EmperorofIceCream

Join Date 09/2004

A Challenge to the 'Religious' of JU

How would you ease their pain?

I'm tired of you, you so-called 'religious'. You prate your pious nothings, endlessly quoting scripture you don't comprehend and expounding dogmas you have no understanding of. As I've said many times, your gods are delusions and your faith no more than over-anxious self-deceit.

So now I'm come to challenge you with a question. Christians may answer it. Muslims may answer it. Jews may answer it. Those who adhere to sects which are subsidiary branches of those three great streams of faith may answer it. Agnostics and unbelievers may answer it also, if they can. But primarily this question is directed toward Christians, Muslims and Jews - because those are the three peoples of the Book.

What real comfort has your faith to offer those who suffer innocently?

Let me tell you a story about my friend Susan, who died long before I ever left England and whom I loved dearly. Susan was a highly intelligent, thoughtful, able young woman. She had a keen mind and a quick understanding. At age 17 she was diagnosed with malignant tumours of the brain, that would certainly have killed her if not treated very aggressively. She was told that the surgery she was to undergo would save her life - which it did. She was not told that it would leave her deaf as a stone. She was not told that it would leave her with most of her face paralyzed and frozen into a drooling leer.

She died fifteen years later, her life (in one sense) a blighted wasteland of opportunites denied her and possibilities unrealized, having suffered continual pain throughout what remained of her time here.

There's endless sadness in the world, endless pain and misey, cruelty and suffering. Except for the fortunate few (among whom I count myself when compared to, say, a Darfurian, or a street-kid in Bogota, or some poor dumb brute tormented so that the eyes of women won't be irritated by their cosmetics), the unfortunate majority suffer endlessly in countless ways. How would you comfort them?

The Jesus of the New Testament didn't preach to the sick, he healed them. He didn't preach to the sinner, or tell the sinful man that his misery was his own fault and entirely to be expected - even when that was true. He forgave the sin. He didn't tell the harlot that her stoning was justified, or God's wrath; he defended her, rebuked those who would have killed her, and changed her life through the example of a love that actually did something other than talk.

Which is why I still like and respect the man, even if I no longer believe in the Divinity.

I left the Church because I grew weary of sermons that were no more than condemnation "uttered in love". I left because I was weary of people only too willing to follow the latest 'teaching' but not at all willing to do what their faith required of them - while knowing and saying all the right things and behaving exactly as if they were devout followers of their 'Lord'. Perfect replicas, with less life and faith in them than a rock or a tree.

So I don't want to hear what the Bible says. I already know what the Bible says, in infinitely greater depth and infinitely greater understanding than any of you will ever attain to. Not because I'm smarter than you or more holy than you or wiser than you. But because I read Scripture with my eyes open and you read it with your eyes shut. Because I read it wanting to comprehend what it says to me, while you read it the other way around - telling it what it says in order to confirm your base prejudice and low opinions as a faith worthy of the name. Whited sepulchres, all of you, full of filth you call praise and abominations you call worship.

I want to know what resources there are in your faith, your beliefs, with which you would comfort my friend Susan; or the man who loses everything through no fault of his own; or that man I knew at work last year, whose only daughter died in a car crash, just before Christmas, while driving the car he had given her as a gift for her sixteenth birthday. It sounds like a bad joke. But it happened.

By all means, use Scripture to illuminate your argument. But don't substitute Scripture in place of an argument. I don't expect any of the so-called 'teachers' I've encountered in JU to be remotely capable of satisfying these requirements and answering my question. But if you can I'll acknowledge and respect it. But I'm not such a fool as to think that, when I have conclusively demonstrated that all of you know nothing, understand nothing, and can do nothing, I'll receive similar courtesy from you.

C'est la vie, c'est la guerre.

I shall post my thoughts on this matter tomorrow (probably) as a response here. Why don't you do likewise?

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I am not responding to answer the question, just saying thanks to you for asking it. It is a question I have often thought about asking but for the way to ask it. I will be very interested to see what responses you get.

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I am not responding to answer the question, just saying thanks to you for asking it.

Alrighty then. And you're welcome.

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What real comfort has your faith to offer those who suffer innocently?

I would venture to say that comfort can be found in the fact that it's always been the lot of the innocent to suffer -at least right now anyway. But then I don't know if I'm qualified to answer as I'm not really one of the 'Religious' of JU either.

