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| Intervention
Posted: 10/19/2008 11:14:27 AM | | Mysteriously, that is truly an amazing story. Thank you for sharing. | |
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| Does God intervene in human affairs?
Posted: 10/19/2008 7:29:13 PM |
I am reading a book called "Prayer--does it make any difference?" by Phillip Yancey. Yancey writes book about issues that most Christians like to avoid. He is not anti-Christian. He is an editor at Christianity Today magazine. Anyways he published a quote by an unnamed professor that went all along the lines that if God did not intervene at Aucswitz or during Hurricane Katrina, what hope do you have of praying for a good parking place at the Mall? Comments?
God made the laws and rules. law one man is in charge of everything that happens here on Earth. People put people in power that did not protect them. You pray about and for things that are outside your scope. You get the yes as long as it does not break the number one rule. | |
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| Does God intervene in human affairs?
Posted: 10/24/2008 2:24:04 AM | Clearly certain views of providence are very hard to reconcile with the existence of evil. Why does God not stop natural and man-made disasters that inevitably kill many innocents (including religious believers), and why did God make a world where things such as incurable terminal cancer and AIDS exist? Where was God during the Holocaust? The paradox is formulated well by Epicurus - Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?
Theologians have proposed some responses, none of which satisfy everyone. | |
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| Does God intervene in human affairs?
Posted: 10/25/2008 5:58:32 AM | RE msg 103 by greg8001:
Clearly certain views of providence are very hard to reconcile with the existence of evil. Why does God not stop natural and man-made disasters that inevitably kill many innocents (including religious believers), and why did God make a world where things such as incurable terminal cancer and AIDS exist? Where was God during the Holocaust? The paradox is formulated well by Epicurus - Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world? It is really quite simple, according to some philosophies of life, and according to others, it is completely insoluble.
Consider the child, the adult, and the wise man:
A child acknowledges that there is such a notion as an answer to every question. Also, the child doesn't yet understand that he will die. So the child sees himself as living forever, and believes that with enough time, he will find the answer to his questions.
The adult knows something that the child does not: that the adult will die, and will probably live to only 70 or 80, and certainly less than 200. So the adult acknowledges that although such an answer might exist, the adult might not find it in his 70 or 80 years. That raises an existential conflict: if there is an answer to my question, but I will not find it before I die, does it exist? The adult says to himself: What do I care? I want to have a relationship with the woman I am dating. I would like to know if this relationship will work out, and if it is going to be worth it, or if it will turn out to be a nightmare, that wasn't worth the trouble. But I don't have infinite time to decide. If I don't decide in a reasonable amount of time, she'll find someone else, and I'll be alone. I need to have an answer soon, and I cannot guarantee that I will. So for me, the answer doesn't exist, and since I am the main one who matters in my life, I am the only one who matters in my life, and so the answer only exists if I will find it. So there is no answer.
The wise man acknowledges that he is not the only person in the world, and that just because he doesn't find the answer, that doesn't mean that others won't. Moreover, he realises that just because he doesn't find an answer in time to help him, he may find an answer to help others. He recognises that he is part of a whole, where he gained benefit from society via his parents, and he would not have survived without them. So his very existence is indebted to society, and so he owes an obligation to at least attempt to benefit society in some way, even if he himself will benefit from it. So the wise man acknowledges that there is an answer to his questions, and that he might not live long enough to find the whole answer early enought to gain benefit from it, but that he must still attempt to find the answer, in order that he may find part of the answer, and so contribute to society finding the answer, and so society may gain from it, even if he does not.
In questions like this, it is clear that we cannot turn back time. Those of us who have suffered under such evil, cannot make it "unhappen". We cannot gain benefit from understanding it any better, because it still happened to us before we had the answer, and so we still suffered with the pain of being hurt badly and not understanding why. But now it is over, and so even if we don't understand it now, it makes no difference to us. It is still not happening anymore. Even if we understand it now, we still went through that greater pain, and it will not lessen our pain now to understand it better, and it will not lessen our pain then to understand it better now. However, it WILL lessen the pain of those who will go through such pain in the future, knowing that there is a good reason for it.
But as I previously stated, the adult doesn't care. Only the wise man will find such an answer. So we must first become the wise man, before we attempt to find the answer, because if we don't, we will very quickly stop looking, before we get anywhere.
However, the wise man doesn't stop looking because he doesn't get the answer, because his reason for getting the answer is not for himself, but for society, and he knows that even if he doesn't get the full answer, then his contributions to the answer is enough. He similarly knows that because he doesn't need to get the full answer, his answer may not answer every situation, and yet still be just as worthwhile a contribution. The only time when the wise man expects himself to get the full answer, is when he gains the ability to live forever, and he actually lives forever, and only after forever, does he actually question if he has the full answer. Until then, it is premature to expect to get the full answer.
Now, for the answer:
The real issue is that every situation is different. When someone comes into a medical hopsital, does one get cured by antibiotics, or surgery? Does one treat the foot or the knee, the liver or the heart? You cannot say one solution fits for all. Every medical problem requires a different treatment. In life, every situation requires a different action.
