Karmic Punishment” through prayer and practice.
I thought the Bible Pt. II said non Christian religions are all hooey.
I think that the post may have been somewhat in response to mine. Karma is how some deal with the likes of Job’s observations.
So someone says something, you say something, I say something, someone else chimes in … it’s like the telephone game, only for topic drift. No big.
Jesus was a Buddha. His teachings in the New Testament are found in the Buddhist Sutras. Most Christians and many Buddhists too will argue with this.
The Sermon on the Mount, for instance is a replay of the Buddhist Sutras. Eventually people will come to realize this. The teachings in the New Testament were taught using the expedient means of the Buddha, in a specific country in a different language and culture.
Mahayana Buddhism and Christianity is inseparable.
There is an amazing relationship.
Lotus Sutra:
Ay, many kotis of years they may pass without ever having mentioned my name, the law, or my congregation. That is the fruit of sinful deeds.
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But when mild and gentle beings are born in this world of men, they immediately see me revealing the law, owing to their good works.
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I never speak to them of the infinitude of my action. Therefore, I am, properly, existing since long, and yet declare: The Ginas are rare (or precious).
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Such is the glorious power of my wisdom that knows no limit, and the duration of my life is as long as an endless period; I have acquired it after previously following a due course.
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Feel no doubt concerning it, O sages, and leave off all uncertainty: the word I here pronounce is really true; my word is never false.
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For even as that physician skilled in devices, for the sake of his sons whose notions were perverted, said that he had died although he was still alive, and even as no sensible man, would charge that physician with falsehood;
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So am I the father of the world, the Self born, the Healer, the Protector of all creatures. Knowing them to be perverted, infatuated, and ignorant I teach final rest, myself not being at rest.
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What reason should I have to continually manifest myself? When men become unbelieving, unwise, ignorant, careless, fond of sensual pleasures, and from thoughtlessness run into misfortune,
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Then I, who know the course of the world, declare: I am so and so, (and consider): How can I incline them to enlightenment? how can they become partakers of the Buddha-laws?
Isnt theres some theory that the decade or whatever where jesus life isnt written about he went and studied buddhism in the east?
As an aside theres a good ancient aliens episode that thinks moses was the uncle of king tut!
Sigmund Freud had written a book theorizing that Moses was a follower of Pharaoh Ikhnaten, the monotheistic Pharoah who was driven out of Egyot. “Moses and Monotheism,” Freud however was demonized by some over this book that offended people.
There is a racial group in Kashmir, the Ahmadis who traditionallly believe they were from a Jewish Lost Tribe. that states Jesus was there as a child, left and returned again, because his relatives lived there. They also have a tomb that they say is the tomb of Moses.
While living in Kashmir as a young boy he studied Buddhism and then returned to his birthplace in Nazerath to teach. Traditionally they believe Jesus returned after his Crucifixion, after long journeys where he taught and healed and known as Issa the Healer. (Prophet Yuz-Asaph in Islam) Buddhist and Hindu sources say he spent time in the Himalayan mountains and was quoted in a Hindu text," Bhavishya Maha Puranaas" a Holy Man:
Here is that Purana text
ekadaa tu shakadhisho
himatungari samaayayau
hunadeshasya madhye vai
giristhan purusam shubhano
dadarsha balaram raajaa
Once upon a time the subduer of the Sakas went towards Himatunga and in the middle of the Huna country (Hunadesh - the area near Manasa Sarovara or Kailash mountain in Western Tibet), the powerful king saw an auspicious man who was living on a mountain. The man’s complexion was golden and his clothes were white.
Text 23
ko bharam iti tam praaha
su hovacha mudanvitah
iishaa purtagm maam viddhi
kumaarigarbha
“The king asked, ‘Who are you sir?’ ‘You should know that I am Isha Putra, the Son of God’, he replied blissfully, and ‘am born of a virgin.’”
Text 24
mleccha dharmasya vaktaram
satyavata paraayanam
iti srutva nrpa praaha
dharmah ko bhavato
“‘I am the expounder of the religion of the mlecchas and I strictly adhere to the Absolute Truth.’ Hearing this the king enquired, ‘What are the religious principles according to your opinion?’
Texts 25 - 26
shruto vaaca mahaaraaja
praapte satyasya samkshaye
nirmaaryaade mlechadeshe
masiiho 'ham samagatah
iishaamasii ca dasyuunaa
praadurbhuutaa bhayankarii
taamaham mlecchataah praapya
masiihatva mupaagatah
“Hearing this questions of Shalivahana, Isha putra said, ‘O king, when the destruction of the truth occurred, I, Masiha (Messiah) the prophet, came to this country of degraded people where there are no rules and regulations. Finding that fearful irreligious condition of the barbarians spreading from Mleccha-Desha, I have taken to prophethood’.”
Texts 27 - 29
mlecchasa sthaapito dharmo
mayaa tacchrnu bhuupate
maanasam nirmalam krtva
malam dehe subhaasbham
naiganam apamasthaya
japeta nirmalam param
nyayena satyavacasaa
manasyai kena manavah
dhyayena pujayedisham
suurya-mandala-samsthitam
acaloyam prabhuh sakshat-
athaa suuryacalah
“Please hear, Oh king, which religious principles I have established among the mlecchas. The living entity is subject to good and bad contaminations. The mind should be purified by taking recourse of proper conduct and performance of japa [meditation on the chanting of the holy names of God]. By chanting the holy names one attains the highest purity. Just as the immovable sun attracts, from all directions, the elements of all living beings, the Lord of the Surya Mandala [solar planet], who is fixed and all-attractive, and attracts the hearts of all living creatures. Thus by following rules, speaking truthful words, by mental harmony and by meditation, Oh descendant of Manu, one should worship that immovable Lord’.”
Text 30
isha muurtirt-dradi praptaa
nityashuddha sivamkari
ishamasihah iti ca
mama
“Having placed the eternally pure and auspicious form of the Supreme Lord in my heart, O protector of the earth planet, I preached these principles through the mlecchas’ own faith and thus my name became ‘isha-masiha’.”
Text 31
iti shrutra sa bhuupale
natraa tam mlecchapujaam
sthaapayaamaasa tam tutra
mlecchasthaane hi
“After hearing these words and paying obeisances to that person who is worshiped by the wicked, the king humbly requested him to stay there in the dreadful land of mlecchas.”
Text 32
svaraajyam praaptavaan raajaa
hayamedhan ciikirat
raajyam kriitvaa sa shashthyabdam
svarga lokamu
“King Shalivahana, after leaving his kingdom performed an asvamedha yajna and after ruling for sixty years, went to heaven. Now please hear what happened when the king went to (the heavenly region of) svargaloka.”
Thus ends the second chapter entitled, “The Age of Shalivahana” of the story of Kali Yuga of the Chaturyuga Khanda also called Pratisarga-parva of the wonderful Bhavishya Maha Purana.
…
Most shockingly, there is textual evidence Jesus participated with the most famous Buddhist teachers at the court of King Kanishka and was involved in the writing down of Mahayana Sutras around the same time as the 4th Buddhist Counsel.
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What about babies who are stillborn?
I don’t know. Free will I guess?
Just part of the big plan?
Mysterious ways
I’ve yet to find anything that addresses babies and how they are judged. Many believe their is a special dispensation of grace, or a get out of hell free card so to speak, for babies as they have yet to have a chance to sin.
I am of a rather small minority that believes there is no special dispensation of grace, and babies, like everyone else, are judged by what is “written in their hearts”. This also means that what a baby is held accountable for will be far less than that of an adult.
God could make this clear if wanted to. Why leave it to us to make things up?
