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Why does that even surprise anyone? Why would you expect otherwise? Why does it need an explanation?Why do bad things happen to good people?
Of all the explanations I've heard, the most satisfying one to me is this: past kamma. Unwholesome deeds, thoughts, and intentions from the past will eventually sprout as bad circumstances in one's life - whether or not the future self who experiences those circumstances is "bad" or "good". Current choices (kamma) will also eventually sprout in the future in some way, shape, and form.Why do bad things happen to good people?
Be careful when answering this question. It's a minefield by the way.
I would like to hear your reasoning.
You get it right.
Now to your question: it insinuates that we were created to fail. We weren't. We failed by our own choice or the choice of the first created couple. We are just living the consequences. Not God's fault but ours. God is good and just. We are fallen and corrupted.
He didn't create a set of rules that we can't live up to. He create them to show the abundance of grace and love, not to challenge.
Remember Christ lived on the earth exactly to show us that.
The fact remains that God could have created a system where the son does not pay for the sins of the father.
Isn't the entire point of Jesus that the rules God made are impossible for any normal human to follow?
Of all the explanations I've heard, the most satisfying one to me is this: past kamma.
That's a phenomenally convenient excuse. The fact remains that God could have created a system where the son does not pay for the sins of the father. That in particular is a bit of a sticking point for me - that the decision made by a couple that I will never know and that I have no influence over somehow sticks to me seems like the epitome of a flawed moral system. Why make a system in which a large portion of the beings you love end up in hell, when you could just as easily, you know, not send them there.
Let me make an analogy. If I put a baby on the edge of a cliff and stop paying attention to it for a while, I do not get to be mad when the baby crawls off and accidentally falls off and dies. I put a baby on a cliff, what did you think was going to happen? But to make this analogous to the genesis account, there would also have to be a sociopath there who gets off on babies falling off cliffs trying to convince the little bugger to jump. One who I also put there. And then I punish that baby's family.
None of this adds up to a supreme being who is all-powerful and loves us. It adds up to a demented sociopath with a hankering for some toasted human. If we weren't created to fail, then God is horribly incompetent. I never failed in the garden, and those who did fail in the garden had no understanding of good and evil so they had no way to know that what they were doing was wrong! That's a system where we never really had a chance to begin with.
If I posted a picture of Scarlett Johansson topless, rest assured you'd see how futile your task is. After all, merely looking at a woman with lust is a sin. Hell, we are born in sin. Isn't the entire point of Jesus that the rules God made are impossible for any normal human to follow?
You know what would show more grace and love? Not creating a system which requires a by-proxy atonement for one's sins. Not creating a system where anyone needs to be tortured forever. Here, let me show you a system with more grace and love:
Humans come onto this earth. They live simple, mostly happy lives, because their needs are taken care of and they don't have a psychological urge to downgrade their own status and constantly yearn for more (we still have free will, we just don't have this one obnoxious psychological quirk) and then they die and get to start over. Also, God acts an awful lot like, say, Luna from Friendship is Magic, showing up in nightmares to ensure that the people he is in charge of know he's around and looking out for their wellbeing.
See, notice anything about that system? It involves humans being happy, actually having a personal relationship with god, and no eternal torment. Humans still have free will (and in fact, we would still have free will even if we weren't able to choose to do evil!). I came up with that system in like 5 minutes after a My Little Pony binge. I'm sure an omnipotent, omnibenevolent ruler of the universe could do better.
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