Ok, can you clarify?

Macarthur said:

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FIDO95 said:

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It is important to keep in mind that what we see as a"tragedy" my actually be blessing and vice versa. And sometimes the lessons we learn "the hard way" are the things that keep us for making more grave mistakes in the future.



Btw, that whole podcast interview was excellent. Can't recommend it enough.

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Yeah, this parable has several diff forms. I like the one Philip Seymour Hoffman's character tells Charlie Wilson in Charlie Wilson's War. It's a good parable, but these things do have limits to their usefulness.

How useful is bone cancer in children? How useful is any of the several birth defects that bring about misery for the child and ultimately a very short life?

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Perhaps. Perhaps not. I've seen families destroyed by the death of a child and I've seen that event be a catalyst for growing closer together and closer to God. I wouldn't judge one way or the other and I pray I would never have to endure that type of loss. Nonetheless, the Christian message is that God suffered for us by taking on the human form in Christ in order to bring about a greater glory. As Christians we are called to bear our cross and to the same despite our frequent failings.

Consider this, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I will be forgotten in time. Yet, someone like Terry Fox turned his suffering into a movement that will live as an inspiration forever:

Terry Fox - Wikipedia

Even stories like Lauren Hill make you reevaluate the definition of courage and force, at least for me, to not take so much in life for granted.

I think Bishop Robert Barron has the best answer on the subject. Gives 2 great examples over about 7 minutes. I would do it injustice to try to paraphrase it (start around 29:30)

Bishop Barron on Not Dumbing Down the Faith: Answers to Young People's Pressing Religious Questions - YouTube

The story he goes into around the 37 minute mark makes me cry every time but so profound.

But don't you see that the death of a child bringing a family closer to God seems really twisted? How is using the suffering of a child to bring someone closer to you make you a benevolent God? That strikes me as borderline evil. And you HAVE to assume God saves the child because you have no real doctrine that backs this up.

Macarthur said:

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But don't you see that the death of a child bringing a family closer to God seems really twisted?


How is using the suffering of a child to bring someone closer to you make you a benevolent God? That strikes me as borderline evil. And you HAVE to assume God saves the child because you have no real doctrine that backs this up.

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No. The world is cruel place. We all will die. It's certainly tragic when I child dies but that is a "modern" idea/luxury. 200 years ago, you likely would likely would have had a sibling die as childhood mortality ranged from 25-33% due to malnutrition, accident, infectious disease, etc and thought it normal. We don't view it as normal today due to advancements in agriculture, sanitation, and modern medicine reducing that number in industrialized countries to less than 1%. So if tragedy is normal status of human existence, your only option is how you choose to handle it.

There is a mountain of doctrine surrounding what happens to the soul of a child based on Catholic doctrine which is what I am most familiar with. I leave a link here if you are truly interested in it

The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised (vatican.va)

kurt vonnegut said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Serious question: if one is an atheist, upon what basis can one assign any sort of value judgement to suffering? Absent some external, transcendent Truth against which to judge, isn't it limited to one individual's subjective experience/opinion which is only meaningful to that individual and not attributable to anyone or anything outside of that individual?

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Assuming you are not an external, transcendental arbiter of Truth. . . . How do you assign value judgements if not through the subjective experience and opinion of your understanding of what said external source wants? The way we make value judgements isn't all that different.

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Perhaps my assumption about how an atheist belief system makes value judgements is wrong. I assumed that atheists don't believe in a transcendent, external truth and therefore wouldn't think about suffering relative to such truth and would therefore not be making any value judgments about it or assigning any morally descriptive terms to describe it. If that's not correct then I apologize.

As a theist, my view of suffering is that it is evidence of a world that is broken by a free choice to reject God's will and that therefore all suffering is a moral tragedy. I believe suffering is the result of moral disfunction not a materialistic, evolutionary adaptation. As a Christian theist, I believe that suffering also has moral value due to the redemptive suffering of Christ. In both cases, I assign value to suffering based on how it relates to what I believe to be the external, transcendent truth that is God.

Suffering pre-exists modern humans by a long long time.

Is animal suffering meaningless? If not how can we place that at the feet of human free will? How is that not simply gods fault?

This is a great thread, I will likely read through it a few more times.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the "relativity" of suffering.

Much of what we call "suffering" is relative.

