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Bill777 said:I re-edited my post. Please re-read. I wrote about God's work in Africa as well as an example of scriptural suffering.
justinstout said:Scriptural suffering comes as a result of preaching the Gospel.
That's the only suffering that's talked about, in the New Testament, that glorifies God.
Yet people are claiming other suffering as "glorifying God".
Sickness and disease does not glorify God.
God "allows" many things to continue in this world that I can promise you are not His will. People are murdered every single day, against God's perfect plan for their lives. Unborn babies are slaughtered every single day, against God's will for their lives. Strife and division exist within the Body of Christ, against the will of God. People are caught up in unbiblical doctrines of men and false concepts of God, absolutely against His will. He doesn't stop these things from taking place, simply because He gave mankind the authority on this earth. We have a free will and we have the power to choose how we are going to live our lives. If God simply chooses how everyone is going to live their lives, then we are nothing but mere worthless robots or puppets on strings. Nothing could be further from the truth. That's nothing but a slap in God's face.JimfromOhio said:After reading many of your posts, I really can see that you are following the teachings of Word of Faith which they typically are very selective in scriptures and doctrines.
We cannot deny that God allows suffering and pain to continue in our world.
JimfromOhio said:"My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor. 12:9) God does answer our prayers, but not always in the way that we would have liked. Gods plan for our lives is to form us more and more into the image of his Son.
Through out my Christian life, I ask myself: "How does God want me to respond to this suffering?" The Bible clearly teaches that contentment does not require comfort. Our society and some practices teaches us that the only way to contentment is through comfort, convenience, and being pain free. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, disabilties and illnesses for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10 ) "I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:12-13)
My faith and my life, I am very realistic about my life. That I understand my role as a Christian. I like this quote by Paul Little "Faith recognizes the fact that God is in control of my life. Whether I believe it or not, it's a fact that God is in control of the world. If I don't believe it, I'm just robbing myself of the enjoyment of the fact."
This is my last post to any of your posts. I getting tired of this. Have a good night.
justinstout said:Although Job knew that the calamity that had befallen him was not due to sin in his life, he did not understand why God (the only possible source of his suffering based on his understanding of life) had afflicted him. Throughout the Book of Job, he continues to ask God, Why me? and often does so very angrily.
Does God answer Jobs questions? Not in Jobs lifetime, nor throughout the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus Christ, however, taught truths that do answer Jobs questions. Kushner has some excellent insight on the record of Job:
To try to understand the book and its answer, let us take note of three statements which everyone in the book, and most of the readers, would like to be able to believe:Kushner correctly states that Job considered himself an innocent victim and that Job thought that God afflicts both the righteous and unrighteous. Often Job attested to his own innocence. He said, I had not denied the words of the Holy One (Job 6:10b); Show me where I have been wrong (Job 6:24); I am blameless (Job 9:21); You [God] know that I am not guilty (Job 10:7); Can anyone bring charges against me? If so, I will be silent and die (Job 13:19); As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice (Job 27:2); and Let God weigh me in honest scales and He will know that I am blameless (Job 31:6). Job made his case that God does whatever He pleases and afflicts both the innocent and the guilty: ...I say, He destroys both the blameless and the wicked (Job 9:22).
A. God is all-powerful and causes everything that happens in the world. Nothing happens without His willing it.
B. God is just and fair, and stands for people getting what they deserve, so that the good prosper and the wicked are punished.
C. Job is a good person.
As long as Job is healthy and wealthy, we can believe all three of those statements at the same time with no difficulty. When Job suffers, when he loses his possessions, his family and his health, we have a problem. We can no longer make sense of all three propositions together. We can now affirm any two only by denying the third.
If God is both just and powerful, then Job must be a sinner who deserves what is happening to him. If Job is good but God causes his suffering anyway, then God is not just. If Job deserved better and God did not send his suffering, then God is not all-powerful. We can see the argument of the Book of Job as an argument over which of the three statements we are prepared to sacrifice, so that we can keep on believing in the other two.
