Where's God?

[doubtingmerle]

Instead of playing Where's Waldo, let's play Where's God. In the picture below, where's God?

 

[Silmarien]

"Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there."
Psalms 139: 7–8

That God is omnipresent is a pretty basic doctrine. I would understand it more analogically, since I don't think God is a spirit diffused through physical reality, but more that he's maintaining physical reality in existence. The fact that bad things happen doesn't seem at all relevant to the question of omnipresence, and the classical Christian answer to the Problem of Evil is really that death and sin don't have the final word and all will one day be redeemed.

 

[NBB]

God is waiting for him should the medics fail.
If the patient is christian he would have been comforted with strenght from God to pass that suffering.
You don't know how valuable it is to have God at your side when things go really bad.
Also God heals... (sometimes).

 

[doubtingmerle]

God is waiting for him should the medics fail.

Sorta like a mortician?

What if somebody is praying for the man? Does God still just stay in standby in case the medics fail?

If the patient is christian he would have been comforted with strenght from God to pass that suffering.
You don't know how valuable it is to have God at your side when things go really bad.

If doctors and nurses are doing all they can to save the man, one would wander why God is just "at his side".

This is serious. Shouldn't he be helping?

Also God heals... (sometimes).

But usually not?

 

[inquiring mind]

Instead of playing Where's Waldo, let's play Where's God. In the picture below, where's God?

Psalms 82 tells us we are all gods and children of the Most High, even though we must die like men. As such, we help the afflicted and needy. Jesus referred to it in John 10:34 in regard to His good works and when He was condemned for, as a man, making Himself God… “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” God makes Himself present in many ways, even through us.

 

[NBB]

Sorta like a mortician?

What if somebody is praying for the man? Does God still just stay in standby in case the medics fail?

If doctors and nurses are doing all they can to save the man, one would wander why God is just "at his side".

This is serious. Shouldn't he be helping?


But usually not?

God is real, and does a lot of stuff to people, your excuses are not very valid, why he does not always intervene in peoples life?, for one people reject him so why should he? you have a lot better chance of getting something from God if you are his child.

The things christians can experience with God are awesome, since he exists because i have experienced him i also believe not only he can do stuff, because he has done, but that we can hope for eternal life with him. Too crazy for you? well, i know because of experience that we have a soul and that God exists also, so no the bible tells us about Jesus, and i have interacted with him.

So fighting God is not very wise.

 

[doubtingmerle]

God makes Himself present in many ways, even through us.

That doesn't sound a whole lot different from an atheistic view of the universe, where the forces of the universe are present in people as they work good.

 

[doubtingmerle]

for one people reject him so why should he? you have a lot better chance of getting something from God if you are his child.

Interesting. In Christian America, 125,000 people have died of Covid. And yet you say Christians have a lot better chance of getting something from God? Why didn't the dying get the help they needed?

 

[Ed1wolf]

Sorta like a mortician?

What if somebody is praying for the man? Does God still just stay in standby in case the medics fail?

If doctors and nurses are doing all they can to save the man, one would wander why God is just "at his side".

This is serious. Shouldn't he be helping?


But usually not?

God is there watching and comforting him. But as the Bible teaches, God generally operates according to natural law not supernaturally intervening. But of course, everything that happens is part of his plan for that person.

 

[inquiring mind]

Interesting. In Christian America, 125,000 people have died of Covid. And yet you say Christians have a lot better chance of getting something from God? Why didn't the dying get the help they needed?

Jesus Himself was not spared an earthly death. God's blessings during our life is something else.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Let me tell you a story. My wife received a breathless call from a gentleman, while working in casualty. Now firstly, my wife had been ignoring the phone all day, as people were calling about nonsense and distracting her from her actual patients. This man was clearly distressed and she advised he goes to hospital, giving him numbers for ambulances. The nursing sister then had misgivings and so they called the pathology lab to get his results and found his home number and address, which they had neglected to ask for. This sister then proceeded to call ambulance services, where the private didn't accept his medical aid and the public were swamped already - until one finally accepted, the service my wife likes to describe as cowboys. They found him half-dead at home, his call to my wife's unit being the last call he had breath for, and rushed him in. Although his medical aid gave issues, they brought him in to my wife's hospital, where miraculously they now had one ventilator, instead of the one where they should have taken him which had none. The covid unit here is run by a great pulmonologist, who came out to intubate him, and he is doing well now. Still intubated, but with FiO2 down to a reasonable 40%.

Or at the Academic hospital I work at, the professor gave a patient such a poor prognosis, he said she was not for escalation of care if she deteriorates. Suddenly, within 48 hours, she totally turned around. Or a clerical error getting a lovely 76 year old woman a scarce ICU bed, while she should have been excluded based on age and co-morbidities, and she walked out there.

