/christianity/ - Christian Theology & Philosophy

This is a common meme within atheism, that bad things shouldn't happen if God is real. God is good, and what he makes is good, but he created beings with the choice of loving him and doing good or evil, that is where evil comes from, because he wants beings to choose to love him and to choose good.

God could easily make us good robots and remove evil and suffering, but that wouldn't fit the purpose of why he created beings. It's not his job to remove evil, suffering, or challenges from our lives.

I object to premise one that an all good God couldn't allow for the existence of evil. The Christian God of the Bible is omnibenevolent but allows evil actions even for his deliberate purposes, not just passively. See the story of Joseph in the Old Testament: his brothers sold him out of jealousy but Joseph ended up positioned for a higher purpose through his slavery.

I would then refer to an expert like William lane Craig for a full argument

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/the-problem-of-evil/

>>11255

A couple schools of thought here and probably more I cannot aware of:

1. "Evil" is relative without God. Morality is subjective without any kind of foundation.

2. Free will is good. Therefore for God to be good freewill must exist which means evil must exist as well.

TL;DR: This question comes from a lack of understanding on who God is, what He wants with man, and what is evil. God is the omni-benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient BEING not force. God wants man to love Him as He loves man. Evil is not a thing but a lack of good, similar to dark and cold.

In honor of Christmas: there was a boy who wanted a BB gun. His father, wanting to make the boy happy, got it for him. Come Christmas morning, the boy was thrilled to final get his own BB gun. Knowing that BB guns can be dangerous, the father locked in up in a safe and put it on the top shelf; never to be taken down.

Meanwhile, another father did something similar. Not wanting to lock up the BB gun, he instead told his son that if the boy ever touched it, he would be kicked out of the house.

Who has it worst: the boy who has a toy that he can never touch or see; the boy who has now has a toy that can only condemn him; or the boy who never got the toy?

Honestly, the answer doesn't matter. The point it that there is little difference between not having a gift and having a gift but not being able to use it.

Another example, one book is placed in a child's hand and another is placed on a table. Now for a time both that child and the table hold the book, but eventually the child puts down his book on the ground and leaves. Does this mean the child is weaker than the table? Of course not. Leave a child alone with almost anything and you will find how much stronger - and more destructive, they are. He chose to stop holding the book, maybe it was suppertime, and left.

Omnipotent is often misunderstood, especially when applied to God. An omnipotent force is something that has no limits while an omnipotent being (IE God) is someone that has no external limits. Gravity did not change, the book did not change, the table did not change, but the child did change. The child's change was not because of external forces but because of an internal decision. The table on the other hand will not change except by external force. An omnipotent force indeed can never change what it does, but an omnipotent being can change what he does.

(Before you say will maybe the child was force because someone knocked him out or something. Obviously the child is not omnipotent in the real universe; hence the use of a smaller universe for an example.)

Going back before the beginning, you have God, all knowing/all powerful/all loving. This means He knows and loves mankind, despite that fact that man does yet exist (yet AKA time does exist either but that's neither here nor there). Being all good, He creates a universe, planet, and people that are also all good. Now He wants man to love Him as He loves them. This means two things one, man's love must not be forced and man's must have the option to not love Him.

The first is accomplished with free-will. Nobody can force omnipotent God to do anything, so nothing must be able to force man to love. This is where an omnipotent being's internal limits come in. (No, I'm not saying that what we will we do. We are fallen and thereby slaves to our own sinful naturals. We are not omnipotent so other people or factors and stop or at least temper our actions.)

The second part is man must have the opportunity to sin. This was first given by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If God had not made such a tree, man could never sin, never not choose Him. This is the same as having the BB gun locked away. Since then God has allowed sin. Why? The alternative would be God smites everyone who sins. Imagine someone says the smallest of lies (like I'm fine) and immediately lightening rains from heaven and vaporizes the person. We would all make a point to follow God, not because of love (his objective) but because of fear.

God is not cold to our plight nor is He lackadaisical concerning evil. He came down Himself, Emmanuel, and took the penalty for our sin and evil and then offered us a way to have for free. He took the sin, He sent the Helper, and He did all the work. All we offer is our sins. Afterwards we work for Him, not for salvation nor for repayment. Just as a good deed compels a 'thank you', God's actions compels us to serve Him. He will someday judge and repay all the evil done on the Earth, but He will not do it such that it will cause people to follow Him solely out of fear.

Read Job, "problem" solved.

omniscient:

They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind:

Jeremiah 19:5

omnipotent:

And YHWH was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

Judges 1:19

>>11270

Omniscient: "Came to mind" is the same of "I thought of it"; it is not the same as "I know of". I know about murder and about random people on the street, that doesn't mean I think about murdering random people on the street.

