Posted on 09/14/2017 11:26:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
Like many Americans during the past three weeks, I've been bombarded by news about the destructive power of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida. The stories are of misery, death, and destruction.
The misery, death, and destruction are acutely difficult to accept because they have been visited upon innocents. I say that knowledgeable of the ancient argument that our personal and collective sinfulness has merited our pain. Yet that raises this question: Does anyone really deserve personal ruination because of personal sin, particularly from a God whose Son said He came to call sinners and not the just?
Stated differently, why does an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God permit innocents to suffer in natural disasters?
This question has occupied philosophers for millennia. The natural order of things has revealed that we all have free will, and we know from our experiences that we can easily abuse that free will. The individual will is so free that we can use it to do magnificent things or horrific things.
But a natural disaster is not the handiwork of anyone's free will. Could it really be the handiwork of an angry God impatient with the manner in which we have abused free will? This argument is not a logical extension of Christian teaching unless God is terribly inconsistent with His impatience over human failures and errors and has somehow overlooked and not yet grown impatient with the world's worst monsters.
Why the natural disasters? We know from the exercise of our reason that the curvature of the Earth and its continuous movement through space set in motion a series of forces. These forces protect the Earth and its inhabitants from the harmful rays of the sun and permit the intrusion of the beneficial rays. All this comes at a price. The movement of the Earth actually produces friction, and that friction, in turn, ignites energy, and that energy often is drawn by the Earth's gravity and finds an outlet in destructive forces on the planet.
Though these forces -- the linchpin of which is the Earth's gravity -- can be avoided through the exercise of creative reason (we can build shelters from them), they are often, as with Harvey and Irma, beyond our ability to harness or control. All this is a thumbnail sketch of basic astrophysics, largely acquired through human reason and beyond serious dispute.
But the disputable philosophical questions remain. What force set all this in motion? What caused the big bang in the first place? What caused the Earth's gravity? What tipped over the first domino that billions of years later triggered the explosions of energy that eventually became Harvey and Irma?
We know from reason that every effect had a cause. You plant grass seed and water it, and the effect is blades of grass. The cause was the interaction of the seeds and earth and rain and sun brought together by the free will of the person who did the planting. There are infinite examples of this. Yet is there any cause that was uncaused? Yes. That is the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving uncaused cause, whom most of us call God the Father.
Now back to the question posed earlier. If God the Father created us and loves us, why does He permit natural forces that He set in motion to harm and even to devour us? A similar question was actually addressed by our Lord Himself when He was approached by biblical scholars who asked about a young man who was blind from birth. The question they put to Jesus was: Whose sinning caused this man to be born blind? Was it the man himself or his parents?
The question may have been an attempted trap. Yet Jesus answered by saying essentially that no one's sins caused the blindness. Rather, he was born blind so that the works of God could be made manifest in him. In other words, he was born blind so that Jesus could cure his blindness publicly -- as He did -- and thereby enhance the faith and understanding of all who learned of this and believed it.
Of course, not all who learned of the cure of the blind man believed in Jesus' divinity. Some thought He was a charlatan performing tricks, and some thought the young man was never really blind. Their skepticism and doubts caused G. K. Chesterton to remark that "the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
Chesterton recognized that we are free to believe or to reject belief. To those who believe in the all-loving God, we know that from time to time, He manifests Himself to give us a need to embrace Him, just as He did with the man born blind. That embrace is the test of faith. It was manifested in countless unseen acts of generosity and selflessness -- from believing stranger to believing stranger -- in Texas and in Florida.
I can hear the prayer of the faithful in pain. "O Lord, I prayed that the hurricane would not destroy my home, yet it did. I still love you, Lord, because my family was spared. I love you more now because I need you more now. I don't reject the truth. I embrace it, no matter the cost -- because the truth will keep my free will set upon you."
As pope, St. John Paul II called this rational belief. It is the essence of understanding. It is faith tempered by human reason and human reason informed by faith. Faith without reason and reason without faith lead to fanaticism. Only their informed juxtaposition will guide our free wills to do the right things and to have understanding when bad things happen.
“The judge ignores a whole body of scripture and theology that says God does punish people.”
I don’t think so. He was talking about theodicy, the problem of reconciling the existence of evil with the concept of a loving God.
Most people, I think, are ok with punishment of the guilty. It’s bad things happening to good people for no apparent reason that trips people up.
I don’t think God creates hurricanes. I think natural disasters are part of his creation. It’s like if I create a computer program....say Sim City, and I have disasters turned on. They can randomly happen, or I can destroy my city with them. I think they happen because they are just part of Gods system of creation, or God obviously CAN make them happen. But I think the former is more likely in 99% of natural disasters.
You may want to revisit the book of Job and see what He permits.
All the wildfires, floods, earthquakes and hurricanes we have seen lately could also be birth pangs. Maranatha.
you basically summed up what the link I listed says- He makes the argument that it’s not localized judgments upon certain civilizations, but just a result of sin in general- Had we not sinned in the garden, there wouldn’t be these natural disasters-
Anyways the link is worth a read- but he says what you do and explains it in more detail=-
Yes, if God didn’t dictate the prophecy, they’re no better than Balim.
‘If “this life” stops, it is not necessarily punishment, could be a door to reward.’
yeah it could be...or it could not be...
see how fluid the whole thing is...?
Sorry Judge that is the dumbest question ever
List those you believe exist.
You have to take the bad to be able to apprehend and appreciate the good.
_________________________________________________________
I think he meant to say “comprehend” instead of “apprehend”. Sometimes our fingers get ahead of our mind.
There is much wisdom in his statement.
The Lord Jesus Christ says we are commanded to be like Him. If we obey the commandments we will become like Jesus and receive, or inherit with Him all that His Father has.
This is not a willy nilly idea. We have come here to learn and obey, to prove ourselves able to handle what God so wants to give us. Our afflictions are for us to learn from. All of us are going to die, don’t think you are going to go through life without something bad happening to you. What you do with what things happen to you is a measure of your maturity in The Gospel. The Lord has told us to be prepared. I don’t believe that just means love The Lord, I believe it also means if you live in a Hurricane prone area then build a house that will withstand the hurricane or move. It means getting medical check-ups, it means getting an education of some type so you are not tossed around by every wind of doctrine so to speak.
If we do those things, if we are prepared by living close to God then when the afflictions come we will try to learn from them or be prepared to not be hurt by them. We will be more prepared to help others when these things happen to them.
We all need to grow from our afflictions and appreciate them for the learning opportunity they are.
To me, the people who cry about God allowing them to have to go through pain and suffering are the same people who believe that since they “accepted” Jesus then they are saved and shouldn’t have to go through pain and suffering. Well The Lord Jesus also tells us to endure to the end. To me you endure hard, difficult things. Life is hard and not always rosy. We need to learn to Love the Lord despite the pain and sufferings, we need to understand what others are going through when we have pain and suffering and be more willing since we understand and have experienced suffering.
Jesus Christ suffered more than you ever will. He understands.
God is perplexed why humans love to build on floodplains.
Why did He allow Barack Obama to be President, not once but twice?
Judge - The reason you ask that question is the reason why.
Read the bible.
They only think they’re good.
It all goes back to fall of man. Not only man was corrupted but the whole creation.
“They only think they’re good.”
I know the theological argument for that, and yes, none of us is without sin.
However, I was talking about the people that others think are good. I didn’t mean “good in their own eyes.”
Because man disobeyed God and SIN entered the world.
There ya go, in a nutshell.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.