Many of the things we consider horrible and "suffering" would be considered luxurious by others.

Does that mean that because more things are viewed as "suffering" that we suffer more now than when people didn't consider these things to be "suffering" but just "living"? Would not that suffering then really be self-imposed because what makes it "suffering" is our attitude towards it?

Just consider how often people "brag" about their "sufferings" in their youth and then denigrate the current youth for not having the same suffering and the lack of "character" they show that is blamed on that lack of "suffering". The "walked uphill to school in the snow" kind of suffering stories.

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Perhaps my assumption about how an atheist belief system makes value judgements is wrong. I assumed that atheists don't believe in a transcendent, external truth and therefore wouldn't think about suffering relative to such truth and would therefore not be making any value judgments about it or assigning any morally descriptive terms to describe it. If that's not correct then I apologize.

As a theist, my view of suffering is that it is evidence of a world that is broken by a free choice to reject God's will and that therefore all suffering is a moral tragedy. I believe suffering is the result of moral disfunction not a materialistic, evolutionary adaptation. As a Christian theist, I believe that suffering also has moral value due to the redemptive suffering of Christ. In both cases, I assign value to suffering based on how it relates to what I believe to be the external, transcendent truth that is God.

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You may not have been really wrong in what you assumed about how atheists make value statements. I don't speak for all atheists, but I don't believe in a transcendent or external source for morality. Values, for me, are drawn out of sources emphasizing human experience, human reason, empathy, secular philosophy, ethics, etc. For me to make a value statement about suffering is less about an appeal to an authority and more about an appeal to human dignity, or empathy and compassion for the person experiencing the suffering, or it could be about the lack of utility of certain suffering. The last example is to say that not all suffering is 'useful'.

Anyway, the point of my previous post was partly to confirm that there is absolutely a subjective element to my understanding of human morality. But it was also to point out that even an objective system of morality must be understood by you, personally, through subjective understanding.

The discomfort I have with your last paragraph is in the first sentence. First - A child born with a terrible birth defect has not made a free choice to reject God's will, but will suffer the consequence of this 'fallen world'. Second - I believe that there is no clear definition of 'God's will'. True free choice requires understanding of the consequences. To apply suffering to being for non-compliance with your will makes no sense to me in a creation where you have not clearly defined your will. Maybe God's will was clear to Adam and Eve, but I don't see how it could be said to be clear today.

kurt vonnegut said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Perhaps my assumption about how an atheist belief system makes value judgements is wrong. I assumed that atheists don't believe in a transcendent, external truth and therefore wouldn't think about suffering relative to such truth and would therefore not be making any value judgments about it or assigning any morally descriptive terms to describe it. If that's not correct then I apologize.

As a theist, my view of suffering is that it is evidence of a world that is broken by a free choice to reject God's will and that therefore all suffering is a moral tragedy. I believe suffering is the result of moral disfunction not a materialistic, evolutionary adaptation. As a Christian theist, I believe that suffering also has moral value due to the redemptive suffering of Christ. In both cases, I assign value to suffering based on how it relates to what I believe to be the external, transcendent truth that is God.

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You may not have been really wrong in what you assumed about how atheists make value statements. I don't speak for all atheists, but I don't believe in a transcendent or external source for morality. Values, for me, are drawn out of sources emphasizing human experience, human reason, empathy, secular philosophy, ethics, etc. For me to make a value statement about suffering is less about an appeal to an authority and more about an appeal to human dignity, or empathy and compassion for the person experiencing the suffering, or it could be about the lack of utility of certain suffering. The last example is to say that not all suffering is 'useful'.

Anyway, the point of my previous post was partly to confirm that there is absolutely a subjective element to my understanding of human morality. But it was also to point out that even an objective system of morality must be understood by you, personally, through subjective understanding.

The discomfort I have with your last paragraph is in the first sentence. First - A child born with a terrible birth defect has not made a free choice to reject God's will, but will suffer the consequence of this 'fallen world'. Second - I believe that there is no clear definition of 'God's will'. True free choice requires understanding of the consequences. To apply suffering to being for non-compliance with your will makes no sense to me in a creation where you have not clearly defined your will. Maybe God's will was clear to Adam and Eve, but I don't see how it could be said to be clear today.

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Thanks for that response.

This portion of your response was particularly interesting to me.

