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Thanks for that response; it's good enough for me. It shows what a rational-minded Christian believes about such things.Heya Monkeypsycho,
I think perhaps the confusion is coming about from not understanding God's character. The Bible is our sort of link with God, in that it tells us about Him and how He acts and what He values. In the Bible God comes to Earth for us, in the person of Jesus Christ. He did this to teach us His values and give us a way to salvation and to wash away all our past, present and future sins. During His time here, he performed miracles and healed people. He did not heal all people, or remove all suffering in the world.
Now your view of God is that He is omnibenevolent, that is a being of the purest good. This I believe is wholly true. The misunderstanding comes into it when we take purest good and give it a definite meaning with our limited mortal minds. For us purest good is someone who will help no matter what, who will set all wrongs right and God has done this too, in His sacrifice for us. Now before you question that, just recall that the Bible makes it very clear to us that God is different than we are.
Isaiah 55:9
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
With this in mind, we cannot assume to know what a being who is so different to us will do. In addition, we cannot know what a purest good being would do, as we are not beings that are purely good. God sees the entire picture, of creation to the end, whereas we see just the tiny window that we can with our fleeting lives and limited outlooks.
In addition we have free will. If God wanted to, He could indeed clean up all our mistakes for us. But what kind of God is that? A babysitter. We would still be as children, yet in adult bodies. Not knowing how to live, how to do right or wrong, or what the consequences are of wrong. If I commit adultery and it causes a great deal of harm and hurt, and God heals it and purifies me again, what have I learnt? Nothing. I would just blunder right into it again. Our free will is our most precious gift, yet we need to accept the choices that we make and the consequences of them. God has a plan for us, we are told He is interested in our character, our hearts and motives. Not in worldly things, big talk or success and fame. But in what makes us, us. In this regard, it would be logical to assume that God does not hold the same value over the things of this world as we do. Everything will return to dust one day, and all will be undone, except for our eternal souls which will house our character.
I cannot make the call as to whether someone who suffered an injury and required amputation has had good come from it, or not. It's easy to look at it and say, "That's horrible!" yet God works in mysterious ways, and by this I mean that God takes the bad and turns it into good. Always. The most unlikley people in the world become God's tools.
In an unusual comparison, I am a serious Farscape fan, and there is an episode where the crew gets sent back in time to a monastry. The monastry was essentially the grounds of a legendary turning point in a war, where sisters and nuns held out against a ravenous horder of attackers. Criton (the main character) goes back and they accidentally mess up the timeline, and in order to set things right they help defend the grounds and save a great deal of lines. Yet when they go back into the future, and look at the historical record, it shows that what actually happened is that all the sisters got killed because the attackers wanted to know who was using advanced weapons (Criton and co.) and the sisters couldn't provide an answer, so they were killed. In a nutshell, we cannot see what our actions will cause in a timeline, when that line of thinking and the scope of time is beyond us. It's easy in the moment to go, yes, heal that person as it will make everything better, but it may not always be that clear.
I hope that helped some.
Cheers!
Digit
What kind of healing are you talking about?If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.
Perhaps the person isn't an atheist, but a seeker? A skeptic who wants to know more, know whether this "Christian" thing is all it's cracked up to be?Why would an atheist care whether or not God did anything, given that he doesn't believe in God in the first place?
I agree, Digit. Things happen for a reason in our lives through the choices and paths we take. Regarding losing limbs, I think that is a mixture of the decisions we make in our lives and God's giving us a chance to grow spiritually stronger through our losses and to grow closer to Him through our struggles and hard times. JMO.I don't take credit when God does heal people, and I certainly don't take the blame when He doesn't.
Your problem is that you want a clear case. One or the other, yet God as revealed to us in the Bible doesn't work like that. Jesus healed a blind man, but He didn't heal all blind men. Why not? Do you think that as a Christian I have a special God-phone that gives me direct insight into how God thinks? It's not quite like that. I have faith in God that He wants what is best for us, and through our free will to make decisions in our lives, we either follow His plan for our lives or we do not.
Digit
Great explanation...great post!Heya Monkeypsycho,
I think perhaps the confusion is coming about from not understanding God's character. The Bible is our sort of link with God, in that it tells us about Him and how He acts and what He values. In the Bible God comes to Earth for us, in the person of Jesus Christ. He did this to teach us His values and give us a way to salvation and to wash away all our past, present and future sins. During His time here, he performed miracles and healed people. He did not heal all people, or remove all suffering in the world.
Now your view of God is that He is omnibenevolent, that is a being of the purest good. This I believe is wholly true. The misunderstanding comes into it when we take purest good and give it a definite meaning with our limited mortal minds. For us purest good is someone who will help no matter what, who will set all wrongs right and God has done this too, in His sacrifice for us. Now before you question that, just recall that the Bible makes it very clear to us that God is different than we are.
