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To: Mad Dawg; McCloud-Strife

It strikes me as silly that any human would presume to judge God. He is God and can do as He pleases. Whether we like it or not is irrelevant.


73 posted on 09/28/2010 1:21:24 PM PDT by MEGoody (Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.)
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To: MEGoody; McCloud-Strife
It strikes me as silly that any human would presume to judge God.

Well, yeah. In the particular event, it's ridiculous for a theist to presume to judge.

But, well, the problem can be expressed like this: Do we mean anything when we say "God is good"? If we can't make a general 'judgment,' if He can do anything and it will be 'good' because he did it, then it's hard to know what 'good' means.

We are told to have an injection, which includes the 'evil' of pain, because "It's good for you." So is that all that good means -- just whatever makes our life longer and more pleasant?

I'm guessing McCloud-Strife [hereinafter MS] won't buy that because he engaged in a profession which required him to be prepared to suffer great evil because he thought there was some objective 'good' or 'justice' which was greater than himself, and worthy of his service.

So is there a kind of unitary moral code such that "justice" and "righteousness" mean something like the same thing when we apply those terms to men, human deeds, and to God and Divine deeds? If not, Is saying "God is good" nothing different from saying "God is God"?

What the Greeks called "The Good" and "The One" was sort of the bare outline, discerned dimly because it was discerned without the assistance of positive revelation, was identified by the early Xtian thinkers with our God. He is dimly known and seen in the sacrifice of people like MS, and even in MS's insistence on knowledge and justice.

We Christians almost all claim some experience, which we call 'salvation' (among other things) in which we find ourselves able and willing to claim that it was God acting in our lives. A consequence of that experience is that we are willing to trust that God does justice (the perfection of which is mercy, in Catholic thought -- if not always in Catholic behavior) even when we can't discern it.

But we have what seems to us to be the gift of faith, we see in the Bible God's self-disclosure. But MS does not have that faith or that opinion of Scripture.

So how to we, respecting God AND respecting MS whom we think God made and loves, engages MS where He is and answer his not totally off the wall (though, we think, pretty much entirely wrong) charges and questions? That is the problem that I, at least, wrestle with.

74 posted on 09/28/2010 1:58:19 PM PDT by Mad Dawg (Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.)
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