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To: RobRoy; GunRunner
The fact that God created all things does not imply that "All is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds," in the words of the fictional Candide.

To the contrary, Judeo-Christian Scriptures teach this we are a desperately screwed-up, fallen race on a cracked planet where everything is somewhat out of whack. What we see around us (and in the pathology laboratory) is not the Universe in the pristine state: what, with your permission, I'll call God's Plan A. From Romans 8:

"For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."

There you have it. In the beginning, everything was "Good." By the time Paul was writing, everything had been subjected to "frustration" and "bondage to decay." You'll probably agree: it's Not-So-Good.

I don't think the AIDS virus was part of God's Plan A. I think it developed subsequent to that catastrophe which took place right at the dawn of the human era. It may very well be a degenerated fragment of a living organism that used to be good. But everything has been subjected to some kind of univeral deterioration, universal entropy: "bondage to decay."

God did not create sin or death. In Christian theology, they are among the countless results of that cosmic catastrophe known as "The Fall."

189 posted on 11/25/2008 10:29:28 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o ("It is our choices, far more than our abilities, that show us what we truly are. " -- J.K.Rowling)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
>>I don't think the AIDS virus was part of God's Plan A.<<

Like all “evil” in our world, AIDS/GRID is only harmful because of sin. Sin made it “evil”. In a closed society where all sex is between married partners, there would be no risk of AIDS. The virus can go on its merry way harming no one.

Aids was not a factor for thousands of years. But I do not mean to argue. I completely agree with your point.

191 posted on 11/25/2008 10:44:10 AM PST by RobRoy (Islam is a greater threat to the world today than Nazism was in the 1930's.)
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