Jobs friends are prepared to stop believing in (C), the assertion that Job is a good person. They want to believe in God as they have been taught to. They want to believe that God is good and that God is in control of things. And the only way they can do that is to convince themselves that Job deserves what is happening to him.
Job, for his part, is unwilling to hold the world together theologically by admitting that he is a villain. He knows a lot of things intellectually, but he knows one thing more deeply. Job is absolutely sure that he is not a bad person. He may not be perfect, but he is not so much worse than others, by any intelligible moral standard, that he should deserve to lose his home, his children, his wealth and health while other people get to keep all those things. And he is not prepared to lie to save Gods reputation.
Jobs solution is to reject proposition (B), the affirmation of Gods goodness. Job is in fact a good man, but God is so powerful that He is not limited by considerations of fairness and justice.
Under this assumption, Job wished there were a mediator or an umpire that could help him out. If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both (Job 9:33). Of course, no umpire or mediator appears. What does appear is a storm, and God Himself speaking from it (Job 38:1). What did God say to Job in answer to his pleading questions? Well, one thing is clear God did not give Job any reason for the problems besetting him.
Many theologians and Bible teachers rightly point out that God never gave Job an answer to the question of [why he was suffering]: ...God never answers question one about Jobs predicament... With all due respect to the many capable and godly preachers and writers who have taught that the major question as addressed in Job is why do the righteous suffer, we note that if this is the question, it is never answered in the Book of Job.
Why not? Because the truth about the Devil as the source of human suffering was not revealed in the Old Testament. It was Jesus Christ who first openly revealed the true source of mankinds suffering.
Interestingly enough, Rabbi Kushner comes to the same conclusion we do, that proposition (A) is the proposition that is in error God is all-powerful and causes everything that happens in the world. Nothing happens without His willing it. We do not, however, agree with his overall understanding of the book of Job, by which he arrives at this conclusion. We arrive at our conclusion from the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament. Nonetheless, we applaud Kushners insight about peoples reaction to this conclusion. He states:
There may be a sense of loss at coming to this conclusion. In a way, it was comforting to believe in an all-wise, all-powerful God who guaranteed fair treatment and happy endings, who reassured us that everything happened for a reason, even as life was easier for us when we could believe that our parents were wise enough to know what to do and strong enough to make everything turn out right. But it was comforting the way the religion of Jobs friends was comforting: it worked only as long as we did not take the problems of innocent victims seriously. When we have met Job, when we have been Job, we cannot believe in that sort of God any longer without giving up our own right to feel angry, to feel that we have been treated badly by life.The New Testament makes it crystal clear that not everything that happens is Gods will. For example, Jesus instructed his disciples to pray that Gods will would be done on earth (Matthew 6:10). If everything that happens is Gods will, such prayer is superfluous. In Romans 1:10, Paul said he prayed for a prosperous journey in the will of God to see the believers there. Another meaningless prayer? No. The will of God for an individual, whether revealed in the written Word of God or by direct revelation, generally comes to pass only when that person understands it and, by his own , acts accordingly.
Rather than sit passively by waiting for Gods will to happen, we must make a diligent effort to learn Gods Word and then aggressively obey it. Gods will, for example, is that people do not steal, but rather that they work to earn what they need (Ephesians 4:28). Very simple. We just do what He says. But are some people stealing? Yes. If everything that happens were Gods will, then nothing would be sin or disobedience. What a travesty of logic!
Going a step further then, if it is so easy for us humans to disobey God, what about the Devil and his spirit army? Can humans sin by choice while evil spirits cannot? Obviously spirit beings can sin, since sin was the reason the Devil and his hosts were thrown out of Gods presence to begin with. Via Adams sin, the Devil was legally given authority over the earth. The Devil did not and does not obey God. The Devil has been sinning for a long time (1 John 3:8). The Devil is a murderer (John 8:44), a liar (John 8:44), and a thief (John 10:10).
justinstout said:Claiming that everything that happens is God's will is holding God ultimately responsible for every wicked and evil thing that has ever taken place. Claiming that God's will automatically comes to pass is ultimately blaming God for every sin, perversion, sickness, disease, and calamity that has ever taken place.
cg1970 said:Justin, you have GREAT WISDOM!
justinstout said:Thank you so much, cg1970.