You can write all these off as coincidence upon coincidence if you wish, but God is very much active here in my opinion. Even an Atheist colleague of mine said this pandemic will make people believe in God.

God is present within each person, guiding the hand placing the tube, the IV line, the a-line, the CVP. With each antibiotic choice, with each steroid given. Doctors are on average more religious than their similarly educated peers, but each patient is a miracle. There is nothing like a pandemic to magnify the inherent goodness of creation, or value of humans, the meaning as opposed to the nihilistic one thing after another. God is omnipresent, and a facile attempt at highlighting suffering, is simply silly. The Christian God is a broken God, Christ Crucified, and in suffering, the suffering of God with His creation is laid bare. I am not going to attempt a theodicy here, nor grope around the specifics of this pandemic; but there have been pandemics before and will be again, and the hand of God rests upon His children, strengthening each doctor's will, granting perseverance and succour if we rest in Him. Walk into an ICU around here, and chances are you'll hear praises to God and sincere prayer, almost compelle intrare, while we grope around in the dark. Our days are numbered, we are all dying just at different rates, and God makes the rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. Christ cured the lame and raised Lazarus, and each doctor and patient embody Christ, who by following we are both crucified and raised on the third day. I have not seen a more compelling argument for Christ Pantocrator and the love of God than the Covid 19 pandemic. It reminds me of Etty Hillesum, Dietrich Boenhoeffer and Maximillian Kolbe in Auschwitz, though in a different and less immediate way. Faith is odd, in suffering we gain perseverance, though I grant what Lewis called 'Christianity and water' might falter in it. Monks and Nuns were the historic medical profession, with Christ the real physician. Those with eyes will see and with ears will hear.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Matthew 13:11-16

He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.

 

[doubtingmerle]

God is there watching and comforting him. But as the Bible teaches, God generally operates according to natural law not supernaturally intervening.

How can a loving God watch what is going on in the ICUs, have the power to intervene, but instead just choose watching and comforting? That does not make sense to me.

 

[doubtingmerle]

Let me tell you a story. My wife received a breathless call from a gentleman, while working in casualty. Now firstly, my wife had been ignoring the phone all day, as people were calling about nonsense and distracting her from her actual patients. This man was clearly distressed and she advised he goes to hospital, giving him numbers for ambulances. The nursing sister then had misgivings and so they called the pathology lab to get his results and found his home number and address, which they had neglected to ask for. This sister then proceeded to call ambulance services, where the private didn't accept his medical aid and the public were swamped already - until one finally accepted, the service my wife likes to describe as cowboys. They found him half-dead at home, his call to my wife's unit being the last call he had breath for, and rushed him in. Although his medical aid gave issues, they brought him in to my wife's hospital, where miraculously they now had one ventilator, instead of the one where they should have taken him which had none. The covid unit here is run by a great pulmonologist, who came out to intubate him, and he is doing well now. Still intubated, but with FiO2 down to a reasonable 40%.

Kudos to all the people who helped out here.

But this sounds like people doing there job, not God.

Or at the Academic hospital I work at, the professor gave a patient such a poor prognosis, he said she was not for escalation of care if she deteriorates. Suddenly, within 48 hours, she totally turned around.

Some improve rapidly. Some rapidly deteriorate. How do you know those that improved were caused by God?

Or a clerical error getting a lovely 76 year old woman a scarce ICU bed, while she should have been excluded based on age and co-morbidities, and she walked out there.

You can write all these off as coincidence upon coincidence if you wish, but God is very much active here in my opinion. Even an Atheist colleague of mine said this pandemic will make people believe in God.

God intervened by causing a clerical error? How do you know that it was God working? Mistakes happen all the time. And if a god caused it, how do you know it was not Thor or Jupiter that caused the clerical error?

 

[bling]

How can a loving God watch what is going on in the ICUs, have the power to intervene, but instead just choose watching and comforting? That does not make sense to me.

Death is the way good people get to go home and the way bad people quit doing bad stuff, so what is the problem?

 

[Ed1wolf]

How can a loving God watch what is going on in the ICUs, have the power to intervene, but instead just choose watching and comforting? That does not make sense to me.

Because suffering often brings spiritual growth and spiritual growth is how part of His plan to destroy evil forever works. A vending machine does not produce spiritual growth.

 

[HitchSlap]

Also God heals... (sometimes).

Unless you're an amputee... he hates those guys in particular.

 

[doubtingmerle]

Death...what is the problem?

Because life is good. Death deprives us of that good.

 

[doubtingmerle]

Because suffering often brings spiritual growth ...
A vending machine does not produce spiritual growth.

...but ventilators do?

 

[NBB]

Unless you're an amputee... he hates those guys in particular.

Things are made so God requires faith to do a lot of things, so your jokes are not truth at all.
I experienced God, being a christian is not having faith and a religion only, that would be worthless.