Also, what is evil? Is it evil to make a drug addict come off drugs? Is it evil to cure a cancer sufferer very badly with painful chemo? Yes. It is incredibly painful. But we still think it is the right thing to do. So we are not against evil. We believe it is right to do evil, as long as it makes sense to us to be of benefit to the person.
We might justify genocide on that basis, it it makes sense to, for the betterment of society, and humanity in general. But we also believe that it is wrong for society to condemn any person to death, even if society might benefit for it. However, we don't mind making that choice in certain criminals. How can we say it is right for one, and not for another?
We believe that criminals have sentenced themselves, by their actions. But we believe that it is wrong to kill someone without their own self condemning them, because we are ending a separate consciousness, separate from us and every other person in life. We only have a right to dictate what happens to us. So we have no right to choose for that which is not us, and to extinguish life that is not our own, is to make that choice. It is tyranny, for we are controlling others lives when that control is not ours to take.
However, we don't believe that harm is wrong. We don't believe that it is wrong to give a cancer patient chemo, because we are killing cells, and not a whole consciousness. But that cell IS alive, and that cell does have its own consciousness, in the form of a nucleus. It isn't the same as our type of consciousness, but it is still a conscious entity, and so it is murder to kill even a single cell.
But we don't see it that way, because we are much bigger and smarter than a single cell, in size and knowledge. We are composed of trillions of cells, and so killing one of our own cells, because we see the benefits to ourself, such as when we kill some cells in the process of exercise, is reasonable. This is because we take the long view. We don't need to always have the same answer for every situation, and we don't need to have a single answer for we killed every cell, or even multiple answers, because each situation is different, and so we only need an answer for each situation. But it could be trillions of answers for trillions of deaths of cells.
We consider it reasonable to kill those cells, because we take the view of what is good for the body over what is good for an individual cell, and we do that because we think in terms of the body, because that is the level where we exist, and we consider it right because those cells are ours, and so we are only taking control of what is part of us, for the benefit of itself on the larger scale.
G-d is everywhere. We are part of G-d. So we are cells within G-d. The whole Earth is nothing more than the tiniest nodule of a single organ in his body. The universe is his body and his mind. G-d's consciousness exists on the level of the entire universe, and so G-d's consciousness is to us, what our consciousness is to the consciousness of our cells. Our deaths and our pain, are no better than the pain and the death of any conscious cell in our body. When we choose to hurt ourselves and kill some of our cells for the benefit, we are no better than if G-d chooses to hurt one of us, and for the same reasons, for the betterment of the body, for the betterment of the universe.
We are a universe in ourselves.
Now, that may not satisfy everyone, but it doesn't have to. It will never satisfy the adult, because the adult has not yet acknowledged that he is not the only person who matters. It will only satisfy the person who thinks that not everything is about him. But such a wise person doesn't need to answer every problem, in every respect. He only feels the responsibility to contribute to that question, and in that the answer suffices much more than necessary. | |
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| Does God intervene in human affairs?
Posted: 10/25/2008 7:51:31 AM | Good questions, Greg. And no easy answers. so I won't attempt them. I'll tell you what I think, what conclusions I have come to that begin to answer the questions, but I don't knwo if they will answer for you.
Why doesn't God stop evil men from acting evilly? Why didn't God - who knows everything and every outcome and all that is to occur - kill Hitler at birth? Or better yet, why not simply prevent his father's sperm for entering his mother's egg? Why did God not act to make sure that Hitler died in the bunker explosion that injured him? Well, each human is given Free Will by God, that allows us to choose good or bad freely. But if that's why Hitler lived, than why did God kill a bunch of other bad guys or prevent them from doing something bad? Why does God appear to be so selective (and somewhat arbitrary) in His "interference"?
All I know is that evil occurs because of human actions and choices and sometimes God "interferes".
What about gratuitous evil such as volcanic eruptions, floods, tsunamis, forest fires ignited by lightning, landslides, droughts, dams breaking, icy roads and massive pile ups, and a host of other factors over which humans exert no control and suffer because of the natural act? God can exert control - I mean, He held back the waters of the Red Sea and dried the seabed so that the Hebrews could escape and then let the waters come back to cover over the army that was chasing them. That's pretty powerful control on behalf of His people. Why not stop or slow a tsunami so that it doesn't drown and destroy the homes and lives of mainly poor and already suffering humans?
Natural disasters were not part of the original plan. I believe the world was created with a harmony between God, humans, creatures, and the world and the Fall changed all of that and created this environment that does harm to its occupants. But why doesn't God interfere anyway? I don't know. | |
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| Does God intervene in human affairs?
Posted: 11/15/2008 1:51:58 PM |
god is keeping me single and unloved
He/she/they/it resurrect(s) the dead threads in my life. I wish I could say who/what is influencing my life, but they/he/she/it are/is very mysterious. | |
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| Does God intervene in human affairs?
Posted: 11/18/2008 4:04:41 PM | | yes god does intervene in the affairs of men,,when its necessary and his will,,,he has many times in my life ,,, i mean really awsome miracles,,, and i conceder myself to be a free thinker..and he just blew me away,,,,,,,,who , can understand the mind of GOD any way.....dahhhhh..so give him a break,,,after all he will make all things new ....... | |
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