It's about time someone says something nice about a guy who is simply defending God's love and goodness. Everyone seems to bash me simply because I do not hold God responsible for evil, sin, and suffering.
Some people say, "How can you trust a God who doesn't control everything that happens?" And I say, "How can you trust a God that does?"
How can someone trust a God that supposedly sends demons and cancer to "teach His children a lesson" ?
You are blessed!
Dragons87 said:I wanna say. I wanna say.
I wanna say that while the evil doings may not be God's active doing, He passively allows them to happen. It's simple logic: no resistance, no growth. He allows these things to happen because they are supposed to benefit the Christian life.
justinstout said:Thank you so much, cg1970.
It's about time someone says something nice about a guy who is simply defending God's love and goodness. Everyone seems to bash me simply because I do not hold God responsible for evil, sin, and suffering.
Some people say, "How can you trust a God who doesn't control everything that happens?" And I say, "How can you trust a God that does?"
How can someone trust a God that supposedly sends demons and cancer to "teach His children a lesson" ?
Sabertooth said:If you want to continue to believe that God doesn't use sinful situations or people to CHASTISE His people, be careful you don't read the book of Judges and many of the Prophets...
justinstout said:Ok. Thanks for the info. I'll stick with Jesus. I don't make doctrine out of the Old Covenant. My doctrine comes from the life of Jesus and the teaching under the New Covenant. God doesn't have to use sin, disease, and problems to "chasten" me. He uses His Word to do so. Any earthly father who would beat his children, give them cancer, or make them a homosexual to "chastise" them is a wicked beast. Same goes to any god who would do such a thing. I thank my God that the chastisement of my peace was upon Jesus!!!!!
Sabertooth said:[Repartee]That should make your Bible a whole lot lighter... [/Repartee]
justinstout said:Although Job knew that the calamity that had befallen him was not due to sin in his life, he did not understand why God (the only possible source of his suffering based on his understanding of life) had afflicted him. Throughout the Book of Job, he continues to ask God, Why me? and often does so very angrily.
Does God answer Jobs questions? Not in Jobs lifetime, nor throughout the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus Christ, however, taught truths that do answer Jobs questions. Kushner has some excellent insight on the record of Job:
To try to understand the book and its answer, let us take note of three statements which everyone in the book, and most of the readers, would like to be able to believe:Kushner correctly states that Job considered himself an innocent victim and that Job thought that God afflicts both the righteous and unrighteous. Often Job attested to his own innocence. He said, I had not denied the words of the Holy One (Job 6:10b); Show me where I have been wrong (Job 6:24); I am blameless (Job 9:21); You [God] know that I am not guilty (Job 10:7); Can anyone bring charges against me? If so, I will be silent and die (Job 13:19); As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice (Job 27:2); and Let God weigh me in honest scales and He will know that I am blameless (Job 31:6). Job made his case that God does whatever He pleases and afflicts both the innocent and the guilty: ...I say, He destroys both the blameless and the wicked (Job 9:22).
A. God is all-powerful and causes everything that happens in the world. Nothing happens without His willing it.
B. God is just and fair, and stands for people getting what they deserve, so that the good prosper and the wicked are punished.
C. Job is a good person.
As long as Job is healthy and wealthy, we can believe all three of those statements at the same time with no difficulty. When Job suffers, when he loses his possessions, his family and his health, we have a problem. We can no longer make sense of all three propositions together. We can now affirm any two only by denying the third.
If God is both just and powerful, then Job must be a sinner who deserves what is happening to him. If Job is good but God causes his suffering anyway, then God is not just. If Job deserved better and God did not send his suffering, then God is not all-powerful. We can see the argument of the Book of Job as an argument over which of the three statements we are prepared to sacrifice, so that we can keep on believing in the other two.
