Did God want all that rain to fall on Houston?

[doubtingmerle]

If your answer is yes, why did God want all this rain?

If your answer is no, why didn't God stop it?

 

[Hammster]

“Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭135:6‬ ‭ESV‬‬

 

[ForsakenGirl]

If we believe God to be the most powerful and in control of everything, then yes, He wanted it to rain...the reasons are unknown to me but i dare to form an opinion.
He wanted it to rain to teach a lesson. perhaps to prove His authority, perhaps to punish the people who have forgotten Him and stopped praying to Him.
i once heard someone say that if we don't get hurt, we will forget God. That is why we get sick, that is why we get hurt.

it is sad that the most High wants our attention. it is truly sad... if its true.

fyi, just an opinion folks.. stay calm.

 

[RDKirk]

"The rain falls on the just and the unjust." -- Matthew 5

Not many people in the US have noticed during this same time that fully a third of the entire nation of Bangladesh has been flooded. Typhoons and hurricanes happen all over the world that Americans pay no attention to.

One would have to ask if it was God's will that Adam would fall from his stewardship of creation. Since then, such events-- good and bad, great and small--happen mostly randomly as the consequence.

 

[CrystalDragon]

If your answer is yes, why did God want all this rain?

If your answer is no, why didn't God stop it?

If we assume he did, then I wonder why we call God "good".

Then again, he was more morally ambiguous in the Old Testament, creating both peace and calamity, commanding terrible things, and sending evil and lying spirits... if that's more of a reflection of God's character than such things actually make a lot more sense.

 

[CrystalDragon]

"The rain falls on the just and the unjust." -- Matthew 5

Not many people in the US have noticed during this same time that fully a third of the entire nation of Bangladesh has been flooded. Typhoons and hurricanes happen all over the world that Americans pay no attention to.

One would have to ask if it was God's will that Adam would fall from his stewardship of creation. Since then, such events-- good and bad, great and small--happen mostly randomly as the consequence.

If God has a plan, than everything must be God's will, or else things would be out of his control. In which case he'd cease to be "God" as he's often defined.

 

[CrystalDragon]

If we believe God to be the most powerful and in control of everything, then yes, He wanted it to rain...the reasons are unknown to me but i dare to form an opinion.
He wanted it to rain to teach a lesson. perhaps to prove His authority, perhaps to punish the people who have forgotten Him and stopped praying to Him.
i once heard someone say that if we don't get hurt, we will forget God. That is why we get sick, that is why we get hurt.

it is sad that the most High wants our attention. it is truly sad... if its true.

fyi, just an opinion folks.. stay calm.

People often praise God when their lives are good. The only way we'd "forget God" is if there was no evidence that he existed and he was left to the pages of history. And even then we wouldn't forget him—the Greek and Roman gods don't exist and heck, we named days of the week and planets after them!

 

[USincognito]

People often praise God when their lives are good. The only way we'd "forget God" is if there was no evidence that he existed and he was left to the pages of history. And even then we wouldn't forget him—the Greek and Roman gods don't exist and heck, we named days of the week and planets after them!

Point of pedantry - the days of the week were named after Germanic gods. That's why it's Sunday instead of Solday and Monday instead of Lunaday.

 

[RDKirk]

If God has a plan, than everything must be God's will, or else things would be out of his control. In which case he'd cease to be "God" as he's often defined.

RC Sprouls has made a useful discussion of different "kinds" of will that we see displayed for God in scripture.

First, there is God's "dispositional" will. That is to say, "God's druthers" or the expression of God's highest and finest desires. "...who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." But as we see, God does not always get His dispositional will. He allows people to disappoint Him.

Second is God's "preceptive" will. That is His will expressed by moral commands and precepts. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." His preceptive will might also be expressed conditionally as an if/then statement, but the intended precept is always clear. Again we see that God does not always get His preceptive will...He allows people to disappoint Him.

Finally, there is God's "sovereign" will. The tricky thing about God's sovereign will is that He doesn't always tell us what it is or what it will be. Whatever actually does happen is God's sovereign will. When He does, it's a definitive prophesy (not an if/then prophesy, which is an expression of "preceptive" will).

