God

An agnostic dyslexic insomniac is someone who stays awake all night wondering if there really is a dog.

God Moves in a Mysterious Way
by William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

Is it significant that a back-to-front dog becomes God, while a slightly more contorted cat becomes act (probably with a small 'a')?? Must have a word with Sirius (which reminds me, on behalf of all cats, why is there no cat-star?)

'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Ummm...no. I used to thinnk he did when I was a little girl because everyone always said he did. But then I grew up and started thinking for myself and learning things people tend to just not tell you. Like the fact that there have been dozens more religions before Christianity or Catholisism and whatnot. I believe there is a supr3eme entity out there but for the most part »God« is just someone maade up by government for control. Not that people don't need God, even if he is fake, though. If people all knew that there was no God then complete chaos would probably take control. People would panic. But if there was a God I would want to sent a big »Fuck You« out there for creating a planet and then just giving up on it or never even caring. For all I know we could just be some science experiment went bad. God must be sadistic if he is really true. To create such a place of pain, agony, torture, misery, sadness, a place with so many wars and starving children. God isn't there, if he is he sure as hell isn't going to help anyone. When little kids are raped and murdered, that's when you know there is no God out there to help you.

Once or twice--well, no, not a god, actually, but a responsive spider. 1. sitting on the ground with her (then)lover, Ted, in some afternoon-filtered sunshine. Late late autumn in a part of the world where winter barely arrives --the sun is still strong on on skin and clothes are still light weight. Ted is leaving soon and they are uncertain of when they will see each other again. Ted sees a tiny spider walking on the leg of his jeans. He says to the spider, »Tie me to Belle--c'mon, I'll give you a quarter.«
Immediately, like a close up slo-motion sequence from a PBS science special: the spider launches a gossamer web thread into the air, with a kind of shower of crystal almost-sparks, the thread sails across the gap between the lovers and connects at Belle's knee. The spider walks across.

God. Many people, maybe even most, believe in one or another God. Or Gods, even. Unfortunately this phenomenon has brought some of the worst events to humanity. I mean: most wars have been started because of conflicts about what God people believe in. Wars have even been started between groups believing in the same God, but in a different way.

Believing in God also has brought many many good things. For most people it is a source of strength, of moral guidance and an inspiration for their daily actions. This has lead to many beautiful things, like humanitarian aid, decent education, health care for people that cannot take care of themselves.
Of course this 'let us call our actions as inspired by God' has also made people do horrible stuff, like claiming that condoms are leaking in order to convince people to not use them. Thus contributing to the spread of HIV, a kind of murder.

I think the important thing to remember is the 'two faces' thing about believing in a God. Two faces as in: it can lead to beautiful, but also to horrible stuff.
And it is important to remember that just claiming that your actions are inspired by your God, doesn't necessarily make them the Good Thing To Do.

Wait a minute. Before we get to Jesus, I just realized a problem with the whole idea of God Himself. You tell me that God is all-powerful and I know you believe He's good. But then, what about evil? An all-powerful and all‑good God wouldn't permit evil to exist, and even if it did exist temporarily, He would destroy it. If God exists—the God you believe in-then why is there evil?
That's a good question. Actually, Jesus has a lot to do with our answer to this problem. But for the moment, let's handle it just on the logical level.

What we Christians must show is that the proposition »God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good« is logically compatible with the proposition »There is evil in the world.« One way to do this is to show that there is some third proposition that is compatible with the first and that implies the second. In other words, we can show that A is compatible with B, no matter how incompatible they at first appear, if we can show that C is compatible with A and implies B.

What I'd like to suggest as that third statement is, »It would be morally better for God to create a world containing morally free beings than for Him to create a world without them.«


I don't see how that ties the first two together at all.

I don't blame you. It isn't immediately apparent how this works. Let's look into this proposition, »It would be morally better for God to create a world containing morally free beings than for Him to create a world without them,« and see just what is implied in it.

The key question is, 'What is a morally free being?" The answer is that a morally free being is a being that is free to do either good or evil at any given time—nothing forces him to do one thing or the other. This means it is always possible for a morally free being to do evil.


So, if it is truly better for God to create a world with morally free beings, then it is better for God to create a world with the possibility of evil than a world without that possibility.


Okay, but why is it better to be morally free than not?


You tell me. You're morally free. That means people can praise you for doing good and blame you for doing evil. A hammer isn't morally free. If someone uses it to do something evil, no one condemns the hammer; if someone uses it to do something good, no one praises the hammer, either. Now, which would you prefer: to be yourself, capable of right and wrong and so susceptible to praise or blame, or to be the hammer, capable of neither right nor wrong, and so susceptible to neither praise nor blame?


Okay, I’d rather be myself than a hammer. I’ll grant it's better to be morally free than not.

Good. Now, if God is morally good, and if it is better to create a world with morally free beings than without them, then if God creates anything He should create a world with morally free beings. But such a world is a world in which evil is possible. That means that our first proposition (Gods exists and is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good) is compatible with a third (It is better to create a world with morally free beings than without them) which entails at least the possibility of our second proposition (There is evil in the world). This means God's existence and the reality of evil are not logically contradictory to each other. They are compatible.

