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Count me as another long time lurker who is willing to chime in now that the thread is fresh and new. I came into the old one trying to expand my knowledge of the lived experience of liturgical church Christians compared to my staunchly Protestant upbringing, and have been blown away by how much I didn't know about Catholicism and Orthodoxy in particular (I honestly don't even know that I knew Orthodoxy was a thing). My fiancee comes from at least a culturally Catholic background, so I've wanted to learn something of the traditions and practices that make up a significant part of her belief system. It's been incredibly helpful for me to be able to read the experiences and beliefs of everyone here, and hopefully one day I will be able to contribute something myself (though the only thing I really know much about is church planting in Central Texas and that from a congregant rather than clergy position).
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Sep 20, 2016 22:52
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One of the common things that I'm reminded of when discussing the nature and presence of evil in the world today (and historically), is that we more or less asked for it as humans and are assigning to God the consequences of our own error. Regardless of whether a literal Adam and Eve ever ate from a literal tree, the message that comes from the story of the Fall is that humanity chose not to trust God and instead to trust in their own wisdom. The consequences of that have been a creation that God has allowed us to rule as we wish, and it turns out that humanity sans perfect relationship with God is wholly unfit as a master over creation. Those who are angry at God about allowing evil to be the just consequences of our own choices are (at least to some degree) discounting the agency humanity has had in bringing that evil about. We're angry that there are consequences to our choices, or that God allows people to exist who would make choices which might have consequences we do not desire, or that we're allowed to make choices which may result in consequences we do not desire. I don't know that any of those are any better of a situation for humanity to be in. I'm not certain that this is entirely relevant to the conversation, but I remember watching a video with Stephen Fry a while back where he was asked what his one question to God would be were he able to see him face to face. He said that he'd ask God how dare he allow children to get cancer and die. He was/is furious that innocent children are dying because God has allowed them to (assuming that any such God existed in the first place). What he failed to take into account, or willfully ignored, is that children get cancer from things we as humans have chosen to do/create. Genetically modified foods we don't know all the effects of, radiation from technological "necessities", harmful toxins released into nature from manufacturing, the list goes on. There are countless reasons we can find that are directly attributable to our own actions as a species which have led to cancers and illnesses that very likely (almost definitely) would never have been had we chosen differently. What makes Christianity hopeful, is that despite our willful choice to drag creation into ruin, God has made a way for what we've wrought to be redeemed. Not only ourselves, but the creation we've destroyed. It's not too late for us to be brought back.
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Nov 30, 2016 18:46
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I'd like to sidetrack here to say that degenerative and fatal diseases were around a long, long time before modern manufacturing and science. Kids were dying of leukemia in Christ's time, and he didn't heal all of them. This is, in my opinion, one of the great American (don't know if you're American, but it's a particular weakness of ours) fallacies. We assume that all misfortune is traceable: you got sick *because* you didn't eat right, or toxins, or vaccination. I wish we were more amenable to "poo poo happens, I'm sorry for your bad luck", rather than "your wellbeing is controllable, because otherwise I'd have to admit that bad things could happen to me." I really appreciate this response, and, for the record, I am American. I am in no way disillusioned to the prevalence of illness and disease before modern times. The gospels are filled with accounts of Christ healing the lame and sick, so clearly there was suffering then as well as now. The world presented in the first two chapters of Genesis, being the world that God is not only explicitly accredited with creating but also where He intended humanity to live and thrive, is far different from the world we actually live and suffer in today and the one humanity has lived and suffered in for nearly all of our time here. I do not believe there was a better time before manufacturing arose to prominence where humanity was able to live without suffering to be expected, but we're presented a time before (the period before The Fall) where that did not appear to be part of the plan. What changed wasn't God inviting evil, death, and destruction into His creation, but humanity demanding it in place of God's rule. Humanity was forcibly removed from a perfect world and accursed in the new one. Labor was painful, work was now difficult, the introduction to suffering begins. We absolutely, as humans, should look at this with outrage and despair, but I think it's wrong to terminate that outrage and despair on the person of God without taking in our own culpability for where we've landed ourselves. God gave us the world we wanted, it just turns out we don't actually want it because it's terrible. To more clearly address Deteriorata's example, Jesus does not blame the man's blindness on sin or evil explicitly attributed to the blind man or his family, but there was clearly something wrong with the world as a whole that Jesus's life, death, and resurrection was intended to correct. The blindness the man suffered was only a symptom of the disease that was afflicting the whole of humanity. Or in other words, at the Fall humanity went wrong and due to its wrongness there was disorder that manifested itself as suffering and illness and death from then until now. Perhaps this is me showing my largely Protestant, and that mostly Southern Baptist, upbringing. I have learned a lot about the different understandings of Christianity by lurking this thread, but wanted to contribute my own thoughts and beliefs to see where others disagree or could point me to further understanding since everyone here generally seems to be pretty helpful.
