Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for November 07, 2009

That bit of nonsense that God only helps those who helps themselves is NOT in the Bible. The fact is, his help is free and available to anyone who asks and often to those who don’t ask. And anyhow, death is not the worst that could happen to you.

That’s the Readers Digest God, the one who rescues the survivors who come home and write about My Most Terrifying Ordeal for Readers Digest. The poor saps who actually died were obviously praying wrong.

Death may not be the worst thing, but watching your children burn up in a fire or drown slowly in the middle of the ocean, or get tortured and slaughtered by crazed ethic-cleansing squads, those’d count as pretty bad and maybe even close to “worst”. Fortunately Super God Man never lets that happen.

The worst is not so long as we can say “This is the worst”.

now show innocent victims of nazi death camps begging for the mercy of god as they are gassed to death……

oh well, bad luck for them, god has his plan, right?

Probably very few of us here can grasp the matter of righteous anger with God fully. I recommend two works by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel: Night and The Trial of God. This man’s exploration into the theodicy problem (or, the problem of evil) is stunning.

Both of these are narratives, so they don’t present an exposition of the problem itself. For that, I might recommend Paul Ricoeur’s Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology.

Now remember, God is all- merciful, all-loving, and just loves the heck out of little children, so I doubt there were ever any innocent victims killed in Nazi death camps, or little children raped, tortured and killed in the Serbian ethnic cleansing. No children or other innocent victims killed in Muslim suicide bombings either. I mean, God wouldn’t allow it, right? Right?

(I LOVE God-Man)

Um … why is Little Orphan Annie’s dog in the background?

True free will requires real choices with real consequences.

God created a good world. He created good human beings, with true free will, and entrusted us with caring for his creation.

We humans chose to turn our backs on God, and we, along with the creation entrusted to us, have suffered disastrous consequences.

This suffering has led some to question the existence of God, or whether God, if he does exist, is really good.

God has answered both those questions in the one and only true God-Man, his own son, Jesus Christ.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

No need for nutty ramblings.

…free will…everything for everyone all the time..puny humans…

jonahblue, it really isn’t that easy. While that may address what theologians refer to as moral evil, it fails to account for what’s called natural evil (earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc.).

True evil is only possible with a perpetrator named “Blackie” or “Pete”. ~Woody Allen