Why God' Why ? Why God' Oh Why ?

Lewis · Mar 25, 2011

Sometimes when witnessing and sometimes just in general people who are not saved and sometimes the saved, will ask why does God let babies die ? Or why did God let what happened in Japan happen. Or why did God allow slavery. Or why did God let a rapist come in and kill the whole family including a newborn ? And then some of them say, doesn't God know and see everything, then why did He let it happen ? I have heard people say that they did not want to acknowledge a God who allows such. I have heard people say how can God be a God of love who allows wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, families to starve to death and die. I would really like to hear your answers ?

Alabaster · Mar 25, 2011

God gave dominion over the Earth to man. Man relinquished that to Satan. This is his territory now. all the evil things we see happening is because he rules the powers of the air.

The earth longs to be back under God's authority and it will be one day soon.

Romans 8:18-25 NLT
18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. 25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)

In the meantime, we as children of the Most High God, through Jesus Christ, have been given HIS AUTHORITY in the Earth. God is more than pleased to act, but He has chosen to limit Himself to working through men. He will move mightily when we pray, when we intercede, when we place a demand on His anointing in us, and on His promises.

Some good news for you: since the disaster in Japan, there have been an estimated 10,000 people who have turned their hearts and lives over to Jesus Christ! That is amazing for a country that is mostly Buddhist and Shinto, and ancestor worshipers!

Praise God!

Oats · Mar 25, 2011

Lewis W said:
Sometimes when witnessing and sometimes just in general people who are not saved and sometimes the saved, will ask why does God let babies die ? Or why did God let what happened in Japan happen. Or why did God allow slavery. Or why did God let a rapist come in and kill the whole family including a newborn ? And then some of them say, doesn't God know and see everything, then why did He let it happen ? I have heard people say that they did not want to acknowledge a God who allows such. I have heard people say how can God be a God of love who allows wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, families to starve to death and die. I would really like to hear your answers ?

First we have to consider a few things...

1.Life is controlled by God....at any rate, I am presupposing God for the basis of my claim.

2. Life is an experience, humans who live human lives have human needs

3. Life is meant to show forth the Glory of God, not based on human needs

4. The non believer prepossess that life should be better than it it due to a logical fallacy-
i.e. "because some people live better lives than others it is not fair that my life should be what it is, we should be equal." When if you presuppose God in your claim you have to presuppose his standard as well, and by it we deserve far worst.

-------

But if you want to talk about what the ideal life here on earth would be would be I could imagine something pretty good

But we are not promised ideal lives to begin with

Lewis · Mar 25, 2011

Alabaster said:
God gave dominion over the Earth to man. Man relinquished that to Satan. This is his territory now. all the evil things we see happening is because he rules the powers of the air.

The earth longs to be back under God's authority and it will be one day soon.

Romans 8:18-25 NLT
18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. 25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)

In the meantime, we as children of the Most High God, through Jesus Christ, have been given HIS AUTHORITY in the Earth. God is more than pleased to act, but He has chosen to limit Himself to working through men. He will move mightily when we pray, when we intercede, when we place a demand on His anointing in us, and on His promises.

Some good news for you: since the disaster in Japan, there have been an estimated 10,000 people who have turned their hearts and lives over to Jesus Christ! That is amazing for a country that is mostly Buddhist and Shinto, and ancestor worshipers!

Praise God!

Oh there is more' people want to know why God let a Holy Ghost filled Christian get his head chopped off in a home robbery gone wrong. How could God let this happen to His own ?

Is this the answer ? This is Jesus talking below.
Luke 13:3-4 (King James Version)

3I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
4Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?

jasoncran · Mar 25, 2011

Lewis W said:
Sometimes when witnessing and sometimes just in general people who are not saved and sometimes the saved, will ask why does God let babies die ? Or why did God let what happened in Japan happen. Or why did God allow slavery. Or why did God let a rapist come in and kill the whole family including a newborn ? And then some of them say, doesn't God know and see everything, then why did He let it happen ? I have heard people say that they did not want to acknowledge a God who allows such. I have heard people say how can God be a God of love who allows wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, families to starve to death and die. I would really like to hear your answers ?