But why doesn't God destroy all evil and prevent its returning?

He could, of course, but in so doing He would be destroying morally free creatures. And God could have created a world in which evil was impossible; but then He would have to have created a world without morally free creatures. The only alternative to a morally good world that contains evil is not a morally good world that contains no evil but a morally neutral world that contains neither good nor evil. Such a world, of course, wouldn't contain us. So which do you prefer: a world that contains you, or a world that doesn't?

A world that contains me. I see your point. I guess God and evil are compatible. But just why would God have permitted evil? What purpose is there in it?

First of course it was the only way to create a morally good world. But what was His purpose for evil? Christians believe evil serves a number of purposes, all consistent with God's plan for the world and, especially, for individual people.

One purpose is to occasion certain moral goods that could never come about without evil. One can never forgive someone without someone's doing something evil, right? Forgiveness is one of the highest moral goods, but it is a moral good that could never come about without evil. One could not have mercy without someone's doing something evil that deserved punishment. One cannot have compassion for those who suffer without someone's suffering, and compassion is also a very high virtue. These and other goods all depend for their existence and expression on the existence of evil. So God permits evil in part so that greater goods can occur than could ever occur without it.


Christianity says there is one even higher good that could never have occurred without evil: God's voluntary sacrifice of Himself to bear punishment for us. Think what kind of act gets the highest praise among men. Isn't it when someone voluntarily sacrifices his life in order to save the lives of others? Such self‑sacrifice is a tremendous good. The greatest such sacrifice was when God sacrificed His life in the Person of Jesus Christ to save the lives of all who believe in Jesus.


This doesn't make sense to me. Why was such a sacrifice necessary? What do you mean by God's having saved the lives of those who believe in Jesus? What did they need to be saved from?

They needed to be saved from two kinds of evil: sin and suffering. Christianity says all men are sinners-we all do evil. The possibility of our doing evil is entailed in our being morally free. The reality of it we see in our own lives and in the lives of others.

Justice requires that evil be punished. Punishment involves suffering. But suffering is a kind of evil—an evil of one kind brought on by another. So the problem for God was how to satisfy the demands of His justice and, at the same time, to deliver people from suffering His punishment upon evil. This He did by becoming man in Jesus and then suffering for our sins in our place.

Please tell me why God allowed over 6000 innocent people to be murdered on September 11, 2001?

Answer?

I don’t know.

Where was God?

I don’t know.

When Leslie Weatherhead, a minister in London during the Second World War, was asked by a member in his congregation where God was when his son was killed in a bombing raid, Weatherhead replied, »I guess he was where he was when his son was killed.«

And where was that?

I don’t know.

Isn’t »I don’t know« too ambiguous? Isn’t »I don’t know« an unconvincing way to convince young people Christianity is true?

Actually, »I don’t know« confirms one critical truth about Christianity…it’s a mystery!

Jesus loves us, right?

Of course.

So if he loves us, he protects us, right?

If he loves us…he is with us.

Jesus can heal, can’t he? And perform miracles?

Of course. Just not very often.

Why?

I don’t know.

What about God’s will?

My youth director says we’re supposed to seek God’s will. There are lots of verses in the Bible that tell us to do God’s will, aren’t there? God does have a will, right?

Absolutely.

Trouble is God’s will is not like a to-do list. It’s more like an undecipherable code. The Bible definitely gives us some clues about the code of God’s will, which means we can figure out part of it; but, because it’s God, we will never crack the code.

Clues?

Yeah, like, follow me, serve me, love me, live by my commandments, point people to me.

That’s it? Just follow me, serve me, love me and trust me?

That’s about it.

What do you mean »that’s about it?«

You don’t want to know.

Yes I do.

We get a cross.

Cross????? What does that mean?

I don’t know.

But God does heal people, doesn’t he?

Certainly.

And miracles do happen, don’t they.

Right.

So we can count on God helping us, can’t we?

We can count on God being God.

Which means…??

I don’t know.

And what does that mean?

It means we can trust God if we lost someone in the WTC or if they survived.

It means we can trust God when we have cancer and when we’re healed.

We can trust God if we survive a natural disaster or if we don’t.

We can trust God when we get a glimpse of Divine will and when we don’t.

We can trust God in the answers and the questions, in the good and the bad, in the light and the dark, when we’re winning and when we’re losing.

We can trust God even when the Truth doesn’t answer all our questions or leaves us with even more questions.

And, most importantly, just beyond our »I don’t know’s,« Jesus is waiting with open arms to snuggle us in the mystery of his love.

Aged three, I was spotted with my mouth open as my revered five-year old cousin (just back from Scripture class in kindergarten) told me in lordly fashion »God is everywhere, you know, he is even in that wheelbarrow...«. No doubt the reason why one is nearer God's heart (and backside, sitting in that wheelbarrow) in a garden than anywhere else on earth.