Posted on 05/19/2013 12:21:32 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck
Edited on 05/25/2013 2:44:13 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"Where were You, God?" The question arises daily as news of tragedies abound, and even from time to time as the tragedy involves ourselves. Servicemen die in a bungled military defense operation that should have been a cake walk, and no government official has credible answers. A son is shot dead in his prime by a wanton criminal. A wife dies decades too soon from a deadly disease. A busy mother dies unexpectedly from a sudden heart attack. Maybe you were emotionally abused when a child and have been saddled with a destructive habit that you acquired in an effort to escape from the torment by the only means you knew, and prayer -- once you realized you were in a trap -- seemed scant help or comfort. In these myriad situations the bitter questions often arise: "Oh Lord, where were You? Dear God, why did You roll over for this? Almighty Father, I've always heard that you are righteous and omnipotent, so why did You not act when it would have been so simple for You to stop it from happening? Oh, the heart-rending woe! Why did You lose, God?"
This is not a modern question, and it was not discovered by modern atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers. It arose many thousands of years ago to a man named Job (pronounced with a long "o") who kept a tender conscience towards God about what he did, and as a result displayed a very upright life, and was blessed with a large, loving family and many earthly riches. And yet without warning this man's world came crashing down upon him. It began with the destruction and theft of his great riches, and was topped by the loss of most of the lives of his dear family. Then, the trouble soon escalated with an inexplicable illness that covered him with sores. His wife, in an apparent hint that God was fickle and undeserving of love, in great disgust told him to curse God and die. His friends, who initially wisely comforted him in silence, then began to lecture him sarcastically about how he must have done something terribly wrong to provoke God's wrath, and his agony grew as a heated argument erupted and Job insisted he had done nothing to deserve the tragedy. Finally a wiser friend suggested that Job look to God's sovereignty, and then God answered Job from a whirlwind, challenging the limitations of Job's knowledge about what God can do. With a deeper appreciation of God's capabilities, Job stopped complaining, and soon God blessed Job twice as much as he had been blessed before.
There is a simple enough answer to the question, at least to the mind: by allowing the world and even our selves to fail so dramatically at times, God highlights His capacity to save, a faith in which we sometimes are sorely lacking, and even if we know it in our heads, our hearts are slower and lag behind that and need to be taught. For God is not merely solving complex intellectual problems. He is solving problems that encompass our entire beings that He has created and bestowed with capabilities that are an image of His own.
I concur. (Except that I do affirm that a believer CAN know he is on the way to heaven, in the grip of the Holy Spirit. But the joy of a heart filled with God is not limited to heaven. It can substantially, if not perfectly, fill one’s heart and one’s highest hopes right here on earth.)
What would it be if not worldly? You deny the otherworldly so what’s left?
If Job cursed God for what befell those he loved and was given to protect and care for, to whom or to what would he turn then?
The temptation as delivered through his 'friends' was curse God and die. Since Job loved God, he would not take their advice regardless of the crushing losses. I've been there, and life on the other side of such a clamatous thing is much deeper in spiritual growth.
Now, ask yourself how this works if there is no God but only your belief in God. If when crushed with loss you give up your belief in the nature of God, then what had you to start with before calamity struck? Well, you had a magical state of believing in soemthing nonexistent (Psychologists call it Magic Thinking, a characteristic too prevalent in democrts, BTW).
So you could replace that non-existent 'thing' with some other, like drugs or money or power to crush others or even service to humanity. But the issue of that non-exitent belief remains at the core of loss, not growth. If we do in fact have a spirit component in us, then that component will remain empty if we are not seeking God to'resonate with that core.
God grows us when we confess Him. As Paul put it, be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus ...
When we see a man like Jesse Jackson or Al Gore or Jimmy Swaggert or that guy named Baker, we see someone who was living on magic thinking, not on a resonance of God in the inner person, the spirit.
What happens to those like that when the magic is broken? well, Jackson became a proponent of abortion and a con man. Al Gore went from claiming to be pro-life to supporting and defending the slagughter of alive unborn as non-humans, and he too is a conman. What I see in Baker and Swaggert is very different, so far. They have turned to serving, with humility, rather than prideful manipulation of others and defending evil.
