How holocaust survivors felt.
The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences
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new hope and happiness
Well Jgnat, i think provided of course that God can explain the entire missunderstanding then he is a God worthy of worship. And i think for many people he has done that. Of couse that is not a sattisfactory answer to Cofty nor to me. But inside i still feel comfort in a power greater than me...is that crazy?
I would answer in the affirmative YES...but ..
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Deputy Dog
Sunny
This isn't about personal suffering. Most of us here were not personally affected by the tsunami. That's not the point. 250,000 people and their families were affected. This is about them and God watching it and biblical christians inability to reconcile Gods inaction.
Yes it is! Each one of those individual people had their own personal story, and I believe God knew each one personally.
This is about them and God watching it and biblical christians inability to reconcile Gods inaction.
I have no problem reconciling it. I'm going to die on the day God chooses by the means He chooses. I'll be fine with that, no matter how or when.
Rom 8:18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
1Co 15:16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
God reconciles each person individually. I didn't know any of them (the tsunami victims), did you or cofty?
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cofty
DeputyDog - Your dismissive attitude to extraordinary levels of human tragedy is a great advert for christian theism.
It has been demonstrated again and again in this thread that there is a direct correlation between biblical faith and callous indifference.
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Simon
if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either
if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men
Good of them to include such a dlsclaimer / warning!
As Christians often love to claim: "What if you're wrong?"
You are wasting your life on a dream, throwing it away on a fairy tale.
I don't care about that though. What I do care about is the collous indifference to other people's pain and suffering.
I wish there was a hell so theists could burn in it.
I didn't know any of them (the tsunami victims), did you or cofty?
It's called empathy - we don't need to be personally affected or it to affect anyone we care about or even know.
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losingit
I believe love is God.
I don't care about the God of the Bible or any other religion anymore.
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suavojr
So after 125 pages and 63,016 views...
God is not great.
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. [...] who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?" Nietzsche
No one will stop the suffering and religious fundamentalists will continue to have this twisted moral mentality, that horrible death is good because God can fix it. So what is God waiting for? all we hear is [SILENCE]
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cofty
i think provided of course that God can explain the entire missunderstanding then he is a God worthy of worship. And i think for many people he has done that - NHAH
No I don't think he has at all. Believers deal with these sort of difficult questions in the same way we used to deal with challenges to our JW faith. We used intellectual dishonesty and surrounded ourselves with other people who think the same way.
We have seen many attempts to explain the internal contradiction at the heart of theism in this thread. Not one of them has been dismissed without careful consideration but all of them have been shown to be vacuous.
If I am missing something please share it.
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humbled
New hope and happiness,
Ebola is shredding West Africa in a bloody and terrible way. The tsunami devastated countries and obliterated hundred thousands of lives. Large scale suffering makes us broken bugs instead of valuable, beautiful human beings.
It would be a comfort to believe an all-powerful and loving Father/God watches and protects his children. But this thread looks at the comforts the Christian God offered and only finds that promises of his power and love deferred to a time after we suffer and die here on earth. Promises made for the select, or (as religion says) only the "elect".
So what convinces us that God loves us? The God powerful who works miracles?
I was at a funeral two months ago. The priest told the story of Lazarus. "Lord, if you had been here he would not have died!"
This thread amplifies that complaint to the greatest extent possible:
This thread charges that God has failed to live up to his own standards. This charge is based on the established, written qualities that have long defined the God of bible Christians. These describe God as all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful and just. Also, God is Love.
New Hope,
Perhaps we all, as Jgnat says, are grappling with a feeling that this thread doesn't fully allow for the possibility of there being some agent(s) of good in the world of suffering--that there is yet room for faith. Well, words for talking about spiritual things are inadequate, and so I'm not sure if that was any of your concern. It is a concern of mine.
I am at a loss for words before your friends' monstrous suffering. As I am when I see others' grief and suffering. If they had some comfort through faith and feel that God is helping them though their troubles--I will not tell them otherwise. Even though I do not find the explanations for suffering from christian teaching to convince or comfort.
Yet I sense force(s)-- (overworked?), often unavailable, and not all-powerful---that help us on occasion. Like an over-worked medic on a vast field of battle. Many cries for help go out yet many have no help come while some do. I have no better way to express this. How to account for the inconsistency of a benevolence that isn't routinely available when ever one desperately needs help?
What of it, considering the OP?
This thread did help me reason past the God of Christian Theism, Yet the scope of this thread cannot address the experience I -and others-- have of a transient benevolence. Does such a thing comes from within? without? or both? Does love and evil have material force that will be known someday--scientifically!!
Jgnat sorts through the sometimes scrambled ideas that shoot through these discussions and helps tidy the lines of thought. She mentions the need to undersand one another--and open dialogue.
I am here: whatever words I can find to describe my present condition of faith or lack thereof,-- if the idea of love dies with the loss of the bible's God--hope will die with it. Yep, faith, hope and love--and the greatest is love.
Maeve
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Ucantnome
I don't care about that though. What I do care about is the collous indifference to other people's pain and suffering.
I wish there was a hell so theists could burn in it.
I think Christian charity organizations have helped in these situations.