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If I understand your challenge here, you want to know how we have lived our beliefs, not just how we've preached or accepted them.

From the standpoint of purely temporal need, my particular brand of Christianity does pretty well. We are not just taught to sit in church once a week and be "edified" by a sermon, or even the spirit. We are taught that The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan of action, not just words.

Every week in our meetings, opportunities to help each other, and our communities are announced by any member who knows the details. Anything from who needs help moving to civic events. Those who want to get involved schedule their time so they can help.

We don't have a preacher or minister whose job it is to take care of the members of the congragation. Our "Home Teaching" and "Visiting Teaching" programs give each of us the opportunity to fill that roll. As home teachers, men of the congregation (usually assigned in twos) visit the families assigned. One day a month they go to teach a lesson, but that is just the beginning of this calling. Home Teachers are supposed to get to know the family, know there needs and challenges so they can be in a position to help (or find the resources available to bring help). Visiting teachers are the women's program to do the same thing. Because of this program, one or two people aren't trying to fill the needs of hundreds, many are there to fill the needs of a few.

We believe it is important for recipients to maintain their dignity and take an active part in their own welfare. Able bodied recipients are expected to provide some kind of service to "work off the aid". This service is anything from working in the church yard to volunteering with local charities and civic events (kind of a pay it forward thing). It usually doesn't matter what kind of service it is, or who it is rendered to, as long as it is discussed between the recipient and the bishop.

Our leadership ask us to fast on the first Sunday of the month. The fast is supposed to last 24 hours, or two meals. We are then asked to donate the equivolent of what those two meals would have cost. Fasting helps us in a few ways. In this context, it reminds us of what it is like to go without food, so we can better emapthise with those live with hunger pangs far longer than 24 hours at a time. The money we donate goes to the LDS Welfare System.

Through this system, bishops can authorize money for rent, food, and other needs of the people within the ward boundaries (no, it isn't just for members). It is often the home teachers, not the people in need who are the first to inform the bishop of problems the families are facing. That is the welfare system at the local level.

At the Churchwide Level we have what has been reported as "the second biggest private welfare system in the U.S". It is centered in Welfare Square in Salt Lake City. The Fast Offerings provide the money needed to run it, but donations of clothing, food, health and sanitation supplies, and other needs are processed and prepared to be sent where they are needed.

Our welfare system also run farms and orchards, canneries and processing kitchens where members donate their time and skills to produce food for families in need. The donated items go out to the people of the world who are in need.

I've never been on a disaster scene where the LDS Church wasn't involved in the response and recovery efforts.

One of the callings in our wards is Employment Specialist. This person keeps up on the employment needs of the people in the ward and the job openings available in the area.

As for myself, some of my oldest memories are of getting out while its snowing to shovel the driveway of people in my neighborhood unable to do it themselves. In 83, when the Wasatch Mountains slid down into the valley because the winter snowpack thawed too quickly, morning after morning, we loaded into the backs of pickup trucks, with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction. We filled sandbags, dug out basements, restored neigborhoods and worked in the shelters. In fact, it was those weeks that later led me to an interest in disaster recovery and emergency management.

To us, yes we are supposed to pray, preach the gospel, go to church, study the scriptures and other things to promote spiritual growth, but:

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have ^adone it unto one of the ^bleast of these my ^cbrethren, ye have done it unto me. Matt. 25: 40:

31 And inasmuch as ye ^aimpart of your ^bsubstance unto the ^cpoor, ye will do it unto me; and they shall be ^dlaid before the ^ebishop of my church and his ^fcounselors, two of the elders, or high priests, such as he shall appoint or has appointed and ^gset apart for that purpose. D&C 42: 31 (30-31):

I hope that answers your question, and satisfies the terms of your challenge.

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But then I don't know if I'm qualified to answer as I'm not really one of the 'Religious' of JU either.

Neither am I. But that won't stop me trying.

I would venture to say that comfort can be found in the fact that it's always been the lot of the innocent to suffer

In exactly what way is it a comfort to know that people and brute beasts alike have always suffered? If you're sick and miserable is it a consolation to know that millions before you have suffered, millions are suffering now, and millions will suffer in the future? If I was to find consolation in the suffering of anyone it would be in the suffering of the guilty, not the innocent. Much as Augustine did, when he told the Faithful that a part of their reward in Heaven would be the ability to watch the torments of the damned in Hell.

