Is this jesus or satan
- Thread starter darkbeaver
- Start date
Ahhh Yesss!!!! The true call of nature. As a tad I would get turned on by the magnificence of the natural world around me. As an old fart I wonder where it all went.
No, that's the argument Job's friends make. God himself acknowledges in Job 2:3 that there was no reason for Job to suffer the calamities he allowed Satan to inflict.
The biblical writers struggled a lot with the question of why we suffer, and came up with half a dozen or so explanations, such as it being a punishment for disobedience, a test of piety, a character-building exercise, a consequence of free will and we cause it ourselves, and so on. I don't find any of them satisfying, either intellectually or ethically, because they're very limited in the range of suffering they each can justify, and sometimes they're contradictory.
What *is* satisfying to me is the naturalistic explanation: all creatures suffer disease, predation, infirmity, violent death at the hand of other creatures or natural processes like earthquakes and forest fires, and so on. That's how nature is, there's no benevolent manager keeping an eye on things, nature is utterly indifferent to everything except differential reproductive success. The man who wrote Ecclesiastes got it right, I think: eat, drink, and be merry with family and friends, there are no promises, so make the best of things and try to enjoy your fleeting existence as much as possible.
Your right. Our free will to believe or not is the x factor. Your don't want to believe so you've written the bible off already, believing that the God described is cold and distant. Which doesn't seem logical. If God created the universe and us, surely he would care about this masterpiece that is all of space, time, and matter. Certainly, if he cared, he would demonstrate his perfect love as a self-claimed perfect being should right? And thats why he let a piece of himself die on the cross, humbled before his very creatures, going through death in order to defeat it - for us. And ultimate, perfect expression of love.
And that is why he created hell and lakes of fire and sin and pestilence and disease and crib death and inquisitions and witch hunts and right wing lunatics like Dubbya and, and, and.... Sorry, but you are leaving out all the best parts to live in your Disneyesque version of Christianity.
Your still twisting it. There can't be "no reason", because God can do no wrong, so God would have reasons. What God acknowledges is that Job is good, abstains from sin and temptation, honors God, praises God. But he's still here, stuck on earth with disease, predation, infirmity, violent death at the hand of other creatures or natural processes like earthquakes and forest fires, and so on. No matter how good Job acts, he doesn't get a golden ticket to avoid all the trouble the rest of us have to face. Everyone must face challenges, you can either go at it alone and try to come out unscathed, or you can thank God for assuring you the victory - because he promised it to you.
Interesting paragraph here. Out of those I would have to go with consequence of free will. In order for us to have free will, we have to have knowledge of this way or that way. Loyalty or rebellion.
That's how awesome free will is. If I picture fatherhood, I can imagine how some children are obedient and others go astray. So if that child has the freedom to love his parent or rebel, it must be pretty awesome when that child *chooses* to love you. That's some powerful love.
You go on considering it fleeting if you wish. I choose to grow my spiritual man. ;-)
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:lol::lol::lol:
The doctrine of hell is a hard case to defend. What I can tell you is that having intellectual obstacles to an answer doesn't mean that the answer isn't there or is incorrect.
I'll like the universe a lot more when it is more Disneyesque. God said he would restore it, just wish it was today...:lol:
I don't think so. Read it again. God clearly says to Satan, "...thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause."
Sure there was a reason, but it doesn't justify what was done to Job, it's not good enough and even god conceded that. It had nothing to do with Job, he was just a pawn in a bet. And if indeed god can do no wrong, that must mean killing or stealing a man's livestock and murdering his children isn't wrong. Or is that only if god does it? God could at least stick to the same standards of behaviour he expects of us and avoid deliberately killing people.
This is about suffering in a much broader context than just that, though it does seem to me that, granted your assumptions, god's pretty inconsistent about who he helps.
That doesn't even begin to explain human suffering. It'll go a long way to explaining all the barbarities we routinely inflict on each other, but the context is much bigger than that. You can't tie human free will to natural disasters, birth defects, childhood cancers, random accidental deaths, and the million other causes of human suffering, you can link it only to the bad things people do to other people. No religiously-based explanation for human suffering, in its broadest context, has ever been offered, and I don't think one is possible. But if you abandon the benevolent omnipotent deity hypothesis, then it's possible to make sense of things.
Even Mikey Mouse had some political statements that could only be appreciated by a future generation. I forget which one it was (there may have been more than the single one I saw) but it was definitely a political. Having to be put into cartoon was either a luxury or a hidden message for some reason. Quite a few years have passed since then but the odds are what was warned about is still going on.
Whatever happened to those types of communications? Today it has been out in the hands of comody. It is so ironic I ctually accept the concept. Mickey would have been shown everywhere, in the movie theaters where the main attraction turned out to be cheering for the war heros in the 40's but the early 30's should have been times of 'welfare state' so who could afford the movies? Let me guess, the all the bankers saw all the movies but totally ignored the cartoons.
If God cared about sorrow He would do something, as some posts later ask. If God cared not about sorrow why would He wipe away each tear? The remedy to never feel sorrow was to not fall into sin. Well it is no longer an option, if you are born you will feel sorrow at some point or another. Most likely it will come in many forms from many different directions. Easc with it's own severity.
Even old age is given as God has determined it would occur. Grinders in the verse below are teeth, strong-backs become weak and bent, etc.
Ec:12:3:
In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble,
and the strong men shall bow themselves,
and the grinders cease because they are few,
and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
You nailed that one, Dex. My ex used to say, "If you think you have trouble understanding me, you should try living inside my head."
Great now I have to try and find that particular one. Not likely from the Steamboat Willie character. In the mean-time the concept that anybody would use cartoons to slip in messages to children (or intended) is nutso (in your collective opinion). That might be easier to prove than an original back then video. It goes along with statements from Henry Ford and others about 'some concerns' they might have about certain people should they gain power. In the documentary the Ring a speech from JFK warned about a certain group. Neither of those men were the least successful in their times. I'm sure Walt had some words of his own that were included in some, if not all, of his works.
Steamboat Willie is parable of good versus evil. It's Zoroastrian I believe.
YouTube - Steamboat Willie (restored)
YouTube - Steamboat Willie (restored)
Kudzu Jesus miraculously appears in Raleigh, NC. Be leaf it or not!
Madonna of the Toast: Kudzu Jesus
Madonna of the Toast: Kudzu Jesus