As the philosopher Epicurus said:
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or He can, but does not want to; or He cannot and does not want to. If He wants to, but cannot, He is impotent. If He can, and does not want to, He is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how comes evil in the world.
Then someone says:
He does, and He will, and we have brought it on ourself.
I ask, did we really bring this:
Imagine a person who graced by God, was a top intellectual in one of the most prestigious Universities in the country. His logical reasoning, and his ongoing contribution to scientific advancement and charity has made him also a very respecting person. But he begins to be inept to recall where he put his keys. He complains to you about this. Then he starts forgetting he even has a car. Then he evolves to not remembering the friends that helped him buy that car. Now he denies this. You touch him to comfort him, and he takes his hand away. He keeps his hand away because he can not put it back. He can't move- on purpose that is. You tell him about how Christ Jesus suffered as well, but because he doesn't understand what your on about, he looks confused and his response is muffled. He can see that you are now confused too. He becomes cursing unintelligibly, and then breaks out into a cry.
You don't have to imagine- this is a real disease, of many. It is Alzhiemer's. That's one of many incurable, degenerative, crippling diseases.
When Adam ate the fruit, did corruption seep even to our genetic makeup? I can describe to you the evolution of cancer, but you probably have seen it. The person would have pain, be losing weight, not wanting to eat (anorexia) because taste for food has diminished dramatically, and he is looking very cachexic. He begins contracting all the diseases floating around him, because he is just that susceptible. Each system begins failing. And if it wasn't the disease and the various diseases that you have a diathesis for, the chemotherapy is just as bad.
Are you going to tell a person that he is going through all this to test his faith! Are you going to tell him that the God your suppose to worship as a merciful redeemer, and glorify by your life, has turned you to less than a human, all to make you prove a point- that you love Him?
I know one thing you are going to say, that we all have sinned, that we all have fallen short of the glory of God- well these two diseases are largely genetic (or atleast the carry a predisposition for such ghastly pathologies). But we seem to be getting the punishment before we are even born.
Does it not say that all curses have been annulled? I think that these damaging genetic mutations and the many microbes that symbiose with us in the most infective way, is the greatest curse that has continued since the Cross. But then again physical death has not passed away either. Did God orchestrate a list of millions of ways that each and everyone of us will die to get to heaven. Don't say this is the devil's doing- last I checked, he had nothing to do with our biology.
That leads me to another thing. You will say God respects our freedom, and He let us bear the brunt of our actions, but made a way to make amends, while still respecting our freedom. Well there does not seem to be much freedom in the after life. Where is our freedom in Heaven. If earth is a paradise of freedom- what is Heaven?
First I doubted God's grace, because even though God died to give me power over Satan, I would not die for myself. Now I doubt the very God that issues it. When I thought I had faith I felt like I was in a cage, and without it, I feel like I am in an open desert. Both such a lonely place. Both away from anything that matters.
As as father once said to Christ, "I believe, help my unbelief."
Comments
But we can pray for that persons healing anyway..
I have not got an answer now to some of your questions.. sorry I have not given it much thought and I still might not be able to..
I hope others answer..
I might be talking irrelevant
I know God can destroy evil but He will not eliminate evil beings like the devil or those who follow him because God gave us a free will and if people thought when they died they would go to heaven or just cease to exist (not even possibly go to hell) like the seventh day adventists believe they would not fear living ungodly in this life, causing others to stumble (whom God wants to save) and there will be less righteous people and the righteous people would have been forsaken in this life.. the righteous person will think if I live just like them its not so bad.. Im content with just living happy in this life.. it doesn't matter if I cease to exist when I die.. I don't care to live with God anyway.. He won't even make the effort to try to change and not be selfish and want to live with God.. for that is what heaven is.. Praising and serving (?) someone else than yourself who is most loveable to the righteous. And some wicked can kill as many people as they want and get away with it..
(Have I said anything wrong?)
but there may be more reasons.. God knows them.. He said.. seek and you will find.. pray to Him and He will reveal in His time which might be quickly according to what He thinks is best.. Some things He will not reveal to us because He knows what is best but this may not be one of them
Read Psalm 73
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm 73&version=9
I am unclear what you are asking?
You would appear to think that because bad things happen there cannot be a God. Bad things happen because we have free will and we live in a universe where we are free to react to them as we wish; God does not require us to be obedient robots, nor does he want a world peopled with them.
If you ask why evil exists, the real answer is that we do not know the full reasons for what God does; God is ineffable and unknowable in His essence; we can only know Him through the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour. What we know from Him is that God loves us and wishes us to live in a way that will make our lives meaningful and which will bring us to salvation. That may involve suffering; so be it. That may involve death by cancer; so be it. Are you saying nothing good can come from such things?
Against the example you cite, I cite one of a couple, both in their eighties, where the wife does indeed, suffer from dementia; the husband looks after her lovingly every day. The sample of love and service he gives has made a very profound impression on those who know them - and one of their children, who was divided by an old quarrel from his father, has come back into the family fold because he has come to recognise that his father has many great qualities that he previously has not recognised. That may be no help the the mother in one sense, but in another it has brought a family back together and helped provide a caring and supportive environment for the mother's final days. Is this why it happened? Who knows? But the result is not all negative.