Such a position could easily be taken by a zealous Christian or a zealous Muslim - though not so easily by a Jew of any description since Jews recognize no Hell - so far as I know. So not only is there precious little comfort to be found in that position, but as a theological standpoint there's nothing to specify its theological origin within the doctrines to be found in the Book. As a point of view it appears most closely related to the dualism of the Manichees, which held that life, the flesh, the world were all alike a prisonhouse and a place of torment from which the only release was death.

And that, too, is particularly cold comfort.

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Well...you know what they say. Misery loves company!

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I hope that answers your question, and satisfies the terms of your challenge.

If my challenge were to say "What is it you actually do, rather than say", then I would agree that you have. Certainly the LDS is of that brand of Christianity which finds its spirituality in positive action that helps others. But what if the aid needed was not physical and material but emotional, spiritual (mental, if you wish)?

Remember Job. His anguish had little to do with his physical condition, his affliction with disease, the deaths of his children and the loss of all his wealth. His anguish lay in being a virtuous man who had fulfilled all the Law and yet come upon a disaster that his faith taught him was reserved for the wicked. How would you comfort him? As his friends did, who were rebuked, and spared their lives only through the intercession of the man they had consistently tormented throughout his suffering with the accusation that it was all his own fault? Or what would you say? That the righteousness of the righteous man is as worthless before God as is the viciousness of the vicious man? Surely not, because the Book teaches throughout Old and New testaments that God is a righteous judge. So how would you comfort Job? With what spiritual reality would you console him?

I certainly recognise the many good works of the LDS, their care for their own and others, and the value of the spiritual principle which underlies it (without works faith is dead). But that wasn't the question I asked.

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And no, this will not be an exercise solely in pointing out what I consider to be the weaknesses of the arguments of others. I have my own thoughts on this issue, thoughts that arose in the first instance as a reaction to the death of my friend. I intend posting them when I have them in my mind as a coherent whole, probably tomorrow, and I shall be happy to answer questions or criticism when I have done so.

This is as much a challenge to myself as to anyone else.

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How would I comfort him? By being there for him. Sit with him while he vent, complains, or unloads on me however he felt the need. I would pray with him so He could get the answers he seeks from God. If what he needs is just to be alone for awhile, I would respect that too.

From what I have found though, when a believer deals with hardship helping them with the physical challenges that come with their hardship seems to be the most effective. Love, friendship and a willingness to voluntarily take on the challenge with them often bolsters them spiritually as well as physically.

Charity is the pure love of Christ. When it is given voluntarily out of love, to someone who truly needs it, there is no separating the two.

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Love, friendship and a willingness to voluntarily take on the challenge with them often bolsters them spiritually as well as physically.

That's a better answer than was given to Job by his friends. And it's a kinder answer than the one given by God to Job, and certainly a more understanding and more human answer. Certainly charity is the pure love of Christ - if Christ is for you the source of divinity in yourself and others.

Your answer, as well as testifying to your own good nature as a man and a Christian, also testifies to a peculiar weakness which afflicts Americans generally, as well as those who are believers. It's intensely practical. Like Martha, you run around doing the good deed that needs doing, out of the love of Christ and charity to your fellow man. And unlike Mary you don't deduce the greater truth that can set men free in themselves so that they need not repine over their suffereings, or the sufferings of the other creatures that inhabit the earth with us.

What first struck me as I read the Gospels was the degree to which the words of Jesus spoke to the human condition; not to our immediate problems of shelter and food and warmth and security - which Jesus blithely dismissed by saying that his Father knows we need these things and will provide them, so we should have no concern for them - but to our fundamental condition as human beings. Which is one of doubt, confusion, and incomprehension. He spoke to that void, and into that void, and everyone who heard him was comforted by what he had to say.

I don't have the knack of saying such things as simply and as clearly as he did. But I know what he meant, and I intend to share what I know - when I'm done working to express it as simply and as clearly as I can.

And once again, while you've posted a very good answer, it isn't an answer to the question that I asked.

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Which is one of doubt, confusion, and incomprehension. He spoke to that void, and into that void, and everyone who heard him was comforted by what he had to say.

This may sound like a cop out, but I don't know if we can help others with doubt, confusion and incomprehension; at least not directly. Even Christ himself felt those during the Atonment. Doubt: "Take this cup from me"; Confusion and incomprehension: "My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me".

