From: mlee@post.RoyalRoads.ca (Malcolm Lee)
Subject: Re: 1/3/92   God's Promise in Hebrews 9: 12
Organization: Royal Roads Military College, Victoria, B.C.
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 17:01:10 GMT


In article <1993Jan6.024339.855@netcom.com>, bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig) writes:
|> mlee@post.RoyalRoads.ca (Malcolm Lee) writes:
|> >
|> >God is not to blame for all the evils of this world.  Man was given dominion over
|> >the Earth, to use and abuse and we saw fit.  This is called free will.  And by
|> >the same power of that free will, we can choose to follow God's ways or not.  
|> >Simple as that.  We cannot take credit for the good things that we do because it
|> >is God who gave us our talents with which to use and abuse.  He gives us the
|> >capability to do good works.  Again, it is by our free will that we choose how to
|> >use our talents.
|> 
|> Let's say you write a long and complicated computer program, and set
|> it to do its thing.  It succeeds amazingly, and you claim all the
|> praise for having written it.  But then it crashes and eats a lot of
|> data.  Can you blame this crash on the program, saying that you gave
|> it everything it needed to work properly so you're free from blame?
|> 
|> Similarly, God creates human beings and sets the to do their thing.
|> They do all sorts of wonderful things, and God claims all the praise
|> for having created them.  But then some of them start causing needless
|> suffering among others, and generally doing nasty things.  Can God
|> blame this on humans, saying that he gave us everything we needed to
|> do wonderful things so he's free from blame?
|> 
|> No matter whether the computer program or the computer programmer is
|> at fault, there still exists the problem of the crash.  The mere fact
|> that it crashed indicates that the program doesn't have the ability to
|> always do what you judge is proper behavior, even though the computer
|> was just executing instructions sequentially, just as it normally
|> does.  Therefore it's up to the programmer to intervene and make
|> things work the way he wants them to work.  If he doesn't, then he's
|> obviously to blame for the crash.
|> 
|> No matter whether God or humans are at fault, there still exists the
|> problem of suffering.  The mere fact that there is suffering in the
|> world indicates that we humans don't have the ability to always do
|> what God judges is proper behavior, even though we just live our lives
|> in a manner that seems to be okay often enough.  Therefore it's up to
|> God to intervene and make things work the way he wants them to work.
|> If he doesn't, then he's obviously to blame for the suffering.
|> 
|> My point is that there's a lot of suffering in the world, and the very
|> fact that God hasn't come down to end it clearly indicates that he
|> CAN'T or he WON'T.  If he CAN'T, then why should we put all our faith
|> in him to solve the world's problems?  If he WON'T, then why should we
|> worship him at all?
|> 
|> >    And why bring God into the picture, well, he's the one who drew the picture
|> >in the first place.
|> 
|> Yes, but he died, didn't you hear?  He died shortly after he created
|> the universe.  That's the only way to explain his absence throughout
|> history.
|> 
|> -- 
|> _/_/_/  Brian Kendig                             Je ne suis fait comme aucun
|> /_/_/  bskendig@netcom.com                de ceux que j'ai vus; j'ose croire
|> _/_/                            n'etre fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent.
|>   /  Nolite te bastardes     Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre.
|>  /    carborundorum.                                             -- Rousseau

I hear what you're saying.  We are not computers, however.  Computers are
programmed to act and perform in a predictable way.  God never intended us to be
robots.  That's what the angels are.  He wanted us to have free will to do as we
choose, whether it be for good or evil.  

And yes, there is suffering in this world because of Man's mismanagement of the
world's resources.  Proof of this is the fact that there are so many who are
wealthy beyond stink and many more who are poorer than poor.  Man is to blame for
this suffering.  But, I agree with you that God should do something about all of
this suffering.  You have to understand, however, that God made a promise to let
Man have dominion of this earth until Christ's second coming.  It is not until
Jesus Christ returns to this world that he will take over and make all things
right once again.  Read about the Thousand Year Reign in Revelations.

But until then, we will continue to suffer under the whims of dictators and 
uncaring, self-seeking politicians regardless of which government they belong to.
My faith rests in Christ Jesus.  

God loves, Man kills.