God, why havent you taken the painful memories of the past from me? the hurts that you know about.i have prayed.

why does life not seem the same since afghanistan. ah but i have something that he did do. he gave me peace as i dont find the past as painful as i used to, nor is life all that bad.

i say this as now i must lean far more on the lord due to wonderful income loss :nono

2

PouringRain · Mar 25, 2011

All of these things in life serve purpose to grow us and to allow God's light to shine. The real question is not "why does God allow tragedy?" but is "how will I respond to it?"

Lehigh3 · Mar 25, 2011

Lewis W said:
Sometimes when witnessing and sometimes just in general people who are not saved and sometimes the saved, will ask why does God let babies die ? Or why did God let what happened in Japan happen. Or why did God allow slavery. Or why did God let a rapist come in and kill the whole family including a newborn ? And then some of them say, doesn't God know and see everything, then why did He let it happen ? I have heard people say that they did not want to acknowledge a God who allows such. I have heard people say how can God be a God of love who allows wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, families to starve to death and die. I would really like to hear your answers ?

This is very important to discuss. It is not the 1st time I've read or pondered about the same.
I believe that nature was set by God at the fall. God may do some physical miracles & intervening once in a while- but I believe that animals started being predatory & insects & natural selection is just part of nature in motion, on its own.

I think the Lord looks over the "righteous"- & those He would call while on earth.

I thought of the Haiti & Indonesian tsunami catastrophies- & it must be that God overlooks some people. But when called upon, God will help them bc of His mercy.

Christians get sick & even die or suffer prematurely. But bc nature is in motion- disease knows no particular person.

Our help is from the Lord. But our life is hidden in Christ & we have His peace that our problems will work out for our good.

And we are not like the heathen who have no hope. We believe in an afterlife.(and not as another species either!)

In fact, a good argument for Christian Universalism (i am told) IS the fact that if all didn't go to heaven - what was the point of some youngster on the end of the planet, suffering with sores & disease all their young life- & they just die to what? Be forever burned in the fires of hell?
What would have been the point for God to have created them?

darrell · Mar 25, 2011

Lewis W, good question.

Lehigh3, I like your answers. I agree the very nature of the universe was changed at the fall - it's right there in Genesis 3: We went from being in the fullness of God's grace to living in a world hostile and predatory - sweat, toil, thorns, suffering and death.

God could have created us as automatons - blindly obedient. But instead He gives us freedom, and with free will we can choose to do right and bring more peace and order to the world, or we can choose to do wrong and bring more suffering and disorder into the world.

Yes, the rain falls on the good and bad alike. The innocent suffer while the wicked go about their business.

Yes, we have an afterlife to look forward to - an eternity of our own choosing. St. Teresa of Avila said something to the effect that compared to Heaven this earthly life, even a life filled with nothing but suffering would seem like an overnight stay in a bad hotel.

I know when our 6-year-old son was killed, I cried , "Why? Why God? Why did my beautiful little son have to die?" Now I know little Johnny is with God, and as much as I miss him, I know he is happier with God than he would be with me. And we don't know, but by taking him home, God may have kept him from some horrible suffering in the future. We just don't know.

My good spiritual friend once told me, "It doesn't matter whether you live 6 years or 90, either way is a really short time compared to eternity."

Drew · Mar 25, 2011

Lewis W said:
Sometimes when witnessing and sometimes just in general people who are not saved and sometimes the saved, will ask why does God let babies die ? Or why did God let what happened in Japan happen. Or why did God allow slavery. Or why did God let a rapist come in and kill the whole family including a newborn ? And then some of them say, doesn't God know and see everything, then why did He let it happen ? I have heard people say that they did not want to acknowledge a God who allows such. I have heard people say how can God be a God of love who allows wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, families to starve to death and die. I would really like to hear your answers ?

I believe that God does not so much "allow" these things as He has no power to prevent them. I know this will seem heretical to some, but I really believe we have misunderstood the nature of God's sovereignty and have allowed overly simple-minded "Sunday School" ideas about a God who can "solve any problem by magic".

