But I do not hold either of the two ideas. I believe God superintends all of His creation, somtimes actively, sometimes passively. To me, it is like a day care for children. God watches us "at play", leaving us to our free will, but with boundaries. And He steps in and intervenes as He sees fit. Otherwise, we have freedom.Steve and Homer, I cannot see why you still think I believe God is impotent. I believe just as firmly as you that He is omnipotent. The two ideas: the idea that God controls every event, and the idea that He is powerless to control every event are not collectively exhaustive as explanations.
Neither do I, but He always has a "veto".I just don't think He has his hand in every event which occurs on earth.
This I do not understand. After the fall of Adam it is my understanding that God decreed that all of mankind would die a physical death, some will live a short time, and some a long time.I think He has nothing to do with human suffering (except for mild suffering, perhaps limited to mental suffering in order to correct His children as a loving human father might correct his children). I think He has nothing to do with people's deaths, and I explained some possible reasons He "allows" death in my last post to Steve.
I don't think He has anything to do with the rape and murder of little girls. But if He "allows" it because of His permissive will, in order to bring to pass a greater good, what could that greater good possibly be? Couldn't that greater good be brought about in some way other than have little girls raped and murdered?
You are asking the same kind of questions that Job asked. In that case we know what the greater good was, but Job did not and God did not deem it Job's business to know, in spite of Job's questioning.
As with Job, God does not owe us an explanation.I find that the idea that God "allows" excruciating suffering and death for a higher purpose is always devoid of a satisfactory explanation.
I'm confident He always has a reason in every case.But it is human nature to know the reason why; God created us with inquisitive minds. Does God just protect some people and lift protection from others in a random fashion?
To me there is an obvious difference between God's active and passive superintendence of creation. He was active against Uzzah and Anannias and Saphira, for example. He was passive when John the Baptist was executed. On the other hand, because He chose not to act when He had the power to do so, He is indirectly but ultimately responsible.In my opinion, it is rational to seek other explanations for the problem of pain rather than to ascribe the execution of atrocities to the Loving Creator, whether their occurrence results from His active will or His "permissive" will. (I don't think there's much difference between the two.)
Job 1:20-22
New King James Version (NKJV)
20. Then Job arose, tore his robe, and shaved his head; and he fell to the ground and worshiped. 21. And he said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked shall I return there.
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
22. In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.
According to your earlier post, Job was guilty of blasphemy, yet according to scripture Job was not wrong in attributing his misfortune to God.
But after the fall in the Garden God changed His creation.My view, as you know, is that God is usually uninvolved, not only in human atrocities, but also in "natural" disasters (which aren't so "natural" since God didn't create the world that way)
— not because He is powerless, but because He chooses not to be involved. If God so chooses, He can and does become involved, and even actively prevents some human suffering and "natural" disasters. But it is rare.
I do not disagree, but this contradicts your previous position.
The bible tells us all we need to know, but it does not tell us everything. We have no way of knowing how often God intervenes.When we read the Bible, (both testaments) it seems that God is intervening in human affairs a lot. But that doesn't imply that He was involved a lot. It's just that the Bible records many or most of the rare occasions in which God did intervene during the times in which the authors lived.