"First - A child born with a terrible birth defect has not made a free choice to reject God's will, but will suffer the consequence of this 'fallen world'."

I'm probably going to exceed my limited capacity to articulate the Christian understanding of the effects of sin, but it is my understanding that when sin entered creation it tainted all of creation. So the whole universe and everything in it is functioning in a broken way. The ripple effects of sin are extensive and non-discriminatory. It effects everything and everyone (as a Catholic I believe Mary was given a singular grace that makes her an exception to this, but that's a digression from the point).

There was no suffering before there was sin. The sin of our first parents, and the evil envy of the fallen angels brought suffering into the world. Any suffering, the slightest as well as the greatest, is the effect of sin, if not our own personal fault, then of someone else. The whole world of sin is the source of our suffering.

With that in mind, yes, a child born with birth defects is born that way because of sin, indirectly, but still because of sin. It is true that our individual sins cause us to suffer directly but our sins also cause others to suffer indirectly. It's a bit like the butterfly effect on weather.

Having said all that, I am still a bit confused by your use of terms like human dignity and compassion. I think of those terms as being inherently value-laden. Sorry if I am being dense.

And I am not avoiding the question about God's will, but that's a dense topic and I think it would derail this otherwise interesting discussion. I will simply say that sin definitely clouds our ability to discern God's will just like it taints everything else in the universe. So your point about Adam and Eve having a clear understanding of God's will seems fair. As a theist, I affirm the existence of natural law and believe in divine revelation, so that's going to be my answer to the question about how are we supposed to know God's will. I don't want to be presumptuous, but I am inclined to say that ideas like human dignity and compassion are actually terms we use to communicate natural law concepts.

Thoughts on suffering.

In the creation account all is good and perfect. Sin enters which results in chaos in creation, severed relationships, and suffering.

1. In the same way our sinful choices separate us humans from one another, our sinful choices separate us from relationship/fellowship with God.
2. God is good in ways that we cannot comprehend and when God takes a step back at our request I think the vacuum left is chaos, pain, and suffering.
3. All we have ever lived in and know, is an existence on this cursed creation that is a product of our sin.
4. God entered into our suffering through His Son and His one act of suffering has made salvation available to all mankind.
5. No one is saved by their own suffering but by embracing God's suffering on their behalf.
6. Suffering/trials/testing/ plays a role in believers maturity process. (James 1) 2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing
7. Suffering also plays a role as judgment towards sin. (Jesus' crucifixion and separation from the Father, Israel's rebellion, etc)
8. Suffering is temporary and for the believer can be recompensed in eternity.
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,

I do not think suffering is arbitrary. It's a consequence of sin. It's perfectly fair that we would have to suffer for our own sins, but it's not fair that we have to suffer when others sin and do us harm. My grandparents lost a son who was on a mission trip because a drunk driver smashed his car. This unfairness is evidence that our world is cursed and broken. This unfairness also has a benefit.

It's not fair that sinless Jesus has to endure separation from the Father and endure the rejection of His own creation and endure the cross to pay for my sin.

I have 2 options:
1: Hate the curse and suffering and shake my fist at God, and cast my blame upon Him.
2: Hate the curse, suffering, and acknowledge this was not His desire and embrace Jesus who promises to make all things new and remove the curse.

Revelation 22:3 There will no longer be any curse...

DirtDiver said:

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Thoughts on suffering.

In the creation account all is good and perfect. Sin enters which results in chaos in creation, severed relationships, and suffering.

1. In the same way our sinful choices separate us humans from one another, our sinful choices separate us from relationship/fellowship with God.
2. God is good in ways that we cannot comprehend and when God takes a step back at our request I think the vacuum left is chaos, pain, and suffering.
3. All we have ever lived in and know, is an existence on this cursed creation that is a product of our sin.
4. God entered into our suffering through His Son and His one act of suffering has made salvation available to all mankind.
5. No one is saved by their own suffering but by embracing God's suffering on their behalf.
6. Suffering/trials/testing/ plays a role in believers maturity process. (James 1) 2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing
7. Suffering also plays a role as judgment towards sin. (Jesus' crucifixion and separation from the Father, Israel's rebellion, etc)
8. Suffering is temporary and for the believer can be recompensed in eternity.
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,

I do not think suffering is arbitrary. It's a consequence of sin. It's perfectly fair that we would have to suffer for our own sins, but it's not fair that we have to suffer when others sin and do us harm. My grandparents lost a son who was on a mission trip because a drunk driver smashed his car. This unfairness is evidence that our world is cursed and broken. This unfairness also has a benefit.