Well, I doubt this is really the case. God has made certain commitments that He cannot "back out of". One was to place creation in the hands of man. Adam then fell and creation was damaged (Genesis 3). God cannot simply "undo" what Adam did - He needs to get another human being to replace Adam as "ruler over the world".

Who is that human being? The Lord Jesus Christ. But, for reasons I will not get into in this post, God had to use Israel over centuries before Jesus could take that role.

So I think the answer to suffering is this: God cannot fix those problems in a "snap His fingers" kind of way. That view trivializes the real risk God took when He put the universe in Adam's hands.

I think my views about this have some commonality with those of Lehigh3.

Drew · Mar 25, 2011

Alabaster said:
The earth longs to be back under God's authority and it will be one day soon.

Romans 8:18-25 NLT
18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to Godâ€™s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join Godâ€™s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we donâ€™t need to hope for it. 25 But if we look forward to something we donâ€™t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)

This is one of my favourite texts. While I would argue that there is a sense in which is already under God's (Jesus's) authority, I would encourage you to keep hammering people with this text - it speaks of God reclaiming and redeeming all His creation.

It's not "all about us" and that God is going to throw his beautiful, although damaged creation into the wastebasket.

jasoncran · Mar 25, 2011

Drew said:
This is one of my favourite texts. While I would argue that there is a sense in which is already under God's (Jesus's) authority, I would encourage you to keep hammering people with this text - it speaks of God reclaiming and redeeming all His creation.

It's not "all about us" and that God is going to throw his beautiful, although damaged creation into the wastebasket.

but the damaged creation will undergo some drastic rapid changes when he is done with it.

Alabaster · Mar 25, 2011

Drew said:
This is one of my favourite texts. While I would argue that there is a sense in which is already under God's (Jesus's) authority, I would encourage you to keep hammering people with this text - it speaks of God reclaiming and redeeming all His creation.

It's not "all about us" and that God is going to throw his beautiful, although damaged creation into the wastebasket.

It is one of the most awesome and revealing passages, I agree, Drew!

Fire_inside21 · Mar 25, 2011

Lewis W said:
Sometimes when witnessing and sometimes just in general people who are not saved and sometimes the saved, will ask why does God let babies die ? Or why did God let what happened in Japan happen. Or why did God allow slavery. Or why did God let a rapist come in and kill the whole family including a newborn ? And then some of them say, doesn't God know and see everything, then why did He let it happen ? I have heard people say that they did not want to acknowledge a God who allows such. I have heard people say how can God be a God of love who allows wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, families to starve to death and die. I would really like to hear your answers ?

God is showing us what will happen in the end times to give us chances to become a follower of him (I probably got that wrong but hey i'm still learning :p). God lets us choose what to do with our lives through free will.

Lewis · Mar 25, 2011

Drew said:
I believe that God does not so much "allow" these things as He has no power to prevent them. I know this will seem heretical to some, but I really believe we have misunderstood the nature of God's sovereignty and have allowed overly simple-minded "Sunday School" ideas about a God who can "solve any problem by magic".

Well, I doubt this is really the case. God has made certain commitments that He cannot "back out of". One was to place creation in the hands of man. Adam then fell and creation was damaged (Genesis 3). God cannot simply "undo" what Adam did - He needs to get another human being to replace Adam as "ruler over the world".

Who is that human being? The Lord Jesus Christ. But, for reasons I will not get into in this post, God had to use Israel over centuries before Jesus could take that role.

So I think the answer to suffering is this: God cannot fix those problems in a "snap His fingers" kind of way. That view trivializes the real risk God took when He put the universe in Adam's hands.

I think my views about this have some commonality with those of Lehigh3.

Hmmmm, who else is with this post ?

jasoncran · Mar 25, 2011

drew that isnt heritical to me. i was taught that as young christian. adam gave rights to the devil and the lord had to send his son to legaly get the earth back. its plainly alluded to in revalation with the scroll of the seven seals.

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Why God' Why ? Why God' Oh Why ?

Lewis

Alabaster

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Oats

Lewis

jasoncran

PouringRain

Lehigh3

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darrell

Drew

Drew

jasoncran

Alabaster

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Fire_inside21

Lewis

jasoncran