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Originally Posted by stroodle  you know how i know this 'concept of god' that so many of you have is false
just turn on the news. unbelievable. i am of course referring to this university massacre of 22 students, now maybe more. how could your so called 'all loving' being from above allow tragedies like this to happen. (let alone any violence, hatred, killing)
i can't accept that.
otherwise life is just one big experiment. one big test or game. and if that's the case, well what's the incentive to want to play. this idea of heaven/hell? come on.
i know that stuff like this happens all over the world all the time. but we become sheltered and blind to it a lot of the time. only when these random acts occur are we reminded of how cruel life can be. |
That Is an age old question, but I tend to think that It's a little easier to answer than some may think.
God did not create evil. See, we sometimes ask "how did evil get created?", but we must understand, that evil isn't actually a creation at all, it's a digretion. If evil had it's totally, if evil had accomplished everything it ever wanted, the common consensious is that everone would be in pain, suffering, and will be miserable for ever. This is the furthest thing from the truth.
If evil had it's way totally, there would be no pain, no suffering, just, everything would be gone. Cease to exist. All evil is, is the rejection of good. We can call it whatever we want, we can call it beneficial vs nonbeneficial, or good vs evil. Good happens first, then evil happens second, good is the creator, and evil is the destruction of that creation. Evil is not a force by itself, its a digretion of the force, good.
Now, this may sound a little "out there", but most people today have a hard time understanding what godd actually is. You can see it in the way people act, and the reasons why peole act the way they do, and I'm not talking about the bad things of the world, I'm talking about the good things, people are good, they just don't understand what good actually is. Being good is simply doing something because it's good, that's it. I don't know anyone that does this. We justify good by doing things if there's an overall benifit to it, a reason. True good has no reason, and has no cause. Being good, in it's truest form, is not something that is controlled, if it is, it isn't good at all, in any way. So in other words, to be good, you have to choose to be good, especially when evil is looking you straight in the eye, because then you become an even better form of good, allowing your "good" to grow, which is the best case senerio, which most people don't understand. "Isn't good enough?" some will ask, "yes" would be the answer, but isn't being better with no reason, no benefit other than being better, good?
The ancient greek, and well before that hebrew, (and before that tounges) term for God is "the ultimate good" and "The ultimate force that is good". God want's to, and continually will create the ULTIMATE good, in It's purest form possible, not just good. Guess what happens when this is rejected? Right, some pretty bad things. Evil is created by us. Sin is not a "to do list", it is a desease that spreads from something extremely small and grows to monsterous proportions in every way, and all sins support total nonexistance in some way, weather extremely small or extremely huge. So after the first sin "a rejection of the creative force" the world is destined to be gone, it's already done, even if to us, in our limited sense of time, seems like an extremely slow process.
God now has two choices, he can just stop the bad people and things from doing what the're going to do and leave the good ones, or he can just end the world now as we know it. Guess what? It's the same thing. We are all those people, in one way or another, the cycle continues over and over again untill only a few of us are the ones who actually commit the final act. So does God really only have one choice? No. He has another, an ultimately good one. He can let the digresion exist, as long as a progression exists at the same time, feeding off of the digresion continuously, making the progression stronger. Which is what's happening, and why evil and pain exists, whim I'm all for. I've suffered many losses in my life, and know truely more than most just how unfair life can be, so I'm not being biased.
Let's talk about pain though. How bad is it really? I mean, there are people who think they know what real pain is, they don't. Pain, is necessary, real pain is no pain at all. That's right, I said It, and I'll say it as many times as I have to. There are three children in this world who don't feel pain, any at all. they can feel everything else, they can be tickled, they laugh, they have fun, they feel everything, just not pain, physically or emotionally. They are two brothers and a sister.
These kids are lucky to be alive. They don't know right from wrong, and if they aren't watched 24/7, they never will. Pain lets you know when something bad is happening to you, it lets you know how good you are. One of these kis sat on a radiator, untill it was burning his bottom and leg, and blood was flowing everywhere. The kids thought, "gee, how fun" and started burning each other, lighting each other on fire, untill the parents came running into the room to stop it. The sister once got hungry and ate two of her fingers. This is life without pain. It's not a bad thing, It's a good thing, just miserable to go through for the temporary time that it lasts. Worth it or not? When something hurts, you're not going to do it.
God dosen't stop the digression for a reason, the world has already been stopped anyway in God's timeline. Stopping the digression imediately will stop the greater progression he has set forth. Although stopping the digression would be a good thing, creating a greater progression from the digression would be an even better thing, which is his ultimate purpose. God uses evil to create a greater good, evil is just the rejection of his cause, which he then uses to cause an even greater good. This is needed, this seperation, this dualty, is the best way. Withought right and wrong, you wouldn't know right from wrong. when you choose to be right, it's better than right in of itself, because the right, the good, has now been strengthened for a freater future purpose, weather a long time from now, or tomarrow.
Jesus and the cross has a lot to do with this as well, but that's another topic for another time. It's meant to be understood spiritually, not intellectually. being strictly intellectual is ine of the biggest mistakes I ever made earlier in my life. The greatest reality is in which you cannot see.
The only real question I would have for God right now, is weather or not the end was created in the beginning.