Of course, he overcame them and fulfilled His mission in the end. I think it is only by accepting that fact we can't overcome them for ourselves. Humbling ourselves to the point of turning to Our Heavenly Father is the only real answer.

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Wow, thank you!

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Wow, thank you!

You're welcome. And I'm away to my bed.

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cactoblasta

Join Date 04/2004

+48

Religion offers the greatest comfort of them all - hope. When the chips are down, that's all you really need to keep going, and religion is the oldest source of hope in the world.

Other than that it's meaningless.

NB: I'm not trying to say that hope is worthless; it's probably the most important thing a person can have. Without hope we cease to be entirely human. But that's all that religion can really provide.

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I'm not trying to say that hope is worthless; it's probably the most important thing a person can have. Without hope we cease to be entirely human. But that's all that religion can really provide.

So what you're actually saying is that all those who believe do so simply because religion provides them with hope?

35 (partial) Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.
36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison.
37 They were stoned[f]; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—
38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
(Hebrews 11).

Something to hope for there, don't you think?

How anyone of even moderate intelligence can convince themselves that the religious impulse, which is as old as humanity, persists because it's nothing more than a source of hope entirely escapes me. Most of those who suffer hope for relief in their present circumstances, not in some future lala land of bliss. Because life hurts now, or hadn't you noticed? And the three great faiths that draw their inspiration from the Book teach that there is no hope of relief in this life. No hope. What they actually offer to the convinced believer is pain, and travail, and persecution.

Oh yes, certainly religion persists because it has nothing to offer but hope.

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My faith has changed over the years. Changed mightily and in ways I could never have predicted in the aftermath of my first great religious experience.

As some of you may know I was once a convinced Christian, a zealous Christian: as zealous, over-bearing and ignorant as the Christians that so earnestly debate the trivia of their dogmas here on JU.

I think I took my first steps away from those endless and pointless debates after the death of my friend, Susan. After her cremation I went home with a question clanging in my head, a question I couldn't still or put aside. Why had her life been so pitifully and cruelly thwarted? It wasn't enough to think that the human condition has always been one of pain, and misfortune, and undeserved misery.

Every time I opened the Bible I was confronted by Job, and by the unending cry of existential agony that forms the core of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. And equally I was confronted by the entirely unmerited suffering of animals at the hands of Man -
whether through the infliction of vile tortures in the pursuit of money, profit; or through neglect, or through deliberate cruelty for pleasure.

Whether or not there is some sense in which my friend Susan could be said to have 'merited' her deafness, her disfigurement, and the isolation and loneliness they bred, there is no sense in which dumb brutes can be said to merit the torments they endure at our hands. They suffer for our convenience, our pleasure and our profit. Nothing more. And that's something I find abominably, hatefully wrong.

The more I looked, the darker became my vision. As I began to realise, in some tiny, miniscule degree, the endless weight of misery and horror and despair that makes up life my question took another form. If God is just, why do the innocent suffer so, while very often the guilty go free, make money, and live lives of ease and pleasure?

The Psalms are full of that question, repeated hundreds of times in different ways. And the answer is always the same: faith in the righteousness and justice of God. But I saw precious little of either.

I went to my pastor, and he couldn't answer me. I went to priests and vicars, and they couldn't answer me. I went to friends, and to people I respected, and they couldn't answer me. And finally it occurred to me that if an answer existed at all I would have to find it for myself. And it was in that moment that I freed myself from a kind of mental slavery, entirely characteristic of all types of Dogmatic Religion, in which I was unable to think for myself because I was fenced in by the opinions of people who knew as little, or less, than I did but who had taken to themselves the authority to forbid a believer the right to inquire of his God.

I rejected that 'authority' in the instant that I understood it, and was never its slave again. Much to the consternation of some, subsequently. So I began to study, and to think, and to piece together an understanding that let me say good-bye to my friend and move on.

The first principle of that understanding, which remains unchanged in me to this day, is that God is just, and no accusation raised
against God can or will be vindicated. As was said to Job "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?"

Jesus remains for me now the Archtype of a certain kind of devotion, power, and spiritual attainment which we can all reach - if we desire it enough, will it unwaveringly and without doubt - and are prepared to pay the price. What Jesus is not, for me now, is the Christ, the Messiah, the Saviour of the World. Jesus was a son of God, just as I am and you are.