BTW, what defines happiness? How do we know what it means to be happy without the contrast of sadness? The issues really turn upon the tragedy of what happened to Job's family, not even his wealth or happiness. I know men who's families are their very life, above even a relationship with God. I know businessmen who have no room for a relationship with God because they are completely engulfed with their business life and all the trappings tied thereto. (Ted Turner ring a bell? The man has no time for 'godiness')
We do have a leg up on that understanding that angels would not have, because we know that we are made in God’s image. So inasmuch as the image is faithful or restored, we DO get the picture that God does... only in miniature. That is one reason our hearts can be filled with a joy in God that is both divine and yet very familiarly human-contoured. God is not asking us to believe and conform our hearts to an alien Martian. God copied his blueprint, as it were, to us in miniature, except we can sin and he can’t.
Then the value of life is magnified by its temporariness.
Swaggart might have had some genuine faith, but allowed his flesh to dominate his walk. It’s perfectly credible. The bible is filled with second-chancers as well as some who fell after doing what they were most noted for.
I respectfully but emphatically believe this to be a false humility. God made our core souls and spirits as eternity sized, though giving us in this place bodies that are time sized. The bible is quite plain about it: God has set eternity in [man’s] heart. And it is an empirical discovery made by billions of people.
Looks pretty much like our world, eh? Despite what people on here say, your choice is not "Believe in God and trust him, or get mad and be angry with Him." It's "Close your eyes and believe someone is in charge, or open them and see the world for the random, lonely, and ungoverned place it is." Once you get used to seeing it for what it is, learn to make the best of it. There's nothing out there but stars. But at least your thoughts are your own.
I found some of the missing pieces to the puzzle reading The Harbinger and learned a lot of American and biblical history as a result.
As to speculating with great risk, to me, that would be speculating on how much one can get away with or how time one has or whether or not God exists or whether Hell is real.
What I've read in the Bible tells me that God is both a God of Mercy and a God of Justice. I'm told that God is slow to anger, getting an idea about what He wants from us, and how to get Him really ticked off.
There are stories of His love and of His anger. We aren't doing much to get the first, but plenty to get to the second. When it comes, it will be like a thief in the night...or a Cat 5 hurricane...or...
Charming story, isn't it?
Looked at your screen name. Then I checked your profile. My suspicions were confirmed. maiden rocks.
Well, technically all humanity is in a wrath situation... it’s vain to speculate the size of grace and the size of wrath; even if sermons that minimize the one and maximize the other may serve to make souls aware of their need for salvation, they also make the Savior seem rather small. However one CAN look at what spiritual wind they are allowing themselves to get filled with. If it’s devil (or world or flesh, which are redirection points for devil) then that wind carries you to hell.
Remember, these stories all come out of the Middle East. To the men who wrote the Bible, women and children were pretty much replaceable commodities, and if the new woman was younger than the old one, hey... he traded up.
Yes it is charming... with a charm that goes way deeper than what you’ve ever looked at yet.
Tested? How have I been tested?
I’ve been asking for help for the last few years. I’ve been suffering from endocrine deficiencies for a while, and I’m aging internally. Pretty much everything about my life is terrible right now, and it doesn’t look like there’s help in sight.
Should I continue to ask for help until I’m unable to do so? Because at the rate I’m going, I won’t live a long life without everything that’s wrong with me being taken care of. Facing osteoporosis before age 40 as a male is not my ideal way of looking at the future.
If I’ve been asking for help for a time, and nothing arrives, am I not being heard? Should I stop?
The later parts of the bible get into further particulars. There are some things that went on in early civilizations and little commented upon in the Hebrew bible, that would be regarded as gross faux pas now. But that’s not because freethinkers taught us that they were gross faux pas. It’s because Christianity did.
You will be wise to ask the Lord for spiritual help. That body was going to die anyhow; maybe in your circumstances that appears to be hastening on at a faster clip than with most people. The entire creation is filled with spirit; to look at it as a physical thing alone misses a huge piece of the picture.
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