Posted on 01/05/2010 11:32:11 AM PST by freedomyes
So many dead. So many grieving. So many distraught.
Where is God? Where is the good God?
(Excerpt) Read more at grantswank.blogtownhall.com ...
I’ve been asking that question since October for personal reasons. They say it’s “Gods plan” but I just don’t see the good in it ...
the article actually does provide information regarding what you have stated.
please read the post again very carefully, particularly the accent on this being a spiritually fallen sphere with much damaged.
But God, In His goodness and mercy, from before the foundation of the Word, chose to send His own begotten Son, that whosoever believes upon Him, should not perish, but have everlasting Life.
We also believe that children under the age of accountability are also saved in such disasters.
Man is depraved and deserving of hell.
Why should a good God preserve man?
God’ smercy towards man is charity. It is NEVER an obligation.
If you think God owes people intervention, then you dont have a problem with God. You have a problem understanding yourself, and your position in relation to God.
yes
It is just the way the universe works, we seem to take it too personally. If, as C.S. Lewis stated, we are spirits who happen to have bodies, then what happens to the body should be as important in the big picture sense as what happens in a dream.
Others will argue that you can’t have good without suffering. It like you can’t have cold without warm, one is just a degree of the other (cold is the absence of heat).
true
Nobody lives on earth forever. You are granted biological life only very temporarily. Exactly how it ends, who knows, it could end any of a thousand ways. But it will end.
What matters is what you do with the time you have. Build. Create. Love. And be prepared to face God when the moment comes.
remembering reading c. s. lewis’ ‘out of the silent planet’ re a planet that never suffered ‘the fall’?
Read C. S. Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain”. It goes over this very effectively.
So does the Bible.
I’ve often heard that the world is our proving ground, not God’s. If it were all fluffy bunnies and roses, we wouldn’t grow, just as a child doesn’t grow if he doesn’t ween off the breast and learn to digest real food.
Fun to speculate about what the perfect world God designed was (will be) like. If people never died would we have stopped procreating once it was full? Or would we have moved to other planets prepared for us?
Thank you for explaining this in a direct and easy to understand (for me anyway) manner.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: HOW CAN A GOOD GOD ALLOW A TSUNAMI?
because we are born in sin. the price of sin is death. and we are also subject to unforeseen circumstances such as the tides. all this is in the bible.
yes yes yes
true, just as that j grant swank jr stated re solomon islands.
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
What DOES kill us sends us to Jesus.
The former is good, the latter is better. So what’s the problem?
Answer: From Eternal Punishment decreed by God who is Holy.
Man can understand god like a fly can understand radio. I don’t even try anymore.
I understand your sentiment, if not your personal situation.
FWIW, I have found comfort in the Book of Job.
I don’t understand partical physics or many other of God’s ways. I don’t pretend to understand things like a Tsunami, either.
romans 8:28
Is it possible for the spiritual nature to actually fill something? It is the human/animal perception of reproduction and space. There is an old Jewish tradition that all souls already exist, they are just placed into the body at conception- but the soul (spirit?) is our real self, not the body.
Don’t Try to Figure God out
http://www.magic-city-news.com/J_Grant_Swank_61/Don_t_Try_to_Figure_God_out12834.shtml
>>Answer: From Eternal Punishment decreed by God who is Holy.<<
Yep. Here is an interesting perspective on that eternal punishment: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2240648/posts
Right now I’m pretty angry at the “Powers that be”. It will be some time before I can look objectively at it. Till then I’m just trying to make sense and deal with the agony of my recent tragedy.
My father told me God put women on this planet so we would stop trying to figure out God.
Specifically, if we can’t figure out a woman, we sure can’t figure out God.
You nailedit.
seeing he has promised to shake not only the earth, but the heavens and the earth, what’s a little Tsunami?
Looking around at the world today, would it be a bad thing if it all passed away? If not, why are we perplexed when a little part of it does—seeing that what remains forever is without corruption?
There are times in our lives when we all ask these questions. And no answer can be good enough. My kids’ best-friends just lost their father. A musician I respected was just killed in a car accident. I don’t get it. Losses...hurts... We go thru these things, we get thru them, but we ache inside. We blame Bush, but humor doesn’t seem to help. We just keep going, not seeing ‘Gods plan’. I have been pondering this life being a ‘breath’ or ‘shadow’ (Psalm 144:4). ‘Someday we will understand’ rings hollow right now...but that is what we have...
I remember when my ex-wife (at the time, of 20 years) divorced me. I was driving by the Kingdome during a Mariners game and could not understand how those people could be laughing and enjoying a baseball game while my life was collapsing. Dead serious. It was beyond my comprehension how they could callously do that.
Intellectually I knew I was being unreasonable, but my feelings were more powerful than my intellect at that time.
For me that was 13 years ago. My life has been MUCH better than the previous 20 years. And I give God the credit and glory.