It's not fair that sinless Jesus has to endure separation from the Father and endure the rejection of His own creation and endure the cross to pay for my sin.

I have 2 options:
1: Hate the curse and suffering and shake my fist at God, and cast my blame upon Him.
2: Hate the curse, suffering, and acknowledge this was not His desire and embrace Jesus who promises to make all things new and remove the curse.

Revelation 22:3 There will no longer be any curse...

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Agree and you said it much better than I can.

Macarthur said:

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What does hope mean for Job's wife and children?

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God has a different relationship with death than we do. We fear it, run from it, and try to extend our lives as long as possible before ultimately still arriving at death. While God abhors death and it wasn't a part of His creation, God doesn't have the fear, running from, and questioning issues about death that we, as man, do. Its God, and He knows its either paradise or hades.

Job's wife and children's lives were cut short. But they were brought into paradise forever.

And thats part of the call of Christianity. To have a different relationship with death. Death no longer has power over you. Not as a threat. Not as finality.

one MEEN Ag said:

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Macarthur said:

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What does hope mean for Job's wife and children?

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God has a different relationship with death than we do. We fear it, run from it, and try to extend our lives as long as possible before ultimately still arriving at death. While God abhors death and it wasn't a part of His creation, God doesn't have the fear, running from, and questioning issues about death that we, as man, do. Its God, and He knows its either paradise or hades.

Job's wife and children's lives were cut short. But they were brought into paradise forever.

And thats part of the call of Christianity. To have a different relationship with death. Death no longer has power over you. Not as a threat. Not as finality.

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Great post.

It seems to me the only way to hold on to the view that god abhors death and say it wasn't part of creation and man is to blame for suffering is to take genesis pretty literally from A scientific standpoint.

Are all you making such claims literalist? If not how do you reconcile putting death and suffering at the feet of man with what we know about earth's history?

Aggrad08 said:

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It seems to me the only way to hold on to the view that god abhors death and say it wasn't part of creation and man is to blame for suffering is to take genesis pretty literally from A scientific standpoint.

Are all you making such claims literalist? If not how do you reconcile putting death and suffering at the feet of man with what we know about earth's history?

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I do not follow.

Whether the story took millions of years or an actual week, the truth is still the same.

Zobel said:

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its both.

human nature is inherently good - Christ is truly human, like us in every way except sin.

sin is a corrupting element that turns our nature away from the good (predisposition)

there are also external influences around us - sin in the world - that influences us toward evil.

grace in general and repentance in particular free us from both.

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How would you interpret David's words here?

"The Lord looks down from heaven
on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
any who seek God.
All have turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."

Without Christ, are not all our good works as "filthy rags"?

Ah - re-reading your post - maybe you're saying that perhaps David left "because of sin" off the ending?

one MEEN Ag said:

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Macarthur said:

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What does hope mean for Job's wife and children?

---

God has a different relationship with death than we do. We fear it, run from it, and try to extend our lives as long as possible before ultimately still arriving at death. While God abhors death and it wasn't a part of His creation, God doesn't have the fear, running from, and questioning issues about death that we, as man, do. Its God, and He knows its either paradise or hades.

Job's wife and children's lives were cut short. But they were brought into paradise forever.

And thats part of the call of Christianity. To have a different relationship with death. Death no longer has power over you. Not as a threat. Not as finality.

---

How do you know this?

dermdoc said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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It seems to me the only way to hold on to the view that god abhors death and say it wasn't part of creation and man is to blame for suffering is to take genesis pretty literally from A scientific standpoint.

Are all you making such claims literalist? If not how do you reconcile putting death and suffering at the feet of man with what we know about earth's history?

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I do not follow.

Whether the story took millions of years or an actual week, the truth is still the same.

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If the story is that man brought death into the world, and god didn't intend death I don't see how this works. As the death was around billions of years before man ever had a chance to sin.

Macarthur said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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Macarthur said:

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What does hope mean for Job's wife and children?

---

God has a different relationship with death than we do. We fear it, run from it, and try to extend our lives as long as possible before ultimately still arriving at death. While God abhors death and it wasn't a part of His creation, God doesn't have the fear, running from, and questioning issues about death that we, as man, do. Its God, and He knows its either paradise or hades.