Jobs friends are prepared to stop believing in (C), the assertion that Job is a good person. They want to believe in God as they have been taught to. They want to believe that God is good and that God is in control of things. And the only way they can do that is to convince themselves that Job deserves what is happening to him.
Job, for his part, is unwilling to hold the world together theologically by admitting that he is a villain. He knows a lot of things intellectually, but he knows one thing more deeply. Job is absolutely sure that he is not a bad person. He may not be perfect, but he is not so much worse than others, by any intelligible moral standard, that he should deserve to lose his home, his children, his wealth and health while other people get to keep all those things. And he is not prepared to lie to save Gods reputation.
Jobs solution is to reject proposition (B), the affirmation of Gods goodness. Job is in fact a good man, but God is so powerful that He is not limited by considerations of fairness and justice.
Under this assumption, Job wished there were a mediator or an umpire that could help him out. If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both (Job 9:33). Of course, no umpire or mediator appears. What does appear is a storm, and God Himself speaking from it (Job 38:1). What did God say to Job in answer to his pleading questions? Well, one thing is clear God did not give Job any reason for the problems besetting him.
Many theologians and Bible teachers rightly point out that God never gave Job an answer to the question of [why he was suffering]: ...God never answers question one about Jobs predicament... With all due respect to the many capable and godly preachers and writers who have taught that the major question as addressed in Job is why do the righteous suffer, we note that if this is the question, it is never answered in the Book of Job.
Why not? Because the truth about the Devil as the source of human suffering was not revealed in the Old Testament. It was Jesus Christ who first openly revealed the true source of mankinds suffering.
Interestingly enough, Rabbi Kushner comes to the same conclusion we do, that proposition (A) is the proposition that is in error God is all-powerful and causes everything that happens in the world. Nothing happens without His willing it. We do not, however, agree with his overall understanding of the book of Job, by which he arrives at this conclusion. We arrive at our conclusion from the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament. Nonetheless, we applaud Kushners insight about peoples reaction to this conclusion. He states:
There may be a sense of loss at coming to this conclusion. In a way, it was comforting to believe in an all-wise, all-powerful God who guaranteed fair treatment and happy endings, who reassured us that everything happened for a reason, even as life was easier for us when we could believe that our parents were wise enough to know what to do and strong enough to make everything turn out right. But it was comforting the way the religion of Jobs friends was comforting: it worked only as long as we did not take the problems of innocent victims seriously. When we have met Job, when we have been Job, we cannot believe in that sort of God any longer without giving up our own right to feel angry, to feel that we have been treated badly by life.The New Testament makes it crystal clear that not everything that happens is Gods will. For example, Jesus instructed his disciples to pray that Gods will would be done on earth (Matthew 6:10). If everything that happens is Gods will, such prayer is superfluous. In Romans 1:10, Paul said he prayed for a prosperous journey in the will of God to see the believers there. Another meaningless prayer? No. The will of God for an individual, whether revealed in the written Word of God or by direct revelation, generally comes to pass only when that person understands it and, by his own , acts accordingly.
Rather than sit passively by waiting for Gods will to happen, we must make a diligent effort to learn Gods Word and then aggressively obey it. Gods will, for example, is that people do not steal, but rather that they work to earn what they need (Ephesians 4:28). Very simple. We just do what He says. But are some people stealing? Yes. If everything that happens were Gods will, then nothing would be sin or disobedience. What a travesty of logic!
Going a step further then, if it is so easy for us humans to disobey God, what about the Devil and his spirit army? Can humans sin by choice while evil spirits cannot? Obviously spirit beings can sin, since sin was the reason the Devil and his hosts were thrown out of Gods presence to begin with. Via Adams sin, the Devil was legally given authority over the earth. The Devil did not and does not obey God. The Devil has been sinning for a long time (1 John 3:8). The Devil is a murderer (John 8:44), a liar (John 8:44), and a thief (John 10:10).
Sabertooth said:It just depends on how you spin it, doesn't it?
Many of us have been saying God ALLOWS..., but all you have "heard" us say is God CAUSES...
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