Also the style is a literary device of repetition with increase value to emphasize a point. President Lincoln used the same thing in the Gettysburg Address to signify the importance of the men who died. "We can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow." God is saying I didn't command you (formal want), I didn't say it (informal want), or even think it (personal want).

Omnipotent:

Good old story: You come to a town completely wrecked. You ask what happened and are told "There was an sudden earthquake, and then the fires." As you explore town, you see fire trucks along the streets, damaged. You ask what happened. "They were caught in the earthquake."

You now know that the person is a liar. He said the earthquake was before the fires, but the fire trucks would only be out in the street for a fire. If they were caught in the streets during the earthquake, then the fires had to be before the earthquake.

What actually happened was there were some fires. When the fire department went stop them, there was a sudden earthquake. The fire trucks were stopped and the fire spread because a major problem.

So when you asked what happened you got a summary of the major problems, earthquake then fires which where not listed in chronological order of when they started but of chronological order of when they became major problems.

The point. Human speech is ambiguous by nature. Do not be quick to jump to the conclusion of lying or mistakes based on summaries. Yes, this is a two edged sword in that anyone can interpret something to smooth out every wrinkle or crooked every path.

This whole section is a summary of several battles fought throughout the land of Canaan. Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the valleys. Why? Because they had chariots of iron. Why are chariots of iron important? Doesn't say.

My interpretation would be considering who the Israelis are, it probably the Judah chickening out. The same thing that their fathers did coming into the promise land in the first place.

Your obviously is that God was not able.

I don't think your interpretation is reasonable, how could someone, God, who taken out mightier armies have trouble with iron chariots. If your reply is that the bible is unreasonable so it's fine, then it will fall under both "two wrongs don't make a right" and "circular reasoning" problems.

>>11278

-mostly because it reminds that any situation could have more factors that we have yet to take into account. Just to clarify.

>>11279

Missing factors or not, we can still determine whether a conclusion is reasonable. If it wasn't for the ambiguity of speech, we could determine if it was logical too.

>>11281

I know hes a muslim but it is applicable to the christian paradigm

>>11282

>>11255

This is a pretty shallow argument, I believe C.S Lewis initially had this thought when he was an atheist, but then he started thinking deeper about it and attempted to define "evil" or bad things we experience in relation to each other, then the issue of free will and the natural order comes into place and he gives us this example:

>In a game of chess you can make certain arbitrary concessions to your opponent, which stand to the ordinary rules of the game as miracles stand to the laws of nature. You can deprive yourself of a castle, or allow the other man sometimes to take back a move made inadvertently. But if you conceded everything that at any moment happened to suit him — if all his moves were revocable and if all your pieces disappeared whenever their position on the board was not to his liking — then you could not have a game at all. So it is with the life of souls in a world: fixed laws, consequences unfolding by causal necessity, the whole natural order, are at once limits within which their common life is confined and also the sole condition under which any such life is possible. Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.

The answer to this question has already been resolved by Lewis many years ago, I urge you to give his explanation a read.

>>11262

breddy gud. Only problem: God is immutable; He does not change. He is not capable of change. He possesses within Himself the entirety of His knowledge and will, and therefore, does not change. He is, however, dynamic. He is capable of defining different rules and priorities in different times according to His eternal will.

For instance, children cannot drink but adults change. Just because children become able to drink once they turn 21 does not mean the law changed. The law was dynamic – it meant one thing for some people at some time and a different thing for different people at a different time.

>>11255

The Problem of Evil doesn't make sense given its false assumption that Evil exists as its own metaphysical force. Evil is simply the negation of Good, which does exist as its own metaphysical force. It's a crucial distinction to make and therefore, the Problem of Evil falls apart. It's basically as simple as that.

Removing suffering would require removing evil. Removing evil would require removing us. God loves us and does not want to do that, so instead He has given us a path to be freed from sin, so that we can exist without evil in the resurrection. God could have created beings who were totally incapable of sin, but those beings wouldn't be us, and God loves us as people, not merely as members of an abstract class.