Job's wife and children's lives were cut short. But they were brought into paradise forever.

And thats part of the call of Christianity. To have a different relationship with death. Death no longer has power over you. Not as a threat. Not as finality.

---

How do you know this?

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Faith.

And I guess this is the gulf that just can't be bridged. This entire thing hinges on you having faith that God 'did the right thing', in the end. Let's say for the sake of discussion, his wife was not a religious person and would not have been 'eligible' to be saved. Does this change the calculation for you?

Macarthur said:

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And I guess this is the gulf that just can't be bridged. This entire thing hinges on you having faith that God 'did the right thing', in the end. Let's say for the sake of discussion, his wife was not a religious person and would not have been 'eligible' to be saved. Does this change the calculation for you?

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You are correct. I trust God.

And it really comes down to faith. You either have it or you do not.

Was talking about this with a pastor yesterday. The biggest jump for a non believer is believing God is always good no matter what happens.

Macarthur said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Macarthur said:

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I think some folks would argue that never having been born at all would be way better than suffering all day every day for your entire life.

Again, this all strikes me as more than a bit aloof for folks like us...born in modern times with all the benefits and luxuries that affords to talk about how suffering is 'necessary' for God's love. I mean, help me with bone cancer in children...

We all know there are dozens of afflictions to children as horrific or worse than bone cancer. I see absolutely nothing redeeming about that suffering.

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Serious question: if one is an atheist, upon what basis can one assign any sort of value judgement to suffering? Absent some external, transcendent Truth against which to judge, isn't it limited to one individual's subjective experience/opinion which is only meaningful to that individual and not attributable to anyone or anything outside of that individual?

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So, Atheists can't have empathy for other humans that are suffering?

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How can you know that it's empathy? Or understand what brought the suffering or what will be it's outcome? How do you know that you understand enough about what's happening to have a 'right' or 'moral' response? Or is any response that you have 'right' or 'good' simply because you have it?

You're wandering through the responses trying to measure them and sort them into what is knowable and what isn't, disregarding things arbitrarily. What gives you the confidence that you're doing it well?

Kurt made a very good post earlier this morning about non-believers and values/morality. It's not particularly complicated and I don't view your questions above as some gotcha. You think you have objectivity on your side, but you really don't.

Wakesurfer817 said:

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Zobel said:

---

its both.

human nature is inherently good - Christ is truly human, like us in every way except sin.

sin is a corrupting element that turns our nature away from the good (predisposition)

there are also external influences around us - sin in the world - that influences us toward evil.

grace in general and repentance in particular free us from both.

---

How would you interpret David's words here?

"The Lord looks down from heaven
on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
any who seek God.
All have turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."

Without Christ, are not all our good works as "filthy rags"?

Ah - re-reading your post - maybe you're saying that perhaps David left "because of sin" off the ending?

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"All have become corrupt". But that is foreign to our nature.

Macarthur said:

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Kurt made a very good post earlier this morning about non-believers and values/morality. It's not particularly complicated and I don't view your questions above as some gotcha. You think you have objectivity on your side, but you really don't.

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Good because my questions aren't a gotcha. I wish you had taken the time to actually wrestle with them instead of trying to jump ahead because my questions aren't particularly complicated either.

You ask questions that revolve around how theists 'know' things. I've simply asked you the same. Kurt pushes knowledge one step back and finds it sufficient. For example, 'human philosophy' or 'human reason'. That doesn't actually answer the question. It simply says, 'someone before me a said x'. How do they know? And what makes your reason, we'll, reasonable?

You've created this binary distinction of faith, as if your belief in human philosophy or subjective value judgment is somehow less faith than a religious person's. That presupposes that you or they have enough information or understanding to make a reasonable rational judgment. I'm pushing back on this idea.

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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Thanks for that response.

This portion of your response was particularly interesting to me.

"First - A child born with a terrible birth defect has not made a free choice to reject God's will, but will suffer the consequence of this 'fallen world'."

I'm probably going to exceed my limited capacity to articulate the Christian understanding of the effects of sin, but it is my understanding that when sin entered creation it tainted all of creation. So the whole universe and everything in it is functioning in a broken way. The ripple effects of sin are extensive and non-discriminatory. It effects everything and everyone (as a Catholic I believe Mary was given a singular grace that makes her an exception to this, but that's a digression from the point).

