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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/25/2004 10:05 AM (GMT -6) |   | How Can God Permit Suffering?
A world of free creatures requires the possibility that they will freely choose evil.
by Frederica Mathewes-Green
www.beliefnet.com/story/87/story_8787_1.html
(2 pages on Beliefnet website. By a woman who: "writes commentaries and movie reviews for many outlets, including NPR's 'Morning Edition,' Christianity Today, Our Sunday Visitor, and the "Come Receive the Light" radio program. Visit www.frederica.com.") | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/25/2004 10:08 AM (GMT -6) | | | The last five paragraphs on the second page, particularly. | | Back to Top | | |
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Mayflower
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 445
| Posted 7/25/2004 10:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Amen.
Peace & blessings,
<><
-----------
.
Excerpt from:
How Can God Permit Suffering?
....."We keep asking why, but we don't need to know why something happened; we can't use that knowledge to go back in time and stop it. And the terrifying truth is that we can't gather enough clues to know how to prevent it happening next time. That's our real reason for so desperately asking why; we hope to gather enough clues to be able to protect ourselves from suffering again. But God does not give us such power. He reserves it to himself and challenges us to trust in him. At times like this, that trust is very hard.
Theodicy nettles us, but the bottom line is that it's irrelevant. The only useful question in such a time is not, "Why?" but "What next?" What should I do next? What should be my response to this ugly event? How can I bring the best out of it? How can God bring Resurrection out of it?
That is, of course, what he did when his own Son was bleeding and crying out to him. He did not prevent the suffering and did not cut it short, but he completed it with Resurrection.
If this is true, it changes everything; if it is not true, Christians are pathetic fools, because it is on this that we have staked all our hopes. "If Christ is not raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins... If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (I Corinthians 15:17, 19).
So, there you are. All we can do is persevere and trust, that if Jesus was raised we too will be raised, and all our suffering will be made right. All we can do is cast ourselves more completely into the arms of God. Stephen concludes the psalm, repeating three times a cry of trust that I hope he would make at such an awful time: 'Forsake me not, O Lord: O my God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord of my salvation.' ."
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/26/2004 8:23 PM (GMT -6) | | From what Mayflower quoted:
"How can I bring the best out of it? How can God bring Resurrection out of it?
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quest for truth
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 479
| Posted 7/27/2004 12:55 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
"How can I bring the best out of it? How can God bring Resurrection out of it?
AMEN! We cannot know the ways of God but we CAN trust that God is working on our behalf. My paraphrase in the wee early morning hour without my bible near me: "For I know that Christ works for the good for those who love him, who are called in his ways"
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selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 7/27/2004 2:42 AM (GMT -6) | | I didn't agree with everything she had to say - especially parts of the last five paragraphs. But I did really like the following:
"A world of free creatures requires the possibility that they will freely choose evil. Since the flood of Noah, God has declined to fix things by wiping out all the troublemakers. The only solution that remains is for each of us to realize that we are ourselves junior troublemakers to one extent or another, and do our part to clean up our own corners.
This is why Jesus was always telling people to repent. He gave no other explanation of suffering. When an atrocity was reported to him--worshippers murdered in the Temple itself--he rejected the idea that they suffered this because they were worse sinners than anyone else. Yet he concluded, "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." This is a hard word, one that doesn't get preached on very often, nor written up in curly script on Bible refrigerator magnets. "
AMEN!
love
selah | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/27/2004 4:58 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Selah
"Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." This is a hard word, one that doesn't get preached on very often, nor written up in curly script on Bible refrigerator magnets."
I wonder whether Barns and Noble (www.bn.com) or Borders Bookstore has such a magnet? Selah, you could corner the market!!!  | | Back to Top | | |
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