Well think of it this way. Let’s say you are really in infatuated or in love with someone and a person is trying to tell you that this particular person you’re so infatuated or in love with is going to do something bad to you, you are more than likely dismiss this person and accuse this person of either being wrong or a liar so then let’s say this person helps you see the mind of your person of love or admiration and it is revealed that it is true that the person of your love or admiration is thinking about doing something bad to you, you would argue that these are mere whims and will never be acted upon so then this only leaves the person of your love or admiration to act upon it in order to convince you otherwise. Also sometimes God uses evil like a chemist mixing chemicals or a chess or go player using certain strategies to in order to obtain a certain outcome

Well think of it this way. Let’s say you are really in infatuated or in love with someone and a person is trying to tell you that this particular person you’re so infatuated or in love with is going to do something bad to you, you are more than likely dismiss this person and accuse this person of either being wrong or a liar so then let’s say this person helps you see the mind of your person of love or admiration and it is revealed that it is true that the person of your love or admiration is thinking about doing something bad to you, you would argue that these are mere whims and will never be acted upon so then this only leaves the person of your love or admiration to act upon it in order to convince you otherwise. Also sometimes God uses evil like a chemist mixing chemicals or a chess or go player using certain strategies to in order to obtain a certain outcome

I think we do a disservice when we talk to non-Christians about the problems of evil and suffering by giving the impression that they're not supposed to be in anguish about it or we never have a hard time with it. Our job as apologists is really just to explain how the situation is compatible with the Christian worldview.

>>11458

It's a strange kind of thinking that makes evil like a dust that blows around creating havoc.

>>11255

A Calvinist answer to that question, in a nutshell… Evil exists because it serves a function, and there will come a time when it's done away with entirely.

<The existence of evil allows God to demonstrate a fuller range of his attributes.

<If Adam had never fallen, we'd still be back in Eden. That's not ideal. God has something better for those who love him.

From Romans 9:

>You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?”

>On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it?

>Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

>What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

>And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,

>>11255

I just happened by for fun and saw this. >>11262's response isn't horrible but it gets really strange with the gift analogy. Let me clarify something: Sin doesn't exist. Sin is not a thing. Evil does not exist. Evil is not a thing. Technically, Good does not exist either. Rather, God exists, and He is Good.

Now, here's the thing. Once Man was given free will, for the reasons that the other post mentioned, Man now had the choice to choose God/Good or NotGod/NotGood, the latter of which the whole world call Bad/Evil and Christians call Sin. Even though the ideas given to us by the Greek and Hebrew are phrases like, "Missing the Mark," so we think, "Oh, sin is when you don't do what God said," we're entirely missing the point. We're assuming that "the mark" is God's commandments. This is a wrong assumption. Rather, the Mark is God.

This is why Christ /had/ to come redeem our flesh. Because of what Adam did, everyone of His lineage is defaulted towards choosing NotGod because NotGod /always/ self-sacrifices for the Greatest Good (Which is defined by the omnipotent Being because He's omnipotent. It's a byproduct of being all-wise and knowing both the entire future and the entire past simultaneously).

In Christ we are given a downpayment of what is to come: A totally new fleshly body that is no longer on the Default-Sin setting. Until then, our downpayment is the Holy Spirit who strengthens us to live doing Godly things (Good/Loving/SelfSacrificingForTheGreatestGood) rather than UnGodly things (Anything that is the opposite of Godly).

So, "the problem of evil," is built on the false premise that Evil exists. Rather, it doesn't exist at all. In praxis, it's an adjective, never a noun.

Minor point: The book of Romans blows open the doors of salvation to anyone who clings to God as much as they can (Romans 1 and 2). This is because the image of God inside of humanity is not completely obliterated, just maligned by sin. This is also why /everyone/ is guilty. Literally /everyone/ has the ability to reach out to God. Sadly, only a few do, primarily because the road is entirely paved in Self-Sacrifice (Luke 9:23, etc.).

>>11255

All of it really goes back to free will. All evil within the world originates with man. But why doesn't God immediately punish evil people? It's because he is merciful and gives us the chance to turn away from our misdeeds. God gives us our lifetime to realize our sinfulness and turn to him. Our free will is a luxury afforded to us out of God's mercy. Some people abuse that luxury.

Here's one fedora-tipping conclusion that I've come to God isn't perfect. He may be perfect from the perception of humanity, but, in "God's world" (After all, who "created" God?), he isn't perfect. So, whatever "Evils" God has to deal with on his level, we have to as well due to it all "trickling down". The only difference is that he created us, so he does have a greater understand of how things work than we do, and is trying to bring us up to his level. Except, the only problem with that is that it's also implied that humanity is one of the most dumbfounding creations the God has ever made, with the Kikes (Originally suppose to be God's servants, and nothing else) screwing it all up beyond belief, which lead to God making Christ his exit clause and having the final say on the matter.

>>12109

Well that's super not the Bible… Where'd you get that my man?

