How can a good God allow suffering

@livinglava,

How so?

@NealNealNeal,

NealNealNeal wrote:

How so?

It sounds like you are treating the love of God/Jesus that goes into forgiving sin as contradictory to 'Holiness' as having to do with God's judgment of sin; but I think divine love is holy and that Holy Spirit was/is involved in the entire creation, including the cause-and-effect mechanical clockwork that ensures sin/harm will cause damage/death and continue to stoke further fire wherever it goes.

In other words, sin and its consequences are just part of the clockwork of the creation/universe, all of which was created through Holy Spirit. But somehow forgiveness and salvation are also built into it, and we have to learn to see how we can simultaneously be subject to material consequences of sin and physiological death, while being spiritually liberated from the degenerating materialities of the creation.

In Buddhism, it is described in terms of temporality; i.e. that everything external is temporary and ultimately breaks down in one way or another. But yet if we raise our consciousness to full awareness, we see that there is always life beyond death; so Buddhism describes the creation in terms of "cycles of birth and death," called "samsara," and the goal is to transcend that by raising consciousness, which is also what you could say Jesus is doing by delivering us from sin/death at a spiritual level through His crucifixion and corresponding resurrection.

He taught second-birth while He was alive, and then He demonstrated it through death and resurrection. Plus He prayed to God to "forgive them they know not what they do," so He was already forgiving the sins He was dying for before He died and resurrected. So through all that, we learn to live in the body and 'the world,' but to be aware at a higher level that our souls transcend death, which is just a thing at the material level of the body.

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@livinglava,

Holiness and Love are two attrbutes of God Good"s Holiness demands punishment of the sinner. God's love for
Provided a substitute for our sins.

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@NealNealNeal,

NealNealNeal wrote:

Holiness and Love are two attrbutes of God Good"s Holiness demands punishment of the sinner. God's love for
Provided a substitute for our sins.

Punishment for sin happens automatically through the accounting of cause-and-effect. Sin caused Jesus to die, but He forgave sinners nonetheless. So the crucifixion teaches that the wages of sin is death but we have eternal life and salvation from sin nonetheless.

There's a disruption in the cycles of sin and death through Jesus, which allows us to experience forgiveness and redemption instead of persistent damnation as we are held accountable for sin and hold others accountable.

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@livinglava,

Livinglava--- You are my favorite poster. You are a person of great thought. It appears as if there is a form of "New Age" in your thinking. I enjoy reading your words.
K

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@NealNealNeal,

NealNealNeal wrote:

Livinglava--- You are my favorite poster. You are a person of great thought. It appears as if there is a form of "New Age" in your thinking. I enjoy reading your words.
K

Thanks, but I'm not sure what you mean by "new age."

I am just trying to explain these things as I understand them.

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@livinglava,

Fantastic!!! Keep on searching for truth.

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@NealNealNeal,

NealNealNeal wrote:

Fantastic!!! Keep on searching for truth.

Truth is already found in sincere searching.

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@NealNealNeal,

NealNealNeal wrote:

God was quite clear in His instructions to Adam.

Maybe to you he was clear, but not to Adam and Eve. Don't forget that before eating of the fruit they did not know good from evil. (obey is good, disobey is evil)

NealNealNeal wrote:

There are consequences to disobeying God.

I can't argue with you there. The Bible is riddled with examples of God's wrath which if attributed to a human would be considered nothing short of psychopathic.

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@mesquite,

mesquite wrote:

Don't forget that before eating of the fruit they did not know good from evil. (obey is good, disobey is evil)

They knew eating from the one tree would cause them to "surely die."

What caused them to know evil was when the serpent lied to them and they believed it.

At that point they learned what evil was by getting tricked into killing themselves with the poison fruit.

God warned them it would happen, so they knew; but yet they failed to heed the warning and resist the serpent's deceptive trickery.

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@mesquite,

I agree with your 2nd statement. However, He is not a man. He is Almighty God His ways are not our ways. He will not share His glory with anyone. He will not accept Secularism.

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@NealNealNeal,

NealNealNeal wrote:

Please remember that Eve was deceived by Satan.

By Satan I assume you mean the serpent in the story. Where is the deception? What the serpent said came to pass. What God said did NOT come to pass.

In Genesis 2 Moses wrote:

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

They did not die in the day that they ate from the tree. Adam lived >900 years. They eventually died because they were denied access to the Tree of Life.

In Genesis 3 Moses wrote:

22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

If that serpent had really been crafty he could have said to eat from the Tree of Life first then from the Tree of Knowledge. Wink

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@mesquite,

Adam and Eve immediately died SPIRITUALLY. They no longer had a close personal relationship with God They were now sinners. Satan now had the authority over earth that God had given Adam.
Adam and Eve now lived in a fallen world, so they eventually died physically.
God had a plan of salvation, which He first mentioned when He spoke to the serpent. This was a prophecy of the coming Messiah.