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Nov 30, 2016 21:02
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thechosenone posted:So is fulfilling our potential good because god said so, or because it is irrespective of gods desires? I think what zonohedron is saying is that God created our potentials, so He created them with the intent that they be fulfilled. I guess that sort of falls into line with the latter part of the question, though I don't think that what God desires would necessarily be arbitrary. Or while they might appear arbitrary to us, would not be so to Him.
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Nov 30, 2016 21:11
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's impossible for moral responsibility not to terminate at the person of an omnipotent and omniscient being. What was Man ignorant of before the Fall that our current state is better than? Is there any reason to believe that anything good would have been denied humanity? That attitude assumes that there is something valuable that we would have missed out on that we have somehow gleaned from all the suffering and misery that has arisen in the aftermath. If that was the case we should be glad of the suffering because of the gains we've made in knowledge and wisdom apart from the ignorance we were once entombed in. We would be right to be defiantly gleeful in the face of our destruction because it meant we had triumphed where God intended us to fail. Why can a human being not take responsibility when we cannot realistically be expected to understand the consequences? Consequences were promised regardless of whether humans were capable of understanding them. A child playing in the street likely has no more capacity for understanding the possibility of their death when being struck by a car, but that does not in any way shield them from a car taking their life. Understanding is not necessary, though if it comes will later lead to appreciation of the instruction given by a loving parent who told their child not to play in the street.
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Nov 30, 2016 21:31
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thechosenone posted:So did bad things happen to us when we ate the fruit because god wanted that to be the consequence, or for some other reason? Regardless of whether there was a literal fruit to eat or not (like Arsenic Lupin I'd lean more towards parts of the Bible as being teaching stories versus pure literal word for word accounts of history (especially so with the creation as its a fairly poor account of how things came to be at least on the details front)), the point of the Genesis creation seems to say that God intended a consequence, in fact the exact consequences we have received, from the rejection of God and the consumption of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. God's only comment on the subject to Adam in the text is that if he eats of the fruit he'll die. He ate anyway, and well, we've seen the results. As to whether it had to be this way, no. There was a point of choosing, and we chose wrong. There was a chance that things didn't have to be this way at all, but if that were the case there'd be no need for this discussion. Also, I'm really grateful this thread is here to talk about these things and that so many perspectives and beliefs are represented. I am aware that what I believe or say may be wrong, and definitely isn't a complete or accurate picture even if it's trending towards right, but it's nice to have a place to talk and get a plethora of different responses. Also, will pray for you Tuxedo Catfish. I've always appreciated your thoughtful responses in this thread and am just hoping to contribute my own thoughts so I can hopefully grow from the experience myself.
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Nov 30, 2016 21:53
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thechosenone posted:I guess really what I wonder, Is anything anything because god said so, or because of some other reason? I've been wondering that. Not even a matter of anything being good or bad even, just, is god even allowed to do things arbitrarily? It seems as if everything has to have a purpose for some reason. What if god made birds because it thought they were pretty, and not for any grandiose reason? Maybe God really did make birds because they are pretty. That still wouldn't be arbitrary. He'd be making them because it delighted Him to do so. A purpose doesn't have to be a convoluted plan.
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Nov 30, 2016 22:09
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Arsenic Lupin posted:e: Also, just to be clear, many of the posters in this thread disagree on foundational faith issues; we agree to talk courteously not because we're all equally correct, but because courteous discussion of Christian differences is both enlightening and fun. This. This is why I have enjoyed lurking this thread, and the primary reason why I decided to actually post instead of continuing to do so.
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Nov 30, 2016 22:17
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