No. I’m suggesting that I have no answers on the randomness of who gets punishment and why. I see no intelligent plan behind the randomness. I have only questions. No answers.
Ok. I’m not disagreeing.
[quote=“Borgia_dude, post:22, topic:239971, full:true”]
Fair enough.
I’m the last to care what human beings do and don’t believe if they don’t use it to hurt anyone or anything.
I’m wondering if there’s so much cruelty on earth because a loving God gave mankind free will & mankind chose to abuse it.
Having stated nature is neither cruel nor kind, I now believe it to lean more towards kind—for example, mother of one animal species nursing the orphans of another so they too can survive.
That’s why I so hate cruelty to animals and those who can’t fight back and wonder why a benevolent God allows such suffering.
Were God to prevent all cruelty, all suffering, all tragedy, etc., then this would be Heaven.
It’s not.
You already answered your own question with your statement about free will.
Others also have free will to intervene when they witness cruelty and suffering and tragedy, etc. Perhaps our focus should be on that calling, rather than trying to redesign this fallen world.
God has subjected his creation to laws. The law of gravity. Laws of metabolism whereby a human body needs to breathe air. Laws of flotation whereby we can learn to swim. God did not drown that girl. She did not cooperate with the laws inherent in creation and the results were the same for her as they would be for anyone else who did not cooperate with the same laws.
Would you prefer a universe with no laws?
They are not as God intended. God put them under man’s jurisdiction, and man by obeying sin puts the world, including wildlife, under Satan’s jurisdiction.
God gave man free will. Man freely gives over power to the devil. It makes no sense to blame God for the natural consequences of man’s free actions.
I asked you because I was interested in how you see all accidents. For example, is a stubbed toe an act of cruelty? If not, where do you draw the line in determining cruelty?
For me, accidents do not qualify as cruel, which is a deliberate act intending to cause pain and suffering and feeling no empathy. There is a difference between pain and suffering and cruelty. The death of a child causes pain and suffering, but death is not a sentient being whose intent is to inflict pain and suffering. I might stub my toe on a rock, but the rock is not a sentient being, either.
Is the question, Why are people cruel? Or is the question, Why is there pain and suffering?
The theological answers for most theists will likely be along the lines that this world was never intended to be perfect. Philosophically speaking a theist could actually point to the presuppositions in such questions and why we even ask such questions.
Are you defining or measuring cruelty through emotional feelings?
Genesis notes that mankind wanted knowledge of both good and evil. Spiritual beings wanted a physical experience. Note that God advised against it, but would stay with us. He also listed some of the consequences, such as hard work and pain, that go along with a physical life.
In an earlier consequences a little girl drowned accidentally, and those who loved her were grief stricken. Yes, that is horrible, but wouldn’t it be worse if we were shielded from that pain so that whenever anyone died or left, we felt not a thing? Would it be a good thing to be shielded from our feelings?
I’m going to switch gears from accidents to cancer effecting children. Now, in a natural world worth out God, cancer hits people somewhat randomly, perhaps influenced by genetics and exposures.
In a God created world, God chose to include cancer effecting children as part of that creation. He could have chosen not to have cancer effecting children or he could have chosen to not have cancer at all.
Would the absence of cancer effecting children rob us of feelings? No. We would still experience loss of loved ones perhaps due to old age instead of the tragedy of a child dying.
So I agree that shielding is from pain entirely might be problematic but some pains seem quite unnecessary.
I’m speaking about theists in general, not trying to offer a specifically Christian response. Furthermore, there are Christians who have various ways they interpret Genesis. So there is no universal Christian answer either.
Please don’t. You may have forgotten that I often work with children with mental and physical deformities. So bringing up cancer when I come face-to-face with illnesses and genetic deformities just as bad or worse, truly makes me gag. Cancer may not even be the worse thing that can happen to children.
I am interested in this thread if it is about man’s inhumanity/cruelty to others. As I noted before, mankind desired to know and experience both good and evil. What other forms of evil, hardship, or unholiness do you wish could be avoided? Where would you draw the line?
I have a sister who suffers from having had a stillborn child. Is that an okay suffering, or are you thinking it certainly doesn’t rise to the level of childhood cancer? Do away with cancer, but those stillborn children are an acceptable level of pain and suffering?
If you conversation is limited to mankind’s cruelty towards our own kind, I don’t know. That would seem to interfere with free will although when you think of humans as being designed by God, he could change the design and make some things less likely. Imagine a Norma distribution of levels of greed. By tweaking the mean and standard deviation (which a designer has already set) one could find a combination that results in less suffering, for example, yet still retain free will. Just far less of us wild be willing to make inhuman sacrifices to satisfy our greed (or lust or any other input you like).
My point about an illness is the randomness of it and it generally being outside our control and only in God’s hands.
Sovereignty does not mean authoritarian micromanagement. The US is a sovereign nation, but its forming government chose to set limits to the governments power to limit the actions of its citizens. Many things are illegal but people are frre to do them but may suffer the sanctions appointed if they do.
God has limited His own power in order to give sentient creatures the opportunity to learn wisdom. People take that freedom and make products that they know are toxic to the human body, add them to foods and target other humans to want to eat those products. Sicknesses result. Do we chose to learn wisdom and reduce our intake of artificial poisons? Or do we keep eating them, hoping that someone will come up with a pill that will allow us to not develop self-control and practise responsible parenting? Then we blame God for the natural law consequences of breaking the natural laws we know (ingesting poisons produces disease) and continue to pursue stupidity.
God has graciously given our bodies the ability to self- heal from a degree of chemical abuse. But if we push that envelop, that is not God’s fault.
Illness does not hit “randomly”. It hits according to laws that can be discerned and the effects of laws can be transcended using other laws, just as the effects of gravity can be transcended by engaging the laws of uplift. The good news in Jesus Christ is that there are splritually discerned laws that can transcend the effects of natural laws, and can negate the diseases that have taken hold as a consequence of ignoring natural laws.
You won’t get that answer. I’m currently on that dark road myself.
Throughout the Gospels, people kept nipping at the heels of Jesus, demanding a sign. Even after healings and feedings and all sorts of miracles, they kept coming back asking for a sign.
For example, MT 12:38+
"38 Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”
39 He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days in the heart of the earth. …"
And even today, people overlook God’s miracles all around them, but instead keep asking for signs. In the Gospel of Luke, at the conclusion of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus points this out:
"27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” " (LK 16:27+)
Is there any doubt what Jesus was referring to in those last 7 words?
Yes, God hitting me in the head with a brick would make it easy to believe. (At least that’s what I hope for! In fact, my wife is going to put a brick in my coffin because I’ve said this so much!) But Jesus tells us we don’t need that, in the gospel story of Doubting Thomas:
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (JN 20:29)
We have been given what we need to choose faith (or reject it.) It’s up to us whether we want to be the Pharisee/Scribe, or the the man hoping that his son could be cured:
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (MK 9:24)
Is less suffering desirable? If so, why? Could there be adverse effects if there were less suffering? What is the right amount of suffering?
In addition to Guvnah’s verses, I’ll add Matthew 5:4:
Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.
