Quote:
Originally Posted by zeek
Do you imagine a God who allows sentient beings to suffer unspeakable horrors in this life and then condemns the vast majority of humanity to suffering for Eternity.? Now explain how He [if you imagine God to be a He] "loves us to the uttermost." If that's how you imagine "Him" then, it seems to me that logically and morally, you need to re-imagine God, cuz your God is a contradiction and a monster.
As an example, please explain how God cared for the approximately 6 million Jews who were exterminated in Germany in the 40s. Did God consign them to hell afterwards because they were Jewish and didn't believe in Jesus? You seem to think that you have all the answers, so surely you can answer these questions. I, on the other hand, find them disturbing and perplexing and I can't answer them. So, I at the very least, need to be able to re-imagine God. But, I think I am just one of billions.
And, if your answer is that God showed that he cared by dying for them on the cross, please explain how that is comparable the suffering and death of a true mortal, since you have also professed that Jesus was omniscient and knew that he would be resurrected in three days. Even while Jesus was supposedly dead, he wasn't really in the sense of total oblivion ordinary humans face because he was in Hell preaching the Gospel to the dead there. I'm looking forward to your answers and hoping they are good ones for the sake of Trapped and me.
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zeek, great questions. It would be easy to transmogrify this into "Why does God allow suffering?" or "the problem of evil", which I know there are other threads on, although I think it's easy to differentiate the original question from that.
I'm not saying that you were going down this route, but just to clarify for those reading so we DON'T go down that route, the
existence of evil and/or suffering doesn't bother me as much, since free will and the "evil/good > moral law > moral law giver" argument satisfy me sufficiently there, at least for now.
The question is, in the middle of this suffering, how do we know God cares? How do people who go through unspeakable suffering, more than 6 hours on a cross, or a day or two of being scourged and reviled, know God cares? How does He show He cares? Does a verse reference get those enduring horrific mental, physical, emotional suffering get them through, or even just the regular suffering typical people go through with betrayals and abandonment, and is it actually backed up in their experience and not just as a mental construct that isn't real?
Your bold and caps "How do you
KNOW" is exactly where I'm at.