Bad things happen to good people

Ok everyone, this thread is going majorly off-topic and in danger of turning in to a snark fuelled dumpster fire.

I suggest everyone takes the night off and comes back tomorrow with fresh eyes (and in some cases attitudes).

I’ve also gone through it and all culled the off-topic/snarkiest comments. If you can no longer see one of your posts please assume that it fits into at least one of those categories or (in the case of one or two) was a reply to a post in one of those categories.

Thanks for your understanding.

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
 
Arthur C Clarke.

God’s ‘technology’ is way more advanced and above, ‘super-’, natural and any man-made, thus it is “indistinguishable from magic.” Just because we do not understand it does not mean that it is not real.

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For many atheists like myself, the world we see is exactly like a world where God does not exist. We see a universe that is indifferent to the suffering of humans. In such a universe we would expect to see bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. For us, it isn’t a matter of advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. It is a matter of God being indistinguishable from no God.

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There is some empirical evidence you are maybe choosing to deny or ignore.

…which will be a problem for believers (to say the least) to the extent that this seems true to them.

Of course, there is a tradition which atheists have been a very valuable part of (instrumental in, I think is fair to note) of culling away false notions of deity. And (as a Christian) I have lately insisted that there is even something deeply Christian about all this. Jesus insists that he must go away so that the Spirit can be sent to become operative. Some may see this only in a mechanical formulaic way (like a literal ‘changing of the guard’ thing where Jesus comes home to the throne and tells the waiting Spirit, “okay - you can go to earth now. I’m back.”) But I think a moment’s reflection shows that our comparisons of God’s operations to those of normal human managers as if they were overseeing shifts on a factory floor, are rather silly - even if understandably provoked in us by the received stories and narrative of scripture. But it isn’t as if the Spirit wasn’t (and hasn’t always been) operative in the world from time immemorial. So obviously there is something much deeper going on here. And I think what you say, T, might be a key to it. If God was so present in this world as just one more being walking around (much to the delight - or horror - of many then who have clamored for just such a demonstration) then there would be no call for us to literally “be the arms, feet, and ears of Christ” as we are now called to do. Christ is supposed to be seen in this world in us. And if he isn’t - then that is certainly an endictment on all of us who claim to be his religious representatives. When the bridegroom appears and walks around in the flesh … then obviously close followers flock to that presence as ostensibly being the place where all the action must then be. But Jesus isn’t satisfied with that. The movement must expand beyond the immediate 12 and their small communities. That is what the church should be about. It is an ongoing tragedy of history that it has so often not been that, but also a lasting glory of history when small and great things have also been done in Christ’s name whether or not those capture the imaginations or admirations of the powers-that-be. In fact it could be that the real acts of Christendom are subversive enough that the wealthy and powerful rather find it more threatening than admirable. But that is a far broader topic.

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Your explanation didnt provide any hard based evidence about what you said or an answer to the topic though. To me it seems more propable for baf things to happen because theres no god rather than happening because “we must suffer for his sake” or something

That isn’t what I wrote above. I don’t even think that [at least not as any kind of surface claim about God].

Furthermore, I don’t think I’ve put anything forward as a definitive answer to your question of why God allows bad stuff to happen. I was simply responding to T’s post … suggesting how it is that good stuff ever happens and how God might be behind that.

But since you asked, I do believe that God uses even the bad stuff (I’m not insisting God causes it) but the prolonged absence of any hardship or challenge does not lead to good places - at least not in this life. I witness and experience that first hand.

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You do realize that many hardships can literally make a person go mad ? You do realize that these hardships sometimes leads people to suicide?

So if your God uses them how he does that exactly? Or he uses them only when the person rises above them maybe? If you witnessed any specific hardship that could have made something in your brain snap" consider yourself lucky. Because other people do snap.

Why cant you good hearted people take any responsibility? Why its so tabboo for a christian to criticize their God?