Certainly he believed he died as a sinless Offering for the sins of the world, and for all I know his offering was accepted as such. And because that offering was made in perfect faith and obedience (as nearly perfect as humanity can achieve) it remains, as the more literate Christians insist, the exemplar of suffering innocence in
redemptive service of others.

And the words written about that sacrifice in the Gospels and Letters are true - but not for the reasons and in the way that Christians believe. God is one and indivisible and has no 'son', except in the way I've described, in the way that we are all 'Sons of God'.

After much study and thought, I found in these verses in Romans 8 the kernel of the answer I was looking for:

Rom 8:19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
Rom 8:20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected [the same] in
hope,
Rom 8:21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Rom 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Rom 8:23 And not only [they], but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption, [to wit], the redemption of our body.

If God is just, and if the creation is not only good but very good, then suffering has a place within it. And, before anyone tells me
that the creation was declared to be 'very good' before the fall of Adam and the supposed entry of sin into the world, let me say that
the creation contained and contains not only what is, but the possibility of what is to be. So that, just as the redemptive sufferings of Jesus were foreknown and foreordained so also was the possibility of suffering, and the reality of suffering as it would be experienced later.

God is the author of everything that is - and of everything that can possibly be - because nothing comes to be save by the will of God. Such things are impossible says the fool who does not know God; they are contrary to sound doctrine says the fool who thinks he knows God:

15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
(Psalm 139)

Suffering, the suffering of innocents, has a place in life. If it has a place it has a function. And if it has a function it has meaning. If it has meaning it can, as the words of Jesus do, speak to that void of confusion and doubt and assuage it by filling it.

If I'm to suffer then I would rather do it knowingly, consciously, and meaningfully, than in the ignorance of some poor brute for whom suffering is nothing but random terror and pain.

Hidden in those few verses in Romans 8 is the key.

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.
20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
21 that[i] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

The whole of the creation was subjected to the frustration of its being - the harmonious functioning of the whole - by its creator so that not only the Sons of God might be redeemed but the whole of created reality. That redemption is most cleary expressed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is a perfect type of the death we all must undergo; and also the perfect type of the resurrection of Life within ourselves (and through us in the world) that we may all achieve.

The suffering of the innocent is not punitive because no fault has been committed by them. It is not remedial, because, again, there is no fault to be remedied or the sufferer would not be innocent.

It's participatory. It participates in and echoes the great cry from the Cross that immediately preceded the death of Jesus, that cry which was the herald of the redemption Jesus promised to his companions: Father, why have you forsaken me.

And when I grasped the fact that the blood and tears of the innocent are the same blood and tears that were shed by Jesus, I was set free, as I am free today, even though my conception of Jesus has changed radically. I found that I could absolve God - since God suffered first. And even now, when my understanding is so greatly changed, I can say that the divinity within, that which in me most closely resembles the archetype of the perfectly self-realised man represented by Jesus, still cries those same words from the cross of our humanity: why have you forsaken me? And I can say that the blood and tears of the innocent call to some great change in the nature and understanding of Man, some change that the shedding of blood and of tears facilitates and will bring about.

I don't say that the comfort I have found will comfort others in the same way, or at all. It might well be too mystical and
impractical. But I will say this. It is a spiritual principle, rather than a merely practical act. It is deduced from the words of the Book and from the inner workings of my faith, and it's the comfort I would offer someone who needed no practical help but a new way to understand and a new way to be.

And on those grounds, I say that I have satisfied the conditions of my own challenge.

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I'll try to answer your question to the best of my ignorant understanding.

What real comfort has your faith to offer those who suffer innocently?

1. In Torah (as you know) I see the orphans, widows, poor, etc being taken care of. The poor wore a specific colored tallit in order to beg honorably (if necessary can expound later). The widows and orphans were given the corners and gleaning rights to the fields during and after harvest.
2. The falsely accused were given sanctuary cities where they were protected by the Levites.

Although times are different I look to these examples as how to comfort others today. I really try not to look down on people but to look at them with compassion. Not just giving some money to the stranger with a "HUNGRY" sign to feel satisfied with my good deed for the week. I'll ask if they would like me to take them some place to get some food and buy it for them. I'll hear some of the most amazing stories from these people. I often will pick up a hitchhiker and give them a ride especially if I am going their direction. Again some crazy stories you'll hear from them too. Some admittingly, I wish I didn't know.

I am not saying such things to gloat but to help understand my meaning.