There was no suffering before there was sin. The sin of our first parents, and the evil envy of the fallen angels brought suffering into the world. Any suffering, the slightest as well as the greatest, is the effect of sin, if not our own personal fault, then of someone else. The whole world of sin is the source of our suffering.

With that in mind, yes, a child born with birth defects is born that way because of sin, indirectly, but still because of sin. It is true that our individual sins cause us to suffer directly but our sins also cause others to suffer indirectly. It's a bit like the butterfly effect on weather.

Having said all that, I am still a bit confused by your use of terms like human dignity and compassion. I think of those terms as being inherently value-laden. Sorry if I am being dense.

And I am not avoiding the question about God's will, but that's a dense topic and I think it would derail this otherwise interesting discussion. I will simply say that sin definitely clouds our ability to discern God's will just like it taints everything else in the universe. So your point about Adam and Eve having a clear understanding of God's will seems fair. As a theist, I affirm the existence of natural law and believe in divine revelation, so that's going to be my answer to the question about how are we supposed to know God's will. I don't want to be presumptuous, but I am inclined to say that ideas like human dignity and compassion are actually terms we use to communicate natural law concepts.

---

Would I be taking Ezekiel 18:20 too far out of context in applying it to original sin or the original corruption of Creation? Certainly, the principle seems to apply that we should not be punished for the 'sins of our father'.

Also, I feel that you speak about the ripple affects of sin and its non-discriminatory affect on everything as though it were a fact of nature beyond God rather than a rule created by God. In other words, if sin corrupted everything, that is because God put the rule in place that said sin would have that affect. And I don't mean for that to sound adversarial toward God, but I think its worth pointing out. . . . If God created this existence, then he created the rules. God decided that any one sin would corrupt all of creation. God decides how we are made, our psychology, our physiology, our impulses, what is / isn't sin, the rules on how to repent for sin, what happens if we don't repent. The rule that says that Jesus dying on the cross gives us a path for salvation is only a rule because God made it a rule. There are no natural laws above or beyond God, right?

All of this is to make the claim that corruption and suffering in this world is God's choice and not mine or yours. We don't make the rules, we don't get to discuss them, debate them or change them. And even those that claim to know the rules should be honest enough to admit that we don't fully understand the rules or know what all of their purposes are. And I think that is one of the places that faith comes in. Which I have no problem with. . . . but for someone like me without that faith, finding cohesion between what Christians say about God and with what Christians say God's will becomes absurd. And from the Christian perspective, I am absurd. The more time I spend on this forum, the less absurd Christianity seems from the Christian perspective and the more absurd it seems from my perspective. But, I think this can simply be part of the process for understanding different beliefs and values.

I don't think I would agree about human dignity and compassion being natural law concepts. Compassion in particular, I think, is a subjective experience and it happens that most people experience it reasonably similarly. And I think our ideas on human dignity can be largely culturally driven. I am fine with saying they are value-laden terms, but for me those values need not relate to something like God.

DirtDiver said:

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It's not fair that sinless Jesus has to endure separation from the Father and endure the rejection of His own creation and endure the cross to pay for my sin.

---

I know I'm repeating what I just posted a minute ago, but why did Jesus have to endure spearation and suffering to pay for your sin. What is the natural law that God and goodness and sin is all subject to that is beyond God that says this is the way for Jesus to pay for your sins? Who made that rule?

Couldn't God have created a rule that said that Jesus only had to go on a beach vacation in order to pay for our sins? Sure, it wouldn't have had any of the same affect or symbolic resonance. . . . . .

to be clear not all traditions teach what he's saying here.

When something happens to you that seems bad at the time, but ends up being helpful what would you call that experience? Say you end up with a job that required you painfully lose the prior one. Or a relationship ends, that only with the benefit of hindsight, had to?

Was the time - and suffering - at the old job or in the old relationship worthless? Not a trick question - I am interested in how non-believers view serendipity or coincidence. Is the sum of outcomes over all humanity - or even in each life - entirely mean reverting?

DirtDiver said:

---

Thoughts on suffering.

In the creation account all is good and perfect. Sin enters which results in chaos in creation, severed relationships, and suffering.