Absolutely. Hardships and difficulties even kill people. Sooner or later there will be something that I will not survive. But meanwhile, if it had not been for all the hardships I’ve survived thus far, I think I can reasonably say that I would not even have lived this long. Something mundane would have picked me off because I would be too weak, too ill-suited, too unprepared to face even the most routine challenge. It’s the falls, scrapes, and bruises we remember that have us eventually learning to walk successfully - and even over challenging terrain eventually. Any protected “bubble-boy” will never live to manhood without at least some of that. I thank God for those hardships, Nick, even while I know that yes - sometimes a fall kills a person. And someday some hardship (that strengthens others) will kill me. That’s life.

What do you think good-hearted people should be taking responsibility for that they are not?

Well, believers do … remind … wrestle with … plead with … shout at … try to bargain with … God all the time. Isn’t there some implied criticism in any of that? But at a deeper level, I suppose that once one accepts God as a ground of all being - and source of all good in the world, then pretty much by definition, it would be inconsistant (illogical) of them to accept that there could be anything wrong with such Deity. There are many undeserving things and false idols that we do heap worship on. If God was merely one of those, then such a god would not be worthy of what the prophets and apostles describe.

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There is more that I should add to what I wrote above (this is a continuation of that - so read that first…)

You might be confusing my assertions about hardship for some sort of “complete justification” for all bad things; but I’m not putting it forward that way. It’s one thing to grow as a result of an existing hardship, and quite another to knowingly inflict that hardship on someone.

For example, any experienced parent whose child is learning to walk does not take much alarm when the child totters over, because they know it’s part of the learning process. But that is not the same as the parent going over to push the child over or deliberately leave all sorts of dangerous obstacles in the child’s path. We would rightly find fault if a parent did that. So just because we know that hardship (if you can survive it more-or-less intact) is in the end a growth event, we nonetheless do not purposely inflict such “growth events” on each other. Unless you’re in boot-camp I guess. I’ve never been a soldier, but from what I hear, I would not wish boot-camp on anyone. And yet, I’ll bet soldiers in the field would not want to trade away their scars or relationships that got cemented together during such inflicted travail. They would not have been prepared for the horrific world of battle otherwise. And of course there is much cruelty and deadly affliction in the world that nobody should face, starvation … lack of adequate or heated shelter (praying for much aide to make it to families in Afghanistan this winter). None of this is meant to be some glib justification for why families are facing that. It seems all-too-likely that many will tragically die, and that is a horrible and evil thing, and some survivers may be scarred for life or become easy harvest for this or that violent movement. Also tragic and evil. I am not an “all suffering is good” kind of a person. I’m only trying to point out to you that not all suffering ends up being bad for us in the end either. Not by a long shot.

Real life (hopefully for the majority of the world) is lived somewhere between “boot-camp” and “party-feast”. The vast majority of the time for way too many, it is closer to the former than the latter. But even so, when their outlook has been trained up with that, and they are then super-equipped to latch onto blessings of love when they have them, you might be forgiven for mistaking who was whom as you see generous love expressed, and discover to your surprise that it’s happening in the midst of “poverty”, in contrast with bitter discontent expressed in the midst of oppulant wealth. One quickly becomes aware that in terms of lives well-lived, a relative lack of hardship has not at all been a boon to the rich. May God spare us from that.

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Amen.
 
Psalm 73 springs to mind, as do a couple of other references: the parable in Luke 12 and the warning about the deceitfulness of wealth.

Thank God i guess for free will right?
So God allows others to literally druve a person insane since some people are so disgusting that they inflinct on purpose damage ( physical or not to others). Great.
Is God fine with that? I mean does he get any satisfactiom seeing one of his children i guess beign driven off to insanity by one of his “brothers” ?
I pray that God doesnt forgive certain things. I really do. Because if the latter ends up in heaven with the victim after he “repents” i better end up in hell

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You’ve put your finger on the crux of the matter right there, Nick. Beside this - all our Christian platitudes, important doctrines, dickering about how we or others believe, or how people handle scriptures - all of that fades into insignificance compared to this:

Can Jesus wish redemption for the brutally cruel mocker who is at the moment busy nailing him to the cross? Can He say to him, as well as He did to the suffering thief, I will rescue you from the evil that grips you right now, and I will have you with me in paradise?