>>12116

That's the impression that I got when reading Genesis and Job; and the part about the Kikes from Joshua and the rest of the OT from Isaiah to the end (With the exception of Jonah and Daniel).

>>12117

That's fascinating for sure… But kinda problematic from a variety of perspectives.

Like, philosophically, it super breaks down.

But, staying Biblically, Psalm 145:3 throws a huge wrench at you as it says, "Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised, And His greatness is unsearchable." That latter part, is literally translated, "not-abletobesearched," and this phrase is used because the Hebrews didn't have a word for Infinite. So, when they wanted to say something was Infinite, that's how they'd say it. So, if God's greatness is literally infinite, then good luck claiming that He makes mistakes.

In the places where it says things like, "God regretted that He made man," (Gen. 6), the problem is the English, not the Hebrew. In the English, the closest we can get is the word "regret" and we regret things when we make mistakes, so we assume God's acknowledging a mistake that He made. The problem is that the Hebrew phrase actually speaks of "to sigh." So, you know our good ol' meme *exasperated sigh*? That's basically what the Hebrew says. It's saying that God experiences emotions and let out a sigh of exasperated grief. Now, often, we're grieved when we make mistakes. But, God is compassionate, so He's grieved when other people make mistakes, even if He hasn't made one. So, as the entire earth was spiraling down into sin, God expressed grief at man's sin, even though He didn't make any mistakes.

I'll say this another way: God knew the flood would happen before He made Adam. Yet, He chose to make Adam and Eve because He saw it was better to have the 1% (or whatever % of humans it is that choose self-sacrifice) who chose Love (defined by the Cross as self-sacrifice, not emotions which are run by neurochemicals) exist than to have 0% exist.

Furthermore, I'm somewhat convinced that God actually values free will, even though I don't, so He values that 100% of people have free will even though only 1% (if that) will end up using it for the sake of Love(Self-Sacrifice).

Thoughts my man?

>>12109

You said it right, only an outsider fedora could come up with garbage like this

Also

>OT Israel

>Kikes

Pick one

>>12119

>But, staying Biblically, Psalm 145:3 throws a huge wrench at you as it says

Not really since Psalms is a collection of hymns and songs. Not history or "lessons" like the rest of the Old Testament.

The problem of evil is an emotional objection, not a serious argument.

>>11255

>>12540

What about natural disasters? Say an earthquake and 100K people dying to it crushed by rubble.

Did God cause that earthquake?

Are the effects of that "evil"? What if the rubble crushes your leg, and you die in pain of dehydration over 3 days.. Is that evil?

>>12559

That's natural evil. The tragedy is a result of the fall, even though no moral agent caused it in particular.

Read Mere Christianity

The person saying sin does not exist is not only wrong, but exceedingly dangerous. Sin, that is doing what God has forbidden through his commandments or his Church, is absolutely real. If you die in a state of mortal sin, you go to hell. If you have committed a mortal sin and have not confessed it, or been absolved through either extreme unction or the exceedingly unlikely chance of begging forgiveness, then you are in a state of mortal sin.

The question of evil is more difficult to answer. Humans are capable of committing evil, that is sin, on their own, but much of it is done at the behest/suggestion of demons. Demons roam about the earth seeking souls which they can devour. They have their own free will, though are kept on a tight leash by God. There are angels and demons all around us, though we can not see them unless God wants us to.

We do not deserve to have evil removed from the earth. Humans had the chance with Adam and Eve. It is due to their original sin that evil exists on earth. Our defense against this is to live holly lives and fight against sin through the grace of God ("Put on the armor of God"). We must believe, adore, trust and love God, which includes not breaking his rules (sin) in order to pass from this valley of tears into Heaven. We can go to confession for our own sins, but we must not do it disingenuously.

>>12540

<evil was not created

Isaiah 45:7

>I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

>>11255

>solving evil

Define evil first. If you mean Psalms 10:17

>The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

And Psalms 26:5

>I have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked.

The "wicked" are "evil doers". So "evil doers" "shall be turned into hell" but the key part is that they "forget" God. You can't forget something you never knew so by definition every person in hell at some point knew God in some fashion. Like for example having faith and being able to hear God in the first place like in romans 10:16-17. Or being able to please God like in Hebrews 11:6. God created Satan, and everything else. The living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Creator of everything and owns everything by extension see Jeremiah 27:5 or Genesis 1:1 for examples…

>>11255

>How would /christianity/ solve the problem of evil?

To answer OP see Romans 12:19-21

>Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

>Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

>Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

Let Jesus take vengence in the book of Revelation, and not us. Also see >>11268 the book of Job