A Question on Evil

[LittleLambofJesus]

LLOJ unsubscribes........

 

[OrthodoxyUSA]

continued from pervious post...​

In regard to the making of the universe and the creation of all things there
have been various opinions, and each person has propounded the theory that suited his own taste. For instance, some say that all things are self-originated and, so to speak, haphazard. The Epicureans are among these; they deny that there is any Mind behind the universe at all. This view is contrary to all the facts of experience, their own existence included. For if all things had come into being in this automatic fashion, instead of being the outcome of Mind, though they existed, they would all be uniform and without distinction. In the universe everything would be sun or moon or whatever it was, and in the human body the whole would be hand or eye or foot. But in point of fact the sun and the moon and the earth are all different things, and even within the human body there are different members, such as foot and hand and head. This distinctness of things argues not a spontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause; and from that Cause we can apprehend God, the Designer and Maker of all.​

Others take the view expressed by Plato, that giant among the Greeks. He said that God had made all things out of pre-existent and uncreated matter, just as the carpenter makes things only out of wood that already exists. But those who hold this view do not realize that to deny that God is Himself the Cause of matter is to impute limitation to Him, just as it is undoubtedly a limitation on the part of the carpenter that he can make nothing unless he has the wood. How could God be called Maker and Arti cer if His ability to make depended on some other cause, namely on matter itself? If He only worked up existing matter and did not Himself bring matter into being, He would be not the Creator but only a craftsman.

Then, again, there is the theory of the Gnostics, who have invented for themselves an Artifcer of all things other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. These simply shut their eyes to the obvious meaning of Scripture. For instance, the Lord, having reminded the Jews of the statement in Genesis, "He Who created them in the beginning made them male and female . . . ," and having shown that for that reason a man should leave his parents and cleave to his wife, goes on to say with reference to the Creator, "What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder."

How can they get a creation independent of the Father out of that? And, again, St. John, speaking all inclusively, says, "All things became by Him and without Him came nothing into being."How then could the Artifcer be someone different, other than the Father of Christ?
Such are the notions which men put forward. But the impiety of their foolish talk is plainly declared by the divine teaching of the Christian faith. From it we know that, because there is Mind behind the universe, it did not originate itself; because God is in nite, not nite, it was not made from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and out of non-existence absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word. He says as much in Genesis:

Forgive me...​

 

[squint]

The premise in most of those spin doctors with regards to EVIL is that God supposedly gave MAN 'free' reign and then MAN or DEVIL created EVIL.

The logical facts of the matter will always remain however that were neither MAN or DEVIL created then EVIL wouldn't have come about to begin with. Nothing could have come about apart from FIRST CAUSE.

The dilema that brings most who try to spin these matters this direction is one that they FEAR to face. That GOD IS EVIL and they STOP dead in their tracks RIGHT THERE because we all KNOW this is not TRUE.

Logic CAN take us PAST that barrier when we 'understand' that God IS without ANY DOUBT great enough to CREATE EVIL and USE EVIL and MAKE IT INTO Good. God really IS that GREAT. Many fail to consider this as a factor in their employment of LOGIC.

Gods Logic can OVER RIDE everything. He can and does by the admittance of scripture both create and USE evil, and did so continually throughout the text. The Old Testament is FILLED to the BRIM with Gods Employment of RETRIBUTIVE EVIL. Were EVIL only REACTIONARY on Gods part then God is only reacting in LIKEWISE manner, being FORCED to react to something that came about on its OWN.

God is not the PAWN OF EVIL, the 'reactionary' to THAT POWER, but the ORIGINATOR of same. There is no other explanation that is logically credible. The only place left for LOGIC to take anyone is that He Is Able to use and employ such things IF they suit His Purposes.

This does NOT make GOD the SAME AS any 'thing' HE created....

God CAN originate ANY THING and not be THAT THING that He originated.

The 'flaw' in reasonings that many a good theologian STUMBLES over on this matter is that their REASONINGS stop at the point where GOD ORIGINATES EVIL because they FALSELY view then that GOD HAS TO BE EVIL to CREATE EVIL...and this is NOT the logical case.

