“Good” in christian terms not only means being nice and caring for your fellow humans but everything that makes God’s creation work: accepting that he knows how it is supposed to work and doing what he says instead of trying to fix this world solely by ourselves. IMO reasonable from a believer’s point of view.
Also however it ends up was what he willed anyway. The whole thing goes tits up: well God is testing our faith, but we must continue to believe. Everything works perfectly: God has blessed us. It removes all personal responsibility from any decision.
Except he has the power to fix it all and doesn’t anyway? Explain childhood cancer. Explain natural disasters. Explain why millions have to suffer because of the actions of others, regardless of whether those suffering are following God’s actions.
Is it purposeful cruelty or does he just not care?
And why wouldn’t it be, it is literally one of the oldest issues with religion that was formulated by Epicurus roughly 2300 years ago and believers have never had a satisfactory answer to it.
That’s exactly my point. Without having an open mind, and not being able to understand different viewpoints or beliefs, there will never be an answer that you find satisfactory. People can answer all day long but you’ll just dismiss them because it’s not an answer you approve of.
Another commenter claimed that we deserve it. And that god causes suffering for his own glory and has the right to do what he wants with us, merely because he created us.
That’s pretty fucked up, no? To claim that children deserve to suffer because they “brought it on themselves” as the commenter wrote? And that no matter what anyone does, god can cause you to suffer just because you didn’t fall on your knees and praise him hard enough?
Well, just to make sure we’re on the same page, the question is why doesn’t God step in and fix the problems of the world if He’s fully capable, correct?
First off, I’m not a biblical scholar, I don’t claim to have all the answers. Anyone who confidently says they do is lying. I encourage you to take a step back from your opinions for a moment, and just take the information for what it is, I’m just a guy trying to figure it out.
Anyway, why doesn’t God intervene? It’s a complex question requiring a complex answer. One facet of that, there’s no doubt there is evil in this world, brought by the fall of man. I mean, look at the violence and wars currently going on. Why does God allow it? I think because we have been given the gift of free will. It’s what makes us human. Would you want to live in a world where an outside entity is making every single decision for you?
There’s no doubt that a human can take an action that does an incredible amount of good for someone, while at the same time that same action causes an immense amount of pain for someone else. For example, an officer shoots and kills a mass shooter. No doubt that action saved a number of lives. But now there’s a mother who just lost her son. A child that no longer has a father. It’s because we are able to make choices that things happen.
What about cancer? Again, it’s an imperfect world. Biologically, we’re just copies of our parents, who are copies of their parents. Copy enough times, combined with how we now treat the food that nourishes us, there’s bound to be glitches. That’s my take anyway. Could be wrong.
Natural disasters? Well that’s a bit beyond my scope of knowledge. All this is, really. But we’re supposed to be stewards of this earth and honestly, we aren’t doing that good of a job. Energy sources are predicted to run out, food sources have been running out for various parts of the world. We’re increasing the planets temperature.
And to touch on the concept of ‘good’. Back to the officer/mass shooter example, while the officer saved lives which is good he also took a life which one could argue that’s not good. Point being that our idea of good is highly subjective and in the context of salvation, completely irrelevant. Now we should strive to do good for our own sake and to make life while we’re here an easier time.
I feel like I may have said a lot, without exactly answering you. I’m not really good at this. But I don’t think we deserve to suffer. I also don’t think our sense of time is relevant to God. God has promised to create a new perfect world again. No more death, no more suffering. Why not right now? Why not a thousand years ago? I have no idea.
My point overall, and based on everything you’ve said being arbitrary, the idea of good and bad, of free will, and of suffering, is that there’s seemingly no point in following and/or praising a being that just doesn’t seem to care about anyone. If believing in him changes nothing, why do it? Because of some promise of a heaven? But the next point makes that argument untenable.
We’re meant to figure out what “being good” is, but the complexity of our world makes that impossible. And then those who feel they have figured it out get nothing for it anyway. They still get sick, they still suffer at the hands of others, they still die just like the rest of us. As far as anyone knows, death is the end (anyone claiming otherwise is fooling themselves or lying). So what are we actually to do?
If God has promised to make us a new perfect world, he’s taking his sweet time. Meanwhile, people are suffering. Every day he waits is another day of global pain for no other reason than that our world is unfair and unpredictable.
Did we ask him to fix it? Did we care about him in any way? Individuals may did but he wants to save more than just a 0.1%. And what is temporary death against eternal life in a “fixed” world? The suffering before is the much worse part. But even this can be quite a cure to many of us. We, seen statistically, don’t become “good” from being rich and having a carefree life. And much less we ask for God to fix the world for the others that are suffering.
He is waiting for us to change our minds, admit that we were wrong, that we weren’t able to fix it ourselves. Pretty selfish, you could think. Seeking for glory, letting people suffer until the come crawling back to you.
But then again, we brought this on us ourselves. We decided we were better off on our own, not made to serve God in a perfect world with no suffering. And also, tho whom would all the glory in the world belong if not to its creator? How could an almighty God be selfish only because he decided the purpose if his creation?
It’s a cruel and demented mindset to justify children dying by claiming they deserve it, that they “brought it on themselves.”
I’m not going to live for a being that causes so much suffering just because he wants some sort of glory. We’d put those people in prison if they were us, because it doesn’t fit with our societal morals.
And this is what I was trying to tell you and so many people don’t get: there is a distinction between God and human. People judge God as if he was human (or as if he was not God and only human more specifically) and as if he had not the right to give and take back what he gave.
And once more, HE didn’t cause the suffering. If we did what we have been made for there wouldn’t be any suffering, we would be infinitely happy. It was our choice all along, things like climate change only make it much more clear what has been true the whole time.
I get that not everybody wants to believe that. But I don’t believe in a world with no purpose and no sense. A random occurence with no meaning. A universe which ends in singularity just to do the same thing over and over again.
Edit: Forgot the most important part on why pain and suffering is still a thing: We somehow need to make an informed decision on what we choose for eternity. Going our own ways and where it leads and going God’s way. Gladly, it doesn’t have to stay this way for very long, we will make the whole thing crash in just a few decades.
Let’s assume the bible is true for a moment. In the new testament God sends his son, Jesus, to die for our sins on the cross which makes the old testament obsolete. It’s also stated multiple times that their mercy is now beyond what we can imagine therefore everyone goes to heaven cleansed of their sins, regardless of who they were and what they did.
Hell and shit was just created to extort peasant in medieval times.
Jesus came to die for the sins of Man, not the sins of all men. The famous John 3:16 is “God so loved the world who sent His only Son, so that whomever may believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
The idea is that murders, rapists, and general good people can go to heaven so long as they believe that Jesus died for them.
Then again, here we are, debating semantics of a book that has been the cause of wars and famine.
Say what you will about CS Lewis, but Aslan’s whole “it doesn’t matter who you believe in, so long as you do good” deal is what a benevolent deity should be.
Fair point about Susan, but the dwarves literally chose not to step through the door into the light as the world was ending around them. It might be that they did have ideological reasons to reject Aslan, in the same way that an atheist at the gates of heaven might cite aspects of the abramic faiths as reason to not enter, but IIRC the narrative doesn’t give any indication of that.
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