Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Does pain and suffering and injustice…

That's fine, you can believe whatever you want. I'm not a good enough Christian to care much. Jesus wants me to care about you, and all the other [bleep] heathens, but I don't. I can't consider your immense ignorance as my cross to bear. That's something I'll have to work out with Him at some point I suppose.

According to God's Word, that is exactly how it works.

Ok, so I don't miss an important part of the ignorant bliss, I'm not seeing words in the second part of his post on my screen, so if you would tell me what it says.

In Jesus’ day…and by modern standards…there was no dignity, there was no fairness, and there was no justice. But there was a lotta pain and suffering and injustice. And into that world stepped Jesus who claimed that every single person had dignity and that God loved every single person in the world (not just the Jews).

Jesus’ first century followers paid dearly for their faith, and they were treated incredibly unjustly with pain and suffering. They were persecuted for essentially believing something. And Jesus’ first century followers embraced a God that was good and loving and just ~ in a culture that was characterized by pain and suffering and injustice.

If the Christian God had been so fragile as to be able to be argued out of existence based on pain and suffering and injustice, the Christian God would’ve never made it out of the first century because for the first 100, 200, almost 300 years, the followers of the Christian God were persecuted. So Christianity is not so fragile as many think, and as many claim.

The fact that 2,000 years later there are Christians all around the world speaks to the strength of the theology that surrounds what the God that Jesus presented to the world is like.

At a time when the apostle John and his friends were being treated unjustly with pain and suffering…after spending between 3 and 3.5 years with Jesus…he asserted that “God is love.” This concept was introduced in the world at a time of extraordinary pain and suffering and injustice.

^^^excellent as always!

I’m sending this on my friend because you are quite eloquent and spot on accurate!

Allah may already have a spot set aside for you in hell.

Speaks more to the strength of the imposition of the faith by torture, cruelty and death. Yeah, seems to line up with the immorality of the god behind the belief.

How is the answer that pain and suffering prove that there is no God a better answer?

This question isn’t meant to be rhetorical. I’ve been thinking about this in relation to the responses in the thread and that answer seems to leave us in a pretty dark place.

If there is no God, the pain and suffering that is used to argue against a loving God becomes a nameless faceless evil that in and of itself is consumptive, fearful, arbitrary, malicious, unchecked, irresistible, etc. To me that appears to be a hopeless fatalism.

If what you feel and believe in relation to pain and suffering is so strong as to deny the existence of God, how do you deal with or explain the very real existence of that pain, suffering and evil ?

Pain and suffering are just the result of the natural world, some things you can do something about, some things you can't. There is no apparent intent behind it and evil is just a label we use. Evil is not a physical entity. We've histoically ascribed intent to things that we don't understand. Actions can be judged as evil where intent is deliberate, but it's not a separate entity or quality. Pain and suffering are just a part of existence, whether deliberate or not. Making up stories just avoids what may be true.

A lion causing pain and suffering to a Christian in the wild is not evil, just survival. A Roman throwing the Christian into the hungry lion den could be considered an evil action YMMV.

It makes sense when a loving god is removed from the equation, or even a god that doesn't care, or no longer exists.

Being born is a pretty good guarantee that there will be some pain, suffering and death.

Dead pedophiles don't scare me.

Her you go.

The bottom image is cut off, I'm not seeing what's in the text ballon. But nevermind. I don't care enough to worry about it.

If anyone had a reason to stop believing in God because of pain and suffering and injustice, it was Jesus. Because the man who taught us that all people have inherent value and that all people are loved by God, was Himself treated with pain and suffering and injustice…and then executed…by those that He taught these things to. Think about that.

Pain and suffering and injustice are not rational arguments against the existence of God ~ certainly not the God that was presented to us by Jesus and other’s in the New Testament.

There can’t be much worse of a topic than religion to bring up for argument. The same handful of people go after each other with no regard for opinion or truth.

Bringing up the subject is as bad as the lame excuses that deny God.

Why don’t you just leave the dumb subject ideas to Wabigoon and think of something to discuss that isn’t so divisive?

Satan has a pretty tight grip on you bud.

If you understand what Jesus taught then you understand that earth is not Heaven, there is no pain and suffering in Heaven, only here on earth. If you understand what Jesus taught then you understand that God's love is conditional, and the conditions are non negotiable.

You have to make the conscious choice to accept God, to have Faith in God, to love God more than yourself, and to do your level best to stop committing sins that you have control over.....in order to receive it.

There are rules, and those are God's.

Jesus taught that ALL people absolutely have that opportunity to recieve God's love in Heaven. Some choose to ignore that opportunity and carry on with their predestined condemnation. Satan loves you for that.

The scripture says God so loved the world that he sent his Son. It doesn't say God so loved all who would accept him and do their level best.

God's love is not based on how well you do your level best. God's love is not conditional. He will love you whether you accept his sacrifice on your behalf or not.

The thing you don't yet understand is that you cannot accept his sacrifice as long as you think his love is based on your level best. You have to give up relying on yourself to rely completely on him.

Sent his Son to die for your sins, context.

Show me where in the scripture you can keep committing sins that you have control over and be accepted into Heaven. Your very existence makes you a sinner, that is unavoidable, but you have to at least try not to sin. God expects that from you.

God will love you unconditionally (which is the whole hang up here on this thread) even if you are the worst sinner ever, but you will not be accepted into His Kingdom unless you meet His conditions, and yes, one of those is to give over your life to Him and rely completely and Faithfully on Him.

One man's pain... is another man's gain.

One man's suffering... is another man's promotion.

One man's injustice... is another man's justice.