The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday (page 100)

humbled

Caliber, The word "perish" and "destruction/death" are the same word in the Greek. Translations can mislead us--we xJWs should know...

The tragedy of death seems to be that life is over and the opportunity for living the goodlife is done. To live well and lovingly has tremendous value in itself. For what it is worth there is a 3 minute account of the killing of a good man during the Rwanda genocide.

www.rwandanstories.org/genocide/a_good_man.html

My opinion--sudden death is to be feared if we have not understood how to live so as o meet it as this man did. His grandson had his example and so did his killers.......

Edited: nothing mitigates the death of innocent children or anyone... tragedy is tragedy.

new hope and happiness

Humbled ..." nothing mitigates the death of innocent children or anybody"

SO what justifies it?

caliber

This is the sort of false dichotomy that leads to convoluted thinking. It is dishonest and misleading.

Ham sandwiches exist. Eternal happiness is an unfulfilled promise; in other words nothing.

If I were you I would take the ham sandwich and waive the rest.

Faith, hope, and love, applied well, is deeply meaningful.

Most beautifully Shakespeare compares love to things of nature.. things of this world so that we might relate

to the depth of his feeling and love

William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

And summer is fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as “every fair from fair sometime declines.” The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever (“Thy eternal summer shall not fade...

new hope and happiness

caliber if we are to qoute Shakespeare lets end this thread with " To be or not to be that is the question"

caliber

caliber if we are to qoute Shakespeare lets end this thread with " To be or not to be that is the question"

What Hamlet is musing on is the comparison between the pain of life, which he sees as inevitable (the sea of troubles - the slings and arrows - the heart-ache - the thousand natural shocks and the fear of the uncertainty of death... the question we are all called upon to ask & chose our course

humbled

new hope, there is nothing that justifies it. Nothing.

Try to put the murdered or the drowned children in the equation of choosing "salvation, accepting jesus as your personal savior". It doesn't fit that theology.

The practical imperative to love others is far more compelling if we are to be the living arms of Jesus. If he overcame the world, then he did it not with theology but by showing us how to live lovingly in spite of it. Reach out to the broken-hearted and the ones in prison....

I do not see any justification for the horror and misery of children.

new hope and happiness

Humbled...i wish i could share your faith.

tec

Humbled, as long as I understand you correctly, my understanding of that verse regarding sin and suffering is the same as yours. Disaster and disease and suffering and death... these things happen to everyone.

Cofty, you asked some really good questions a couple of pages back. I noticed a couple days ago but haven't been around enough the last couple of days. I would like to address them, and also Zound.

I would like to ask a couple of questions though... because I do have a hard time understanding what people are demanding of God here.

Did God ever promise you that you would have a life without suffering?

Did God ever promise you that you would not die (in the flesh)? Unless His Son returns to gather his own, and shortly afterward to establish His Kingdom, in your liftime, that is.

Did He ever promise that He would stop any movements of the earth that cause these disasters? (earthquake, tsunami, flood, tornado, hurricane, ice storm, etc, etc)

Or did He promise you Life in His Son... eternal life... giving you the right to BECOME sons of God... and to inherit the Kingdom that He prepared for you?

If/when you followed Him (and Christ, because to follow Christ is to follow God)... were you not aware that people died in natural disasters? Were you not aware that Christ said there WOULD be natural disasters and wars and famines, etc? If you were, how is that a natural disaster that resulted in death was the cause of your loss of faith? Or was it more a loss of faith in that which He DID promise?

I don't ask to judge anyone. I just truly don't understand who you thought you were following... that this is even an issue.

Okay, going back to find the other questions, and a couple other comments...

Peace,

tammy

new hope and happiness

Tec...God promised me " Double Indemnity" ...i mean do you see it any other way?

alecholmesthedetective

50 pages on and not a shred of a proper answer to the OP.

2000 years and not a credible answer from theism.

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

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