Creation suggests God delights in diversity, but you seem to suggest diverse perfection is an oxymoron off His table. His only options are massive cloning or massive evil? I like to think a God of UNCHALLENGED omnipotence could and would think and act outside that box.
Okay, we need to discuss the meaning of Job. It is set up on two levels, the human level of Job and his friends, and the divine level of YHWH and Satan. Job was a good man. This established not only by his opinion, but by the statements of both YHWH and Satan. Then all of a sudden his life goes awry, He loses his wealth, and he loses children. He is down to just himself and his wife and then she gives up on him, but he still keeps his faith in YHWH despite the predictions of Satan.
Still Job is troubled. There is a conflict between his theology and his life experience. What he was taught and what he and his friends believe is that a just God punishes people for their evil deeds, and thus he would not be punished as he was unless he had done something very bad. While Job confessed that he was not perfect, he knew that the suffering inflicted on him, especially after he was suffering from painful boils, was not consistent with his sins.
Thus there conflict was between Job and his comforters who insisted that Job was guilty of a secret gross sin and the only was for him to find healing was to confess and repent. Also there was “conflict” between Job and YHWH based on the misunderstanding that YHWH was punishing him for his sins. Job wanted to speak to God directly to tell God that he was innocent of any serious sin and was frustrated that YHWH was not listening and did not seem to care.
But YHWH was listening and did care. God appeared to Job and heard his complaint, and gave him an answer, although not a direct one. What did Job learn from this experience?
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He did learn that people should not put God in a box of simple theology, which sadly we do all the time.
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He learned that he was right and his friends were wrong, as YHWH told him afterwards. His suffering was not punishment for his sins.
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Most importantly Job learned and we are supposed to learn that God does listen and God does care about us. YHWH did not have to respond to Job. God does not have to respond to anyone. If God were Absolute as most people think God is, God would not, could not respond to us, because that God would be far above and beyond us poor mortals.
Job learned from his experience and we learn from our experience, which usually means we learn from our mistakes, and hopefully from the mistakes of others, like Job. Adam and Eve learned about sin from committing a sin. We learn about sin and its consequences also by sinning, not be being good. Hopefully we will learn from our mistake of sin by repenting and turning to Jesus.
The Law and the Ten Commandments tell us what not to do. The Covenant of Jesus Christ tells us what to do. Often we are afraid to follow Jesus because we might make a mistake and fall into sin despite our best efforts or even because of our best efforts because we are still sinful humans.
But God tells us that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the whole world, including yours and mine, so there is no reason to hold back in fear of committing a sin. Jesus is telling us to live boldly by faith, not seeking self justification, but seeking the best for all of God’s people in God’s Kingdom. Again sadly we do this all too infrequently.
As Christians we are sinners saved by grace. We do not seek sin, but we must not be afraid of it. Satan keeps trying to tell us that we are too insignificant and too sinful for God to care about us. Jesus tells us that this is a LIE. God cares about us and God cares about sinners to bring them into fellowship, and so should we.
You are right. God does delight in diversity. The problem is that humans do not. They are suspicious of people who are different from them.
First of all it should be noted that before humans came on the scene God’s Creation was perfect because there was no sin. God did not create evil, humans created evil.
Second, while God did not create evil God created the conditions whereby evil could exist. This is what you and others seem to question. Why did God create the conditions where evil can exist, if God knew in advance that humans would sin and create evil?
The answer to that question is that God’s diverse perfect includes 1) the freedom of humans to sin, and 2) even after sin takes place God had a plan to restore the perfection of the Creation through Jesus Christ, so in effect it is still perfect as a whole, although not individually.
Humans have the freedom to sin, because we learn from experience, esp. from our mistakes and failures. See above. This is exactly how God thinks and acts outside the box.
Humans want God to think and act for them to protect them from their evil actions and decisions. God insists that we take responsibility for our evil actions and decisions, and repent. When we do not, we and others suffer, although we still have peace and joy through Jesus Christ, which cannot be compromised by sin. Thus we have salvation even in the midst of pain and suffering, ours and others.
Roger, thank you for your gracious and thoughtful reply and usual food for further thought. It omits creative imperfections that are ample and devoid of intrinsic moral (evil sin) content. I want to refocus on the meaning of God’s omnipotence. I have proposed that we are in a moment of temporarily challenged omnipotence. This helps me to explain, as I have, a flood tide of imperfections, including but not limited to human sins, that survived the creation process. Sins, earthquakes, tornadoes, bird-borne diseases, and many other causes of human pain and suffering are reasonably categorized as creative imperfections, not what one would expect from a perfectly good God of unchallenged omnipotence. In the imperfection category, one might count pain and suffering associated with the predatory interactions of the non-human food chain–if God is a vegetarian. Unfortunate human contact with predators would qualify as a creative imperfection contrary to a perfectly good God of unchallenged omnipotence.
Unchallenged omnipotence is what’s left from your apparent rejection of a challenged version.
My surmise is that a perfect God of unchallenged omnipotence would have created everything, and done so perfectly, excluding fallen angels, lying reptiles, poison ivy, and anything else not perfectly good.
