Post by Leon on Apr 26, 2012 21:42:39 GMT
If God were good, he would wish to make his creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty he would be able to do as he wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.’
These creatures cause pain be being born, live by inflicting pain, and in pain they mostly die. Why?
And however did human beings attribute the universe to the activity of a wise and good Creator? All of the great religions were first preached, and long practiced, in a world without chloroform! Christianity, in a sense, creates the ‘problem of pain’ by postulating that ultimate reality is righteous and loving.
IS GOD ALL-POWERFUL?
The Bible asserts that ‘with God all things are possible’. This must tacitly exclude, of course, the intrinsically impossible – you may attribute miracles to God, but not nonsense. In God’s universe there are physical and moral laws, which may operate beneficially for some but not for others: water which is ‘beautifully hot’ to a Japanese adult in a Sento bath will burn a small child. Morally, because wrong actions result where free wills operate, the possibility of suffering is inevitable. God does not violate the aggressive person’s will to strike the innocent.
IS HE ALL-LOVING?
When Christians say that ‘God is Love’, what do they mean? Is he a senile benevolence who wishes you to be happy in your own way? A disinterested cosmic magistrate? Or a mere ‘heavenly host’ who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests? No, no and no. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God. Because his love is a ‘consuming fire’ he must labour to make us truly lovable, and when we are such as he can love without impediment, only then shall we in fact be truly happy. Nor is God’s love selfishly possessive, like that of an immature parent. He who lacks nothing chooses to need us, but only because we need to be needed. His commands to worship and obey him marshall us towards our most utter ‘good’ if only we knew it. Thus there are only three real alternatives: to be God; to be like God and to share his goodness in creaturely response; and to be miserable.
IS PAIN OUR FAULT?
Because some psychoanalysts have explained away the old Christian sense of sin, God easily seems to us to be impossibly demanding, or else inexplicably angry. To our resentful consciousness the ‘wrath’ of God seems a barbarous doctrine. Occasionally we might admit our guilt, or perhaps blame ‘the system’, or hope that time will heal our past misdemeanors. But the fact and guilt of sin are not erased by time, but by contrite repentance and the blood of Christ. God’s road to the Promised Land runs first past Sinai, and then Calvary. We are creatures whose basic character is a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves.
We humans have deliberately abused our free-will, one of God’s best gifts to us. And we are not getting any better – not even the animals treat other creatures as badly as humans sometimes treat other humans. From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God, and of itself as self, there is the danger of self-idolatry, pride. But God has the antidote: he saw the crucifixion of his Son in the act of creating the first nebulae. God himself assumes the suffering nature which evil produces, and offers forgiveness, and life in Christ.
Lewis touches on a few interesting points here, on how we see God. Does God demand that we do as ordered, or does God give us free will to make our own choices. I like to think the latter, I feel that God is always showing us the way, even if we are a little blind to his light, God does not meddle with our affairs, but shows us the error in our ways.
We was given free will so that we could learn to understand this life properly, for me God has no need to shout his orders from above. It is the heart that God speaks within. It is there that we feel pain and joy, and it is in the heart that we find the answers from God.
Everyone has to confront pain sometime in his life. Jesus had to confront his just like the rest of us, there is no better example of a man who looked through the eye of pain and instead saw God speaking.
You also must learn to see what Jesus saw, and look through pain and instead see the light of truth.
These creatures cause pain be being born, live by inflicting pain, and in pain they mostly die. Why?
And however did human beings attribute the universe to the activity of a wise and good Creator? All of the great religions were first preached, and long practiced, in a world without chloroform! Christianity, in a sense, creates the ‘problem of pain’ by postulating that ultimate reality is righteous and loving.
IS GOD ALL-POWERFUL?
The Bible asserts that ‘with God all things are possible’. This must tacitly exclude, of course, the intrinsically impossible – you may attribute miracles to God, but not nonsense. In God’s universe there are physical and moral laws, which may operate beneficially for some but not for others: water which is ‘beautifully hot’ to a Japanese adult in a Sento bath will burn a small child. Morally, because wrong actions result where free wills operate, the possibility of suffering is inevitable. God does not violate the aggressive person’s will to strike the innocent.
IS HE ALL-LOVING?
When Christians say that ‘God is Love’, what do they mean? Is he a senile benevolence who wishes you to be happy in your own way? A disinterested cosmic magistrate? Or a mere ‘heavenly host’ who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests? No, no and no. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God. Because his love is a ‘consuming fire’ he must labour to make us truly lovable, and when we are such as he can love without impediment, only then shall we in fact be truly happy. Nor is God’s love selfishly possessive, like that of an immature parent. He who lacks nothing chooses to need us, but only because we need to be needed. His commands to worship and obey him marshall us towards our most utter ‘good’ if only we knew it. Thus there are only three real alternatives: to be God; to be like God and to share his goodness in creaturely response; and to be miserable.
IS PAIN OUR FAULT?
Because some psychoanalysts have explained away the old Christian sense of sin, God easily seems to us to be impossibly demanding, or else inexplicably angry. To our resentful consciousness the ‘wrath’ of God seems a barbarous doctrine. Occasionally we might admit our guilt, or perhaps blame ‘the system’, or hope that time will heal our past misdemeanors. But the fact and guilt of sin are not erased by time, but by contrite repentance and the blood of Christ. God’s road to the Promised Land runs first past Sinai, and then Calvary. We are creatures whose basic character is a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves.
We humans have deliberately abused our free-will, one of God’s best gifts to us. And we are not getting any better – not even the animals treat other creatures as badly as humans sometimes treat other humans. From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God, and of itself as self, there is the danger of self-idolatry, pride. But God has the antidote: he saw the crucifixion of his Son in the act of creating the first nebulae. God himself assumes the suffering nature which evil produces, and offers forgiveness, and life in Christ.
Lewis touches on a few interesting points here, on how we see God. Does God demand that we do as ordered, or does God give us free will to make our own choices. I like to think the latter, I feel that God is always showing us the way, even if we are a little blind to his light, God does not meddle with our affairs, but shows us the error in our ways.
We was given free will so that we could learn to understand this life properly, for me God has no need to shout his orders from above. It is the heart that God speaks within. It is there that we feel pain and joy, and it is in the heart that we find the answers from God.
Everyone has to confront pain sometime in his life. Jesus had to confront his just like the rest of us, there is no better example of a man who looked through the eye of pain and instead saw God speaking.
You also must learn to see what Jesus saw, and look through pain and instead see the light of truth.