God can and does create any THING and does not by LOGIC have to be THAT THING.

enjoy!

squint

 

[squint]

continued from pervious post...
Forgive me...​

Your presentation merely revolves around ONE continual point....

BLAME ONLY MAN....for EVIL.

And on that basis is built the foundation of 'most' of orthodox christianity.

BLAME AND BLAME AND BLAME and ACCUSE AND ACCUSE AND ACCUSE and CONDEMN AND CONDEMN AND CONDEMN and then spread DEATH AND DEATH AND DEATH....


only and upon


man


for


EVIL.

 

[OrthodoxyUSA]

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;

​

​

and again through that most helpful book The Shepherd, "Believe thou first and foremost that there is One God Who created and arranged all things and brought them out of non-existence into being."Paul also indicates the same thing when he says, "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared."For God is good or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ and of all these His earthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men.​

Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree they might continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise. But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the rst upon two things namely, a law and a place.​

He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, "Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die." "Ye shall surely die" not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption.

You may be wondering why we are discussing the origin of men when we set out to talk about the Word's becoming Man. The former subject is relevant to the latter for this reason: it was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love He was both born and manifested in a human body. For God had made man thus (that is, as an embodied spirit), and had willed that he should remain in incorruption.​

But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, they were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion. For the​

continued on next post...​

Forgive me...​

 

[OrthodoxyUSA]

transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non- existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he bears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it armed in Wisdom: "The keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption."And being incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says, "I have said, Ye are gods and sons of the Highest all of you: but ye die as men and fall as one of the princes." ​

This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, though they were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from the natural law, provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is to say, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, as also Wisdom says: "God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world."​

When this happened, men began to die, and corruption ran riot among them and held sway over them to an even more than natural degree,because it was the penalty of which God had forewarned them for transgressing the commandment. Indeed, they had in their sinning surpassed all limits; for, having invented wickedness in the beginning and so involved themselves in death and corruption, they had gone on gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any one kind of evil, but continually, as with insatiable appetite, devising new kinds of sins. Adulteries and thefts were everywhere, murder and raping filled the earth, law was disregarded in corruption and injustice, all kinds of iniquities were perpetrated by all, both singly and in common. Cities were warring with cities, nations were rising against nations, and the whole earth was rent with factions and battles, while each strove to outdo the other in wickedness.

Even crimes contrary to nature were not unknown, but as the martyr-apostle of Christ says: "Their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature; and the men also, leaving the natural use of the woman, amed out in lust towards each other, perpetrating shameless acts with their own sex, and receiving in their own persons the due recompense of their pervertedness."​

Forgive me...​

 

[squint]

Forgive me...

God creates a blade of grass.

Is God a blade of grass?

God creates evil.

Is God evil?

This is a fairly simple exercise in logic.

forgive me for being logical...

Logic dictates that God is NOT the same as ANY thing in His creation. But every THING that IS, is HIS creation.

 

[squint]

The next fantasic thing that 'believers' really have a hard time with once they take the premise of Gods creation of EVIL...

is HOW can a PERFECT GOD allow (for examples) a child to be sexually predatorized? How? How can God ALLOW that to happen? Even LESS how can God CREATE such a thing?

That is a hard thing for me as a believer to face honestly. I cannot stand by and proclaim the HOLY HOLY HOLY God who sits there AND DOES nothing either. Yet that IS what happens.

The supposedly all and powerful God stands by and does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING even while a CHILD is being sexually predatorized WITHIN HIS OMNIPRESENCE.

How can that possibly BE? Whether God created that EVIL or not, the fact of the matter IS that God without ANY DOUBT whatsoever has the POWER OF INTERVENTION in that matter, yet HE DOES NOTHING about it whatsoever.

Believers relegate this to a LATER JUDGMENT...oh, God will burn that predator alive in fire LATER...but in the MEANtime He just sits and watches it??? Please...

Yet that is exactly what happens....God just SITS and WATCHES all that evil transpiring RIGHT in His Midst and at this time still DOES NOTHING about it whatsoever as to THE ERASURE of EVIL. And 'all' believers can only say...WELL...justice and judgment will come about LATER.