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@NealNealNeal,

NealNealNeal wrote:

I agree with your 2nd statement. However, He is not a man. He is Almighty God His ways are not our ways. He will not share His glory with anyone. He will not accept Secularism.

You got to be kidding me oh by the way I taken notice,after you stated that he is not a man an yet that you used the male pronoun for this god as most people happen to do so is there a female god or does he please himself or fall back on angels or humans or some other form of lessor beings? Oh of course there is Mary and Jesus so does god or the holy ghost have a penis?

At least the Greek and Roman gods that was male have female gods beside humans to fall back on.

Since even early childhood I found it hard not to wonder if the adults reality buy into this nonsense or is it the same as the tooth fairy an such other creatures that adults sell to children.

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@NealNealNeal,

NealNealNeal wrote:

Adam and Eve immediately died SPIRITUALLY. They no longer had a close personal relationship with God

So when the Bible no longer make logical sense, you just make stuff up?
Do you have any biblical translations that translate that verse as to die spiritually or just fall out of favor with God? Strong's Concordance shows that other uses of muwth refer to physical dying.

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@BillRM,

Quote:

I taken notice,after you stated that he is not a man an yet that you used the male pronoun for this god as most people happen to do so is there a female god ... ?

That's actually a good question. I wondered about that myself, but the Book says that once you get in communication, you have the irresistible urge to say ‘Abba Father' which was a Greek expression for a sincere 'Dear Dad'.

That fit pretty well but I wasn’t 100% sure until I met more women.

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

NealNealNeal wrote:

I agree with your 2nd statement. However, He is not a man. He is Almighty God His ways are not our ways. He will not share His glory with anyone. He will not accept Secularism.

You got to be kidding me oh by the way I taken notice,after you stated that he is not a man an yet that you used the male pronoun for this god as most people happen to do so is there a female god or does he please himself or fall back on angels or humans or some other form of lessor beings? Oh of course there is Mary and Jesus so does god or the holy ghost have a penis?

At least the Greek and Roman gods that was male have female gods beside humans to fall back on.

Since even early childhood I found it hard not to wonder if the adults reality buy into this nonsense or is it the same as the tooth fairy an such other creatures that adults sell to children.

Sexual reproduction allows for genetic recombination, unlike asexual reproduction, i.e. cloning.

Using sexual reproduction, two individuals that are genetically different can produce many genetically diverse offspring, instead of just cloning themselves.

Genitalia are necessary for genetic material to be controlled in a way that makes sexual reproduction more efficient. Fish lay and fertilize externally, for example, but land animals can prevent eggs/sperm from drying out using internal fertilization and then laying eggs that have better protection against evaporation.

All these different adaptations that allow organisms to live and reproduce in different environments exist within the spectrum of possibilities of creation and pro-creation.

So in a narrow sense you wouldn't say that God has a penis because physical form can change and adapt to different environmental conditions. E.g. humans could evolve to a future where reproduction no longer requires a penis, just as cetaceans have evolved to the point of having the bones of their hind limbs disappear into their bodies as they are no longer used.

God is not a specific species or even a material entity in the sense we think of material entities. He is not even a single mind/soul, though we can interpret Him in terms of attributes we recognize in ourselves because we are created in His image. We are like apples who see the tree from which we grow as a great apple God, even though the tree is much more than a single apple. Obviously an apple is made in the image of the tree it grows from, but that doesn't mean the tree and apple are identical twins either.

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@mesquite,

mesquite wrote:

NealNealNeal wrote:
Adam and Eve immediately died SPIRITUALLY. They no longer had a close personal relationship with God

So when the Bible no longer make logical sense, you just make stuff up?
Do you have any biblical translations that translate that verse as to die spiritually or just fall out of favor with God? Strong's Concordance shows that other uses of muwth refer to physical dying.

The Bible provides guidance for theological reflection. Anyone can hypothesize about the answer to questions and the Bible can provide information to guide the process of answering them. Sometimes the Bible provides direct answers and sometimes you can extrapolate logic based on what you understand to be true about a certain scripture or verse.

It's like with science. You learn some scientific facts, so when you encounter situations that you haven't directly learned about from science texts, you apply what you understand about science to making sense of the thing you are trying to make sense about. You may investigate further by seeking other textual information and/or making your own empirical observations and reasoning about how to explain/interpret what you've observed in terms of what you know prior to beginning your research investigation.

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@mesquite,

You make an excellent point!!! I will need to do more research. Thank you for the information.

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@livinglava,

Would you prefer that I say that God is not a " created being"?

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How can a good God allow suffering

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