It gets better, but I understand how you feel (as much as I can, I mean).
Satan is in charge on earth, not God.
It’s funny, because when in the Lord’s Prayer, we ask
“Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”.
We never stop to consider the gravity of it - His will is ALWAYS done on Heaven, but on earth, not always.
All things serve God’s purpose. We don’t know the plan. We just obey.
The idea of whether something is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is our spin on things.
Two twin brothers are raised by a tyrant of a parent who beat them both to within inches of their lives. One becomes a successful businessman with a family, the other a murderer. Both were asked the same question:
“How do you find yourself where you are today?”
Both had identical replies:
“Given my circumstances, I had no other choice . . .”
I don’t know God’s plan, and I don’t want to know. I do know this - everything I have is a gift. Every moment, my family, each meal - everything.
If it is taken away from me, I’ll try to be grateful. I certainly want to be right now, but I may be in an awful lot of pain at that particular moment and do or say things I don’t mean to God.
Peter certainly had the best intentions about admitting he was Jesus’ disciple before the cock crowed thrice.
In addition to being a sinner, and broken, I also know I’m a coward. Yet, still, God has a use for me.
May He continue to recognize what a weak little man he’s created with me, and continue to be merciful on me and coddle me as He does.
I hope I see the use in the tragedies that befall me, and if I must afix blame, may I place it where it rightfully belongs.
From Aish HaTorah's award-winning website, aish.com
Born in 1948, I have never experienced a catastrophe as massive and sudden as the earthquake/tsunamis that, at last count, have killed more than 60,000 people. Living in Israel during the terror war of the last few years, I have unfortunately become accustomed to crying at the funerals of children. But to read of hundreds of children together being buried in mass graves staggers my mind and batters my heart. How should/can/does one respond to a tragedy this enormous?
“Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”.
We never stop to consider the gravity of it - His will is ALWAYS done on Heaven, but on earth, not always.”
Wow, that’s a very good point.
It’s pushing 3 months since my beloved passed. I don’t know how those who have lost their lovers made it thru. I will some how ... but so much pain ... the holiday’s were rough.
Life is just one long search for the thing that will kill you. In this case, 60,000 people found it...
God, not sure what He thinks because I think like a human.
Actually when Man sees real love, He sees God. The Apostle John said "Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:7,8).
Therefore, If you have seen real love, you have known God. Your next response is probably that you don't believe in Love. To Which I would reply, then you would be dead, because babes who do not get love die. And you can clearly see, I believe you are alive at the other end of this thread.
16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." 17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." 20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. 21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
my condolences - i lost my best friend this summer (he was 37 and in peak fitness) - Im watching his wife deal with the same issues. Fortunately her faith carried her through
Job has always been among my favorite books — the guy was put through the wringer, and came through it ok. Our trials have a purpose, though we may never fully understand it. Maybe God placed another cosmic bet with Satan ... “take, for instance, my friend SnakeDoctor —betcha can’t break him.”
Though, for all of those that refer to the “patience of Job” ... he started bitching pretty heavily from about chapter 2 through about Chapter 38 (when God told him to butch up and quit whining ... that’s a SnakeDoctor paraphrase). Job had 2 chapters of patience.
SnakeDoc
Why doesn’t this happen every day?
Humans, in their fallen state, deserve no less.
A good God withholds his wrath from a rebellious and wicked people that He created in His image.
And, He KILLED HIS ONLY SON as payment for this rebellion, to show us that He SO loved the world.
Your question isn’t relevant.
Death is a different thing, from God’s point of view.
1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5 God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
7 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
8 Come and see the works of the LORD,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
10 "Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."
11 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
His ten children, killed as part of the bet between God and the Devil, are less fortunate.
clamper,
I am so sorry for your loss. You are in my prayers that the Lord will give you comfort. It will help if you will go to Him as well.
Have Faith in Him FRiend, do not faint in that. He can be your solid place to stand, He can be your Comforter. I pray that you’ll find comfort.
Define “less fortunate”. They ascended to heaven and missed out on the rest of the beating that Job took. Their worries were over, and their deaths were not without meaning. Just goes to show, there is a reason for everything ... but not necessarily a reason we can know or comprehend.
SnakeDoc
You don’t think Adam had a physical body before the fall?
Good question, not sure. I know that’s how some people now read Genesis, but that may not be the case. The entire concept of the fall may be God saying, OK, you don’t trust me when you have free will, then it is time for you to exist in a proving ground where you face the consequences of not choosing the correct path. The pre-fall descriptions give rise to the thought that maybe it was describing a supernatural existence- one that certainly didn’t follow the laws of nature we see around us.
Genesis also seems to clearly describe the Garden as a set-apart/unique place from the rest of creation- after all, Adam was sent ‘out’ of the Garden, it doesn’t say God changed the garden.
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