BLM discussion

I’m guessing you don’t belong to a religion, also if Christ was God then He has every right to command us

I also do not base my beliefs solely in the Bible but the theology of the church

I was raised Christian. I even went to a Christian school where along with math and English classes we also had a Bible class.

One year we even memorized some Catholic catechism. "God does not cause evil but he allows it" stuff like that.

And do you remember why he allows evil?

in the bible it says we're the human race.

So you'd probably quote some verse like "Faith without works is dead" therefore you can't actually worship Jesus and go to heaven while also doing a lot of bad in the world.

But that's not what I mean. I mean you can live your whole life as a killer and rapist and then on your deathbed accept Jesus and go to heaven.

You can also live your whole life as a good person, and then on your deathbed someone tells you about Jesus, and if you reject Jesus then you go to hell forever.

So it's about satisfying a vain God's ego. It has nothing to do with being a good person.

Theodicy is actually a very deep and difficult subject. Theologians have written entire books trying to answer this question. Don't think you can sum it up in a forum post.

blm is racist

Well I do think it’s important to point out that, again, Gods way are not our ways, and He knows all perfectly and is the very embodiment of perfection. It may seem unfair, vain, or silly to us, but that is simply because our limited human reason does not have the capacity to handle the totality of things. The reason that evil exists is this: God made us with a choice, either to follow Him or to reject Him. God is goodness, therefore to reject him there must be an alternative to goodness, this the existence of evil. Without a choice we are nothing but robots basically, programmed to do Gods bidding without any choice in the matter. That is the reason, so that we could be truly be free and real

Yeah ik I can’t, but I enjoy these types of things lol

I can imagine your BLM Yelp review:

The racism was annoying, but they had free cookies, so they're ok I guess. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Lol nice^

Free will is an easy answer for evil that manifests from our actions.

But, for example, natural disasters are very difficult to explain. An earthquake half way around the world causes a tsunami to hit some poor village killing a thousand children.

But sure, "God works in mysterious ways, it does no good trying to think about it" is a good way to... well, not answer it, but it's a good way to not think about it

Well in my view such disasters come from original sin (a choice btw) Have you ever read any Chesterton or Aquinas?

Also I find it hilarious how a BLM discussion turned into a theological debate

Well, still, someone has to design the tectonic plates that cause earthquakes, someone has to design how natural disasters work, and then someone has to let them happen randomly to innocent people.

Let's try to look at it from a different angle. Let's say I have an airplane, and I like to fly around and drop 100 little bombs out of it. I do it at random, so mostly I bomb empty ocean, deserts, mountains... but every once in a while I bomb a children's hospital.

Am I a good person?

If normal values of good and evil don't apply to God, then what does it mean to be good or evil in the first place? And why would you worship a God you don't believe is good.

I see where you are coming from, and I actually have wrestled with this problem before. Here’s the thing... God may have designed everything in the universe, and he has foreseen all that will happen, that is obvious. But, simply because he designed it does not mean He is the being misusing it. Take a rifle for example, it is utterly neutral, but it can fall into either good or bad hands. Your analogy about bombing children is flawed in one way: God may have designed the plane, he might have made the bombs, he may have created the tectonic plates, but WE are the ones who have crashes all of these things into utter ruin and destruction, we are the ones who made the wrong choice

Also we aren’t exactly innocent children or innocent mice,

You are viewing the world like it is a piece of clockwork, it’s not

If you are by definition 100% knowledgeable and 100% powerful (i.e. if you're God) then it is clockwork.