Posted on 11/22/2004 11:12:20 AM PST by stuartcr
I read the Book of Job this weekend, and I have a question regarding the reasoning behind Job's trials. I believe that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, which includes knowing what we are going to do. Going on this premise, my question is why did God, knowing the outcome, subject Job to all that he went through? Why did He allow satan to do the things he did to Job? The only thing I can think of, was to prove a point to Job?
Do you have kids?
Whatever else about Job, it's also a teaching story that decouples the prosperity has to equal being in good with God, which is what a lot of people want to think.
Job has disasters happen to him, even though he was in good with God.
Things happen. Bad stuff happens to the good and the bad alike.
If you think a prosperous person has to have the blessing of heaven upon him, which a lot of people did then, and still do, while a poor person is cursed (which is one of the reasons we sometimes want to make a poor person's poverty all their own fault, like they were sinners, which is not necessarily the truth), I refer you to the book of Job, as well as to the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.
Did Job have to suffer this to teach us this? That's a different question.
When I am in grief and misery, I don't necessarily look to Job - I look to Calvary, and Jesus hanging on the cross.
Isn't being the Creator of all, the same thing as causing it?
So the details and the outcome weren't known?
Why, if the lesson isn't necessary?
I'm not sure I know what you mean. Please elaborate.
Some people are gifted, and others are not?
I don't think I'm anything more than a guy with a bunch of questions.
This really isn't that complicated. :)
I guess if you think of God as a parent, and we as the children - God knows whether we'll be good or bad, and that we may not always heed his advice. He's happy with us when we do as He'd like, and upset and/or sad when we don't, but He never stops loving us...
How can anyone be dragged down, if the outcome is known, and God wins?
I do not have the patience to read the Book of Job.
If we really have free will, God did not plan for Job to be tested?
Right.
That's my take.
God left it up to Job.
God knew Job was a good man,
and God was counting on Job
to act accordingly which he did.
God must have been pleased with Job,
and we are to try to have the faith of Job
despite misfortunes and sad events that come our way.
I think you nailed it...
The outcome is known for the demons. I, on the otherhand, have free-will and can choose for myself partnership with God or opposition to His will. I am not one of those who believe that a person's life is pre-destined. The Anabaptists of the 16th Century, John Knox, and the Calvinists argued this point ad nauseum.......
But God already knows all about us...He created us, He knows what we are going to do, He even created our behavior, why would we need a Savior, why would He be wrathful??
No, but parents are not all-knowing or all-powerful, they are human, like their children.
What does it matter what religion people are, if any? Aren't they just believing as God made them to?
Doesn't God also create the resulting action or our free-will choice? I don't understand His being upset with us doing as He designed us to.
Maybe we don't really have free-will, and you were designed without patience.
OK, thanks for a firm answer.
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