Isaiah 55:9
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
With this in mind, we cannot assume to know what a being who is so different to us will do. In addition, we cannot know what a purest good being would do, as we are not beings that are purely good. God sees the entire picture, of creation to the end, whereas we see just the tiny window that we can with our fleeting lives and limited outlooks.
In addition we have free will. If God wanted to, He could indeed clean up all our mistakes for us. But what kind of God is that? A babysitter. We would still be as children, yet in adult bodies. Not knowing how to live, how to do right or wrong, or what the consequences are of wrong. If I commit adultery and it causes a great deal of harm and hurt, and God heals it and purifies me again, what have I learnt? Nothing. I would just blunder right into it again. Our free will is our most precious gift, yet we need to accept the choices that we make and the consequences of them. God has a plan for us, we are told He is interested in our character, our hearts and motives. Not in worldly things, big talk or success and fame. But in what makes us, us. In this regard, it would be logical to assume that God does not hold the same value over the things of this world as we do. Everything will return to dust one day, and all will be undone, except for our eternal souls which will house our character.
I cannot make the call as to whether someone who suffered an injury and required amputation has had good come from it, or not. It's easy to look at it and say, "That's horrible!" yet God works in mysterious ways, and by this I mean that God takes the bad and turns it into good. Always. The most unlikley people in the world become God's tools.
In an unusual comparison, I am a serious Farscape fan, and there is an episode where the crew gets sent back in time to a monastry. The monastry was essentially the grounds of a legendary turning point in a war, where sisters and nuns held out against a ravenous horder of attackers. Criton (the main character) goes back and they accidentally mess up the timeline, and in order to set things right they help defend the grounds and save a great deal of lines. Yet when they go back into the future, and look at the historical record, it shows that what actually happened is that all the sisters got killed because the attackers wanted to know who was using advanced weapons (Criton and co.) and the sisters couldn't provide an answer, so they were killed. In a nutshell, we cannot see what our actions will cause in a timeline, when that line of thinking and the scope of time is beyond us. It's easy in the moment to go, yes, heal that person as it will make everything better, but it may not always be that clear.
I hope that helped some.
Cheers!
Digit
Great explanation...great post!
If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.
God HAS healed amputees, or at least He probably did.
When Jesus was on Earth he healed thousands of people, from skin diseases, to paralysis, to even reversing death. It's reasonable to believe that in the thousands of people he healed, some of those were amputees.
Bingo thats it right there.monkey---
God heals people and sometimes He doesn't. His long term goal is to help us to grow spiritually and get us ready for heaven. Yes, by His stripes we are healed spiritually.
Also, its all for Him and His Glory - sometimes this will entail not be healed. In not being healed and being a witness one can be more effective long term than if one was healed. God's ways are way above our ways.
You know, I agree very much with your point there. A perfectly good being puts a stop to unjust suffering, or suffering purely through ignorance. I think Creation itself is designed in some way to limit suffering out of ignorance as well as other causes, through physical death.Thanks for that response; it's good enough for me. It shows what a rational-minded Christian believes about such things.
Although I do still believe that a perfectly good being should try and stop suffering, but as you said, this would make God a "babysitter."
!So do you mean that everyone that pray and not get her/his prayer answered have doubts when it`s about heeling.That I think are unfair.How can we tell people that.They maybe really believe.How can we judge them like this? Sorry about this but I always get so upset when I hear something like this
Remember the story about the male that was heeled but didn`t even know that was Jesus that was there = no faith.I tried to see if I could find it but I didn`t
All healing hinges on believing, God can heal anything or restore anything, the problem is does the man with the missing limbs "BELIEVE" God could restore them??? Have you ever heard of the man with the withered hand in the bible, it was totally restored, but that man believed and obeyed the Word of God in order to get His healing.If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.
Quick point to make here. I don't see where it is written that God is omnibenevolent.If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.
Again, I ask, what evidence is there that amputees have not been healed?
Lisa
Why do I have to prove that they haven't? That makes o sense. I could say that there's an invisible elf in the core of the Sun, deciding the outcome of baseball games by altering the wind. But I would have to prove this strange hypothesis, no? I wouldn't make you disprove it, because that makes no sense.
And there's no proof that they have been healed. If you have any, PLEASE post it.
Who says God can't replace limbs? Just because some miracles are unusual and infrequent, doesn't mean they're off the menu. Take, for example, the man born with the deformed hand [Luke 6:6-11]. Does this sort of miracle happen today? It certainly could. Does it happen on the Benny Hinn television broadcast? Not that I've seen...but that proves nothing.If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.
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