In the heart of the gospel itself (Matthew 6 and also in chapter 18) Jesus taught in no uncertain terms that everything hinges on this. You need have no fear that you will be sharing Heaven with anybody you can’t forgive. Because if strife is what separates you from a brother, then either you or he (and likely neither) is in heaven. Because there is no strife in heaven.

This may be the hardest teaching in all of scripture. Believing “right things” and having all your “doctrinal ducks in a row” is child’s play in comparison - and all comes to naught in any case if you still live in the grip of unforgiveness. You may have the most excellent and well-founded reasons for truly hating somebody, Nick. And no one else can stand in that gap for you to make you do what you will not do. Thank God for free will indeed? … I guess? But nobody else is in a position to extend forgiveness to somebody in your place. If you are the wronged party, then the forgiveness has to come from you in order to mean anything to the forgiven. That is exactly why this one matter is of such over-riding importance.

Perhaps the one main help we are given to help us leap this seemingly impossible chasm is this: We are shown that there is no “us” who are the righteous and worthy ones, as opposed to “them” the cruel ones over there who are forever only fit to burn in hell. You and I and everyone else has been in that latter category, Nick. We have ourselves stood in need of forgiveness from others, who in their own turn had every good reason to think: “Never! – never will I want to be in any heaven if I’m obliged to share it with that creature!” And yet most of us as we face into that sting of repentance will pleadingly insist, but that wasn’t really me. I loath what I did to you there, and I long to make it right and show you that I really do love you and wish with every fibre of my being that I had never been the cruel jerk I was at that time. If we come to realize this and see it in each other, then previously cold hearts melt, and paradise is truly attained. But here is the tough part: Can we even make those first steps before any such repentance is even evident? Can we pray forgiveness and redemption for somebody while they are still nailing us to a cross? That is what Jesus did. It isn’t just you that struggles with this, Nick. This is all of us. Realizing that I have been that cruel person to others, and knowing that I in my own turn have need of that cleansing - that is a valuable tool to help me jump that impossible chasm and extend anticipatory forgiveness to the as-yet unrepentant. They (we) know not what they (we) do, but when they (we) are finally brought into full knowledge of it (as we all will be) - then they (we) will experience such self-loathing such as no fires of hell can match.

Your post nails this matter head-on, Nick. It is the very heart and whole of redemption, and it is exactly where God is.

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One other followup is needed here. This exhortation toward such expansive forgiveness is always - always - in the end a self-application. It has to be you, and nobody else can command you to do it; my own exhortations here notwithstanding. Yes, Jesus does pretty much command us to do it, but He doesn’t make us do it.

And furthermore - and more importantly to my follow up point - this is most certainly not to be taken as an insistence that vulnerable people should stay in abusive situations, forgiving their abusers even while it’s happening. There is a time to flee, and very understandably so. Refusing to continue enabling abusers is likely the very thing that both abuser and abused most need at the moment. So I fully acknowledge (without having good answers for all situations) that this adds very tricky layers indeed to all such strong exhortation given above. Perhaps part of the solution will always involve time. It seems that nothing ever happens in a day or in an instant. So thank God for time, and that death does not (for God) impose any boundaries on such time as may be needed for such a massive redemption project.

Nope. Enough with this. Religious people playing with others feelings telling others to “forgive” and “heal”. Ask an abused child to forgive their parent which treated them like trash. Yeah that will work. Certain people dont need to be forgiven. And God knows that. If God demands from me to forgive someone which treated me like i was dirt even though i cared for them ,lovedetc etc. or demand that we forgive certain evil people,then by all means i dont want any connectiom to that kind of God. I dont want to even hear about him. Ill even put him in the same potision as those i spoke above.

Sorry for my explosiveness here but sometimes i get really mad at your God

Understood.

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Anecdotes aren’t empirical evidence.

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What about the testimony from a scientist’s field notebook.