Modern man has a problem with accepting that there are some things he cannot understand and never will; in this case the humility and acceptance that accompany a belief in the Risen Lord provide an alternative way of being in this world. Which one prefers is no doubt down to the individual.
Things happen - for reasons we may know nothing of, but they happen all the same. It is how one reacts to those things and what one chooses to learn from them which matters; Christianity is a better school in which to learn than atheism.
In Christ,
John
Doubting Thomas, How do you define "evil?"
Obviously 2 things are inferred here: 1- one of those things are wrong; 2- our perception of what those things are wrong.
The classical argument is that God created the potential for evil when He created free-willed spirits. I do not have the problem with that. That explains a whole plethora of evil: being ripped-off in the supermarket, having your house burgled, and murder, amongst other things. Thats a God who respects our choices. Free choice has given us not just hate and suffering, but love.
And I know that good can come out of tragedy. You don't have to look further than from the redemption that was made available through the dei-cide of the Cross. The infirmity of St. Paul (likely blindness), had made him closer to God and prevented Him from perhaps from the sins of blasphemy and pride.
But that is not the problem. The problem is the diseases that take away freedom, that were inflicted randomly or genetically/congenitally and not from any bad or even good choices that you have made.
I will take a quote from the Western St, St. Augustine: Since God is the highest good, he would not allow any evil to exist in His works unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.
But here is the problem, He inflicted it Himself. The Devil can persuade us to do evil. Hey, we can even tempt ourselves. But for God to inflict, and to say a life of worship is the highest ideal and pleasure a creature can have with His creator, is not very plausible.
As someone said, this is not the case for a father of the child to let her skateboard without knee pads, knowing when she falls she will skin her knees. This is a father who breaks her leg, then comforts her, and expects the experience will bring love.
That is one thing I find it hard to believe.
Now the atheist has no way to make moral judgments against God or anything. They base their judgments on subjective and collective conscience. That is non-sense. What I want to know is if the God of the Holy Scriptures is our personal and experiential God of our daily life.
Even the Marconians believed that the Gods of the different covenants (testaments) were different! I am saying is the God of the Scriptures the God we experience today.
I know I might seem arrogant, thinking why can't people see it my way. It's just I wrestled with this issue as a medical student a lot. I see dementia patients and I heard some of the elderly with the most unreserved tongue, lash out against the ban on euthanasia. "The damn Christians, who with one breathe condemn murder and the next praise the mass-murderer- God."
I can try to make intellectual guesses or theories that can defend God, but I have personal testimony to make me believe in this omnipresent, loving, saving, Pantokrator.
What do I define 'evil' as- well I don't think the definition is necessary at this point, as I narrowed my real reservations to the burdens inflicted by God. It is such a fluid concept. I think it is the deliberate choice, when there is at least a choice that is less self-seeking and more beneficence to those involved, to choose the one of greater maleficence. And with God, the possibilities should be endless.
Now, I can relate to your questions, as I went to a school with a humanities-based curriculum. I was forced to reevaluate my beliefs, and to some extent, I still am.
Everything happens because God either allows it or wills it. In other words, it is either his intention to cause evil, or he allows evil to exist. Our definition of God is such that we know God cannot will any evil. The Story of Job further compels us to the conclusion that God only allows evil to happen. The question now, is why. I do not presume to have a definitive answer to that question. I will leave that to more knowledgeable members.
In the case of the diseases you describe, albeit cruel, are not evil. This is not the cruel vindictive nature of God. This is medicine. No doubt, there are plenty of horrible diseases in the world. Some are a sort of punishment, and other simply exist because we caused their existence in some way. God allowed these disease to plague us, but that in no way suggests that on every such occasion he is testing our faith or punishing. He may either have a reason which only he knows, or he is merely allowing us to use our free will. In that sense, earth is a place where relative freedom backfires and ends up imprisoning us. In heaven, freedom will not be an issue. You will be transformed to an existence devoid of your previous sinful nature. You will always desire to acquiesce to God's will.
Thank you for clarifying what you are asking; most helpful.
A famous English statesman once said: 'God is love and the world is what it is; how do you explain that?' What he was doing in this statement was drawing our attention to the limitations of our human minds in comprehending the ineffable wisdom and purposes of God.
Sin, including death and disease, entered the world through our disobedience to God's law and His commands. If you want an analogy it is like a parent saying to a child, don't go into that room, it is dangerous, but the child waiting until the parent's back is turned and doing so any way. We have to cope with the consequences of that primal disobedience, and we do so best by accommodating ourselves to His commands. We shall surely not be saved by the attitude that brought humankind to the pass from which it could be saved only by the death and resurrection of the Christ.
This is a hard saying to modern man, who likes to think he has dominion over the world and all that is in it when, in reality, he was meant to be its steward. As stewards we are most definitely in the category of those bad ones in the Bible; indeed, if the scientists are to be believed, we are busy destroying the planet we live on. Only if we repent of our sins and believe in Him shall we be saved.
Vindictive? No, He sent His only-begotten Son that a sinner like me could be saved; in the words of the hymn, 'love so amazing, so divine, demands my love, my life, my all.'
In Christ,
John
Join the rest of us; we have all sinned, and without His love we all perish. Forgiveness is to be found in Him - and He will rejoice.
In Christ,
John