And again in this they merely EXCUSE God as an INNOCENT POWERLESS BYSTANDER to ALL of these events. The Great and Powerful OZ is merely STANDING BY watching all this EVIL go down right in the MIDST of OMNIPRESENCE.

He simply doesn't CARE (at this time.)

There is no logical explanation that can cure that IDLE WATCHER.

Logic can only again reason me past this and say that IF I believe in God, then I also HAVE to believe that

A.) Evil in some way does SERVE Gods Purposes

B.) That every act and action of EVIL can be completely ERADICTATED and every MEMORY of all of these events can be UTTERLY wiped out only by HIS GREATNESS.

There is just no other way for me to see these matters than to see GOD GREATER than the SUM of 'all things.' I can see no other way past this other than HIS GREATNESS over them, even if at the present time I cannot perceive this as a present reality.

Other believers can provide blame unto man and excuses for their God and condemnation unto man and excuses for God and tortures to their fellow man and excuses for God and for all of these things....

but ultimately I have to believe in His Prevailing in A PERFECT WAY...over all of these matters, whatever that may be or consist of, I cannot say or perceive IN FULL.

I am certainly NOT going to be providing God with any CONTRIVED EXCUSES for any of these matters.

Evil exists...and it does so withIN His OMNIpresence, meaning HE WANTS IT to be so.

s

 

[visionary]

That is why all children need a covering prayer to protect their innocence.

 

[squint]

That is why all children need a covering prayer to protect their innocence.

Those prayers are not much solace to the abused.

 

[LittleLambofJesus]

Those prayers are not much solace to the abused.

That brings to mind this rather solemn song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UrG_MFgntU&feature=related

 

[visionary]

Prayers of healing for the abused. Prayers of protection from the evil one for all at all times.

 

[squint]

Prayers of healing for the abused. Prayers of protection from the evil one for all at all times.

I raised 5 children to adulthood. IF I would have known these facts I would NEVER have had them infant baptised. Know WHY?

This is what they DO NOT TELL YOU in CHURCH...the instant THE WORD is sown in them this is what happens....

Mark 4:15
And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts.

Matthew 13:19
When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.

Luke 8:12
Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.

The INSTANT the Word was sown upon my children, they were SUBJECTED to the PREDATOR within their hearts.

Not quite as pretty a picture in the light of the scriptural facts is it?

s

 

[brinny]

That brings to mind this rather solemn song

YouTube - CHILD ABUSE-HELL IS FOR CHILDREN

It's abominable, the evil that befalls the "least of these", those who cannot speak up or defend theirselves. God admonishes to speak up for and defend those who are at the mercy of others.

God help us.

 

[TimRout]

MOD HAT ON
This thread has undergone a clean up
following staff action. We apologize if one
or more of your posts is missing. Please continue
the conversation, and thank-you for your patience.
MOD HAT OFF
​

 

[OrthodoxyUSA]

God creates a blade of grass.

Is God a blade of grass?

God creates evil.

Is God evil?

This is a fairly simple exercise in logic.

forgive me for being logical...

Logic dictates that God is NOT the same as ANY thing in His creation. But every THING that IS, is HIS creation.

Logical or not... you would be following a false path.

Forgive me...

 

[squint]

Logical or not... you would be following a false path.

Forgive me...

Making declarations are pointless until you can apply PROOF of your supposed declaration.

Freewillists, which most of orthodoxy are, simply declare mans supposed freedom and then proceed to pounce upon the man.

But none of them are ABLE for some strange reason to LOOK at the WILL that cannot make itself FREE of SIN and connect that DOT to the CREATOR of that supposed WILL. And this is but a single FLAW of failure to look at FIRST CAUSE. There are many other valid logical critiques to freewill. I look at most of those presentations [of freewill blame to mankind] as COP OUTS in behalf their God who seems to 'need' cop outs.

 

[OrthodoxyUSA]

Hey... I know! Blame it on God. See how far that gets you.

Forgive me...

 

[squint]

Hey... I know! Blame it on God. See how far that gets you.

Forgive me...

Hey! I know logic appears to be worthless to you, but MAYBE God can clean every BIT of it up? ya THINK?!

 

[OrthodoxyUSA]

We cannot reduce God to logic.

God is ineffable.

Forgive me...