There's endless sadness in the world, endless pain and misery, cruelty and suffering. Except for the fortunate few (among whom I count myself when compared to, say, a Darfurian, or a street-kid in Bogota, or some poor dumb brute tormented so that the eyes of women won't be irritated by their cosmetics), the unfortunate majority suffer endlessly in countless ways. How would you comfort them?

In Hebraic thought the down trodden are to given to humble us not them. As I mentioned before it is a common Torah principle to help the poor. So many stories in the Bible that show helping those that you see struggling in this life. Good Samaritan, the several stories of hospitality (Abraham, Servant to Laban's house, etc), and other examples of how I am to be.

Which is why I still like and respect the man, even if I no longer believe in the Divinity.

I know many Orthodox Jews who consider Yeshua/Jesus as the best Jew that ever lived. I see Jesus as being a Jew being the ultimate Torah keeper. What I don't see is a new religion.

I left because I was weary of people only too willing to follow the latest 'teaching' but not at all willing to do what their faith required of them - while knowing and saying all the right things and behaving exactly as if they were devout followers of their 'Lord'. Perfect replicas, with less life and faith in them than a rock or a tree.

I left because what I read and what they said were two different things.

A quick story as an example. I was attending a Church of Christ for awhile. One Sunday they preached specifically at me because I didn't attend three times a week and I loved to go for a run on Sunday afternoons. It was a brutal 45 minutes sitting there with all eyes directed towards me. After wards in their pompous demise they asked me what I thought of the service. I responded telling them, "I am closer to G-D when I'm running on those trails then I'll EVER be in this church building." With that I shook off the dust of my shoes vowing never to return.

Another thing that turned me from Christianity is how they are blindly more into legalism (ie control) than the Torah observant Jews. I'm not referring to the followers of Talmud, Mishnah, Chabalah, etc.. I'm sure you know what I mean?

Thanks for asking these toe stomping questions. I'm not sure if you n LW will celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow but if you do I pray it is blessed!

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I'm not referring to the followers of Talmud, Mishnah, Chabalah, etc.. I'm sure you know what I mean?

Talmud and Mishnah I'm familiar with, but Chabalah not at all. I googled the word and the results indicate it has something to do with 'injury' or 'destruction'. So I find myself a little perplexed. But I certainly understand your point about legalism, and the impulse to control others, which is particularly rife (in my experience) within Pentecostalism. But perhaps I simply had a bad experience.

I'm very much in sympathy with the OT depiction of God's sympathy with the poor, the defenceless, the widow and the orphan. It seems to me that it has less of a taint of moralism about it.

I left because what I read and what they said were two different things.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

There's something congenial to me in both Judaism and Islam. They're both fierce religions, whereas if Christianity ever had any ferocity of spirit to it then it was lost long ago. The dove and the lamb are not the two heraldic beasts most likely to stir my spirit.

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Your dear friend Susan is a very sad story. There are oft times I have found there are not words to describe the situations God allows in our life. We are left to a tears, a hug and prayer that God will gird us up as we stand upon His faithfulness.

Question
"What real comfort has your faith to offer those who suffer innocently?"

I have often thought emperor of the nearly 50,000,000 babies that have been torn to pieces, ripped from the safety of their mothers wombs. I have prayerfully sought to understand such vile sin against the innocent.. http://www.repentamerica.com/gallery/theamericanholocaust ... yet very little cry for this innocent victim. Why would God allow such?

His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. When the finite mind of humanity tries to understand what and why God allows something the human understanding is left to confusion of thought. The three friends of Job are an excellent example of such.

As far as humanity is concerned, we are only left to trust the Potter. Hath not the power of the potter over the clay. Who are we to say how and why? God's will is perfect and sovereign, best leave it to Him.

What about His own sacrifice. He who knew no sin became sin for us. If thou be the Son of God, tell us who smote thee. The innocent suffering for the guilty. Release unto us Barabbas. A murderer, insurrectionist and robber. The innocent for the guilty. What real comfort has your faith to offer those who suffer innocently..... He who for the joy that was set before Him despised the suffering, the shame and the guilt of all His creation. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts.

The dove and the lamb are not the two heraldic beasts most likely to stir my spirit.

Based upon this deduction would you might consider the Lion? "Behold your adversary as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour."

Then again your most noble emperor there is always the Lion of Judah? Two lions with very different substance.......