 

[doubtingmerle]

“Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭135:6‬ ‭ESV‬‬

And it pleased your God to dump all that rain on Houston? Why would that please God?

 

[Hammster]

And it pleased your God to dump all that rain on Houston? Why would that please God?

I don't know.

 

[doubtingmerle]

the reasons are unknown to me but i dare to form an opinion.
He wanted it to rain to teach a lesson. perhaps to prove His authority, perhaps to punish the people who have forgotten Him and stopped praying to Him.

And so he figured that the best way to teach millions of people a lesson was to indiscriminately dump water on everybody? What is the lesson? That whether you pray or not, whether you care or not, you are all getting soaked?

 

[doubtingmerle]

"The rain falls on the just and the unjust." -- Matthew 5

Not many people in the US have noticed during this same time that fully a third of the entire nation of Bangladesh has been flooded. Typhoons and hurricanes happen all over the world that Americans pay no attention to.

Good point. I use the Houston Hurricane because it is more familiar to most readers here, but yes the flooding in Bangladesh was far more extensive.

One would have to ask if it was God's will that Adam would fall from his stewardship of creation. Since then, such events-- good and bad, great and small--happen mostly randomly as the consequence.

That's odd. For we see signs of natural disasters long before there were people to sin.

So your God turned the universe over to random sources. Odd, but that is close to the atheist view, that there is no God looking out for us as we face a random world.

 

[doubtingmerle]

If God has a plan, than everything must be God's will, or else things would be out of his control. In which case he'd cease to be "God" as he's often defined.

If God wanted to soak people with water, then why bother to make dams to hold back the water, or stack sandbags? If God wants to do it, won't he find a way over your dam or over your sandbags? If he wants a flood, and there are sandbags in the way, will he just make it rain longer until he gets the flood he wanted?

 

[CrystalDragon]

If God wanted to soak people with water, then why bother to make dams to hold back the water, or stack sandbags? If God wants to do it, won't he find a way over your dam or over your sandbags? If he wants a flood, and there are sandbags in the way, will he just make it rain longer until he gets the flood he wanted?

What I meant was that people say that even those things humans do are part of God's plan, like he's some all-controller which means we really have no free will. We're just cogs in a machine.

Natural disasters just happen.

 

[ForsakenGirl]

People often praise God when their lives are good. The only way we'd "forget God" is if there was no evidence that he existed and he was left to the pages of history. And even then we wouldn't forget him—the Greek and Roman gods don't exist and heck, we named days of the week and planets after them!

It is not really my opinion
But i think because.. maybe we will forget to pray to Him if we are always happy.

 

[doubtingmerle]

But i think because.. maybe we will forget to pray to Him if we are always happy.

And you don't think that is a little odd?

What would you think of a parent who turned a firehouse on his child's dorm room because that child might forget to call home if he was always happy?

If one wants people to talk to him, I think there are better ways to do it.

 

[ForsakenGirl]

And you don't think that is a little odd?

What would you think of a parent who turned a firehouse on his child's dorm room because that child might forget to call home if he was always happy?

If one wants people to talk to him, I think there are better ways to do it.

Well.. idk God has many children and while his time maybe infinite ours is not.. so it would possibly take eternity if we all were to have personal conversations..
what better ways could you think of though..?

 

[doubtingmerle]

So far I see no votes for "No," which seems a little odd to me. If I ask you if you wanted that hurricane to dump all that rain on Houston, I think everybody here would say "No". I can't imagine that anybody here was watching the news as the hurricane made landfall and was hoping that the city would get flooded the way it did. But when we ask what God wanted, nobody here can seem to say that God must have wanted the same thing we wanted.

"I don't know" seems to be a copout. If God wanted all that rain, was he cruel? If God did not want all that rain and did not stop it, is he weak or lazy? But when one says "I don't know whether God wanted this", that seems to say he might have been wanted it (which seems cruel), or he might have not wanted it (which seems weak). And yet your response is, "I don't know"?

 

[doubtingmerle]

what better ways could you think of though..?

Ah, lets see, if an Almighty God wanted people to communicate with him he could either dump tons of water on them or...

..he could get a toll free number.

...or he could tweet.

...or he could get an email address.

But if he dumps 50" of rain on people to get them to talk to him, that seems a little odd.