1. In the same way our sinful choices separate us humans from one another, our sinful choices separate us from relationship/fellowship with God.
2. God is good in ways that we cannot comprehend and when God takes a step back at our request I think the vacuum left is chaos, pain, and suffering.
3. All we have ever lived in and know, is an existence on this cursed creation that is a product of our sin.
4. God entered into our suffering through His Son and His one act of suffering has made salvation available to all mankind.
5. No one is saved by their own suffering but by embracing God's suffering on their behalf.
6. Suffering/trials/testing/ plays a role in believers maturity process. (James 1) 2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing
7. Suffering also plays a role as judgment towards sin. (Jesus' crucifixion and separation from the Father, Israel's rebellion, etc)
8. Suffering is temporary and for the believer can be recompensed in eternity.
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,

I do not think suffering is arbitrary. It's a consequence of sin. It's perfectly fair that we would have to suffer for our own sins, but it's not fair that we have to suffer when others sin and do us harm. My grandparents lost a son who was on a mission trip because a drunk driver smashed his car. This unfairness is evidence that our world is cursed and broken. This unfairness also has a benefit.

It's not fair that sinless Jesus has to endure separation from the Father and endure the rejection of His own creation and endure the cross to pay for my sin.

I have 2 options:
1: Hate the curse and suffering and shake my fist at God, and cast my blame upon Him.
2: Hate the curse, suffering, and acknowledge this was not His desire and embrace Jesus who promises to make all things new and remove the curse.

Revelation 22:3 There will no longer be any curse...

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Well said. Your point about how suffering helps us mature and can even bare fruit through our growth. It also helps us appreciate that much more, when the suffering subsides and we take stock of all that God has blessed us with in this life, not to mention the one to come.

I think there needs to be a distinction here between challenges in one's life that we all face and gratuitous suffering. I keep wanting to talk about seemingly needless suffering of children and some of you want to talk about not getting the job promotion you were hoping for.

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It seems to me the only way to hold on to the view that god abhors death and say it wasn't part of creation and man is to blame for suffering is to take genesis pretty literally from A scientific standpoint.

Are all you making such claims literalist? If not how do you reconcile putting death and suffering at the feet of man with what we know (some people believe) about earth's history?

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I think you raise a good question if death existed millions of years prior to the notion that death was a result of Adams sin.

I personally hold the minority view and take Genesis literally. The only way to understand a miracle is to understand the natural order of the world. A miracle is a break in the natural order of things. (walking on water, healing blindness, plagues, walking out of a tomb after being crucifixion. I think the biggest miracle in the Bible is the creation of this fine tuned universe and planet out of nothing. Thus, I would expect the natural laws as we know it to be broken.

We cannot recreate the formation of our universe in a lab for testing and experimentation. Scientists and make guesses however these are all philosophies and theories.

In the Genesis account we have a very intentional God making very intentional statement of purpose.
14 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so.

Interesting enough, everything God says about the great lights in the sky's applies to all humanity throughout all ages regardless of their biblical exposure.

This could turn into a YEC debate and has the potential to derail this thread.

I agree I'm not looking to turn this to a YEC thread, there are plenty of those for people interested. And this is specifically why I'm not asking YECs, they have an answer on this question.

The question is for the majority view. How can you reconcile this.

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And I guess this is the gulf that just can't be bridged. This entire thing hinges on you having faith that God 'did the right thing', in the end. Let's say for the sake of discussion, his wife was not a religious person and would not have been 'eligible' to be saved. Does this change the calculation for you?

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A few clarifying points as I see a few misunderstanding about salvation.

1. No is eligible for salvation. It's a gift God gives us sinners who through a simple act of faith trust Him.
2. Redeemed sinners still sin after salvation.
3. Job's wife could be the most religious person in the world. Being religious saves no one.

We do know this...

9 Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!" 10 But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Job's wife was foolish. This doesn't mean she 'saved' or not 'saved'. I don't think we have the answer to this question. What we do have it evidence that God is not going around ripping people off. If you want to know the character, nature, and heart of God that we can most easily comprehend, look at the life of Jesus. Looks at what He knows about people and how He treats them and even His moral outrage when people are getting ripped off.

I'm convinced that job's wife, wherever she is spending eternity, from everything we know about God in the scriptures, is not getting ripped off.

Well, if Job's wife is suffering eternally, I would say she is def getting ripped off.