If the dove and the lamb do not stir ones spirit, one day the Lion of the tribe of Judah will. For when He returns He will return not in humility and as the suffering prophet but as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Hamartano

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They lived their lives

It was such a pity that Job never had a copy of the scroll of Isaiah.

Aeryck.

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GOD: Why NOT you?

Suffering is an integral part of all of our lives and the reason for it is discovered not in concourse with man, but in concourse with God.

A friend of mine who died of leukemia, in his early twenties, suffered not only physically but emotionally and spiritually. His face would swell up like a big brown ball, and cold and insenstive ones who call him 'lion face'.

Inspite of his suffering, he had found in God comfort. These are the words he found most comfort in. 'My Grace is Sufficient' Job found comfort in these words, 'The Lord has given and the Lord has taken, blessed be the name of the Lord.'

In your suffering there are surely positive and comforting words that you will find to make sense of it. That is personal, something God has taught you.

Your honesty is terrifying.

Aeryck.

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cactoblasta

Join Date 04/2004

+48

How anyone of even moderate intelligence can convince themselves that the religious impulse, which is as old as humanity, persists because it's nothing more than a source of hope entirely escapes me. Most of those who suffer hope for relief in their present circumstances, not in some future lala land of bliss. Because life hurts now, or hadn't you noticed? And the three great faiths that draw their inspiration from the Book teach that there is no hope of relief in this life. No hope. What they actually offer to the convinced believer is pain, and travail, and persecution.

Well if we want to be moderately intelligent (and who does, really, there's nothing so terminal as moderation) then we'd acknowledge there's a 'god' centre in the human brain, which incidentally explains why people believe in all sorts of things, from cliches to science. We've got to fill that hole somehow, and mystical gods make as much sense as anything else - particularly if you've got a touch of the dramatic about you.

The three great faiths offer their salvation in the next life - you get the hope that things may get better while you're alive, insyallah/if God wills it, but no matter what else happens things will be better on the other side. What they actually offer to the convinced believer (or at least do in their purest forms) is salvation, pleasure, contentment and a kind of exquisite boredom that's presumably supposed to be attractive.

Oh yes, certainly religion persists because it has nothing to offer but hope.

Okay, maybe I was being a little melodramatic, but you have to admit the challenge is pretty melodramatic. Religions have other things to offer - a sense of community, self-indulgence, something to do on the weekend, occupations for pedarests and the insufferably noble/hypocritical, rules to not live your life by etc - but hope's the most significant one in my view.

Personally I'm going to put my faith in flippancy and the belief that whatever created this world has a sense of humour. It's more fun to laugh than to slum it in misery/start thinking depressingly bad things are exciting and positive. Depression is far too 2007-emo.

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It was such a pity that Job never had a copy of the scroll of Isaiah.

Dear Simon,

I have spent much time meditating on the book of Job and come to the same conclusion every time. Job saw everything as coming directly from the hand of God. Job was resigned to this view and even when God rebuked him, in the closing words from God, Job repented.

The Muslims call this being resigned to the fate of Allah.

I chatted to the father of a man called Job, a Muslim and found that our beliefs in this regard were identical. I told him about Jesus and how Jesus had done something to put and end to the perpetuation of death and ergo. disease.

Jesus is not just the dispenser of how to deal with suffering, or how to handle your daily insomnia. He has given us far more than that. Problem is there are parts of the Bible that not even the most astute scholar (as you say you are) will openly reject because their hearts are not like Jobs, they only accept part of what God says, the rest they edit out and by that I mean 'Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God.' - The one of whom Isaiah wrote...Isaiah 51, 52, 53, 54....Rabbi (ex) Max Wertheimer as one of the original students of Mary Baker Eddy as well as teaching Christians the truth of Judaism, until while reading the book of ISAIAH the eyes of his heart were 'dug out' and he began to realize that the one whose beard was plucked was in fact Jehovah. Here is the link : From Rabbinism to Christ.

Aeryck.

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The three great faiths offer their salvation in the next life - you get the hope that things may get better while you're alive, insyallah/if God wills it, but no matter what else happens things will be better on the other side. What they actually offer to the convinced believer (or at least do in their purest forms) is salvation, pleasure, contentment and a kind of exquisite boredom that's presumably supposed to be attractive.

This ONE view. Keep in mind that this life goes by very quickly and one day you will be knocking on heavens door, so don't knock it. Making comments about what it is like to be a Christian (experientially) without being one, is the same as writing about war and never having been in one.

Aeryck.

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