So how could rampant human sin foil a perfect God who knew perfectly what He wanted and had the unchallenged omnipotence to prevent it? My surmise is that a perfect God of unchallenged omnipotence could have defined freedom perfectly–how else?–and designed humans uninfected with any inclination to use it imperfectly.
Freedom is a variable notion. Birds are free to fly, but the God-given definition of wolf freedom does not include airborne flight. A God of unchallenged omnipotence could have assigned humans a broader freedom than other creatures, but He still would have had His own freedom to define freedom to His purposes. And with unchallenged freedom to define, I do not believe He would have used that freedom to define freedom as license to sin. There would be a countless multitude of God-pleasing options available under His human freedom. How much should we lament the absent freedoms of winged flight or sin?
Theodicy is defined by Webster’s as “defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in the view of the existence of evil.” Ensconced in the dictionary as it is, I obviously have lots of company attempting a defense, but I haven’t encountered an alternative easy sell in this conversation. (An omnipotent God created everything, including all the bad stuff, including a subcategory of evils unexpectedly created by the created—obviously trashing God’s perfect original plan? Bad is good except when it’s not? This stuff may make sense to the committed, but it is hardly user-friendly to the uncommitted.)
Numbers,
We are working on the same problem, but from a different point of view. Clearly I prefer my point of view and you prefer yours. But let me try again to clarify what I am trying to say.
Certainly we agree that God is good, but you like many people think that God’s goodness means that God should protect humans from sin and suffering. I believe that there are worse things than pain and suffering and that is the loss of freedom and the inability to love God and others. Thus if I had the choice of a living with a painful disease like Job, or living in a prison where I was not in any physical pain, but living in isolation, I would choose the former.
Pain and suffering are the result of existing in a physical body. They are the result of our nervous system telling us that something is not right with our body and also our life situation. Also our nervous system enables us to enjoy the beauty of the earth, the wonderful smells of flowers and food, the feel of extraordinary and ordinary textures, the sounds of music, language, and nature. Our nervous system gives us the power to communicate, to build, and to think. It is strange that some people use the “disorder” present in life as an excuse not to believe in God, when life is overwhelming good.
If God’s goodness means that God protected humans from pain and suffering, why did God the Father send the Beloved Son into the world to suffer and die? Why did Jesus tell His followers to pick up their cross and follow Him? We might think that we are protecting God when we say God does not want us to suffer, but aren’t we really trying to protect ourselves, because we don’t want to suffer, regardless of the cause?
God is good because God saves us from sin and brings us into relationship with God so we can share God’s Life which includes God’s Joy, Peace, and Love. If we believe the Bible, God does suffer with us when we fail to do what is right.
God is good because God created humans in God’s own image which means gave them freedom to chose between right and wrong. God does not surrender God’s omnipotence but uses it in God’s own way, not to protect humans from pain and suffering, but by sending Jesus Christ into the world to suffer and die so people might be reconciled with God and one another.
God ever employ this freedom to choose wrong? I like to think we are ready to agree to disagree. Much of what you say is familiar and welcome and I count you on the side of the angels.
A quote from John C.L Gibson, author of Genesis, Volume 1, p 126:
“Having made his chief point that ‘man’ must face up to his own guilt and not look for a scapegoat, he [author of Genesis] slips in a reminder that there is a larger force of evil abroad in the world as well, one that is independent of ‘man’ and that has opposed God’s will from the beginning of time. The battle which each man or woman must wage within himself or herself is but a small part of a much greater battle being waged between Heaven and Hell. That battle too must be won before Paradise can come to earth.” [emphasis added]
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Affirming Gibson & reiterating my own prior replies to previous:
Denial of Hell, denial of “some negative force,” denial of any Pre-Paradise challenge to God’s omnipotence–leaves the deniers with a God of unchallenged omnipotence being vulnerable to blame for any and every calamity except sins of God-given freedom. By default all kinds of perceptually bad stuff must be good because nobody but a God of unchallenged omnipotence was/is around to cause it; nothing’s bad except the free sin? This Rube Goldberg convolution is theodicy in reverse.
An obvious assertion I have previously failed to be explicit about: God does not have to be the creator of a real evil in order to make something useful (good) out of it. Such is in the power of a God of temporarily challenged omnipotence.
I cannot see how Buddhism defines suffering as evil. There is no evil there at all, but suffering that comes from minds misconception of reality. A misconception that comes from the apperance of a separate, subjective Self/Ego that is not an integrated part of the one shared reality. This sense of separation from others causes our suffering, our unease with ourselves and the world we live in. But of course, to suffer that way is not good or pleasant, and it will lead us to unskilled action and conflict. But there is no inherent “evil” in the buddhist world as far as I can see.
About dualism, I believe there is physical dualism of forces. That is, the universe and all its different forms created within are either contracting or expanding. Things manifest as contracted and radiate/dissolve as expanding. My faith is in Jesus Christ as actually being Light, the holy Sun and the perpetual energy of Creation and re-Creation. In the Sunlight, I see Jesus every day. To me, He is Enlightenment.
With all respect
//N
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