Tercel

Hi Scumble,

Regarding Job, it seems to me that God is not so much instructing Satan to cause suffering, but rather giving him permission to do so but setting boundaries to his mischief. If as Christian doctrine teaches, that the heavenly beings will be judged for their use of the power they are permitted, then it would seem rather questionable to even construe permission as meaning approval.
But the purpose of the book of Job is not to make theological statements about God's relationship with Satan, rather it's to explore the question of whether, and why, the righteous suffer.

GPLindsey

Tercel--
You say that you accept the suffering of the Righteous as a mystery, but the original point of my e-mail is that the Bible doesn't say it is a mystery. It says that it is the result of Original Sin by Adam and Eve in the Garden. Fundamentalists don't regard this issue as a mystery because they accept the Bible literally. My posting took issue with non-fundamentalists--if they don't really think there was an Adam and Eve, and therefore no Original Sin, then why do the righteous suffer? This isn't just one of the many little side mysteries in the Bible--this is one of the most important issues any religion must address. It's a mystery, so have faith??? No thanks.

Much of Human suffering is pointless and not caused by their own misbehavior. I tire of the circular reasoning I sometimes see on this. God created the world, which means he also created earthquakes. People have died as a result of them for centuries. This caused people to eventually build their buildings stronger and out of harm's way where possible. See, Good has come from suffering! God created earthquakes so that people will eventually build homes to withstand earthquakes better. We suffer because it helps us to cope with future suffering. Wha??

Also, if suffering might be good, then I guess it must be wrong to try to prevent it. Surely, if "Good" might come from sudden infant death syndrome, then the faithful must believe we could incur God's wrath if we try to find ways of preventing it. Who are we, in our limited knowledge, to pass judgement that suffering is a bad thing--let God's will be done!

Finally, this business about God giving Satan permission to inflict suffering. A creates B, and B causes evil. A is all-knowing and therefore knew B would cause evil. This makes A evil too, my friends.

Answerer

Sorry pal, but your arrgument seem to me to be around the point that bible said this and bible said that, can't you be a little bit more constructive. Furthermore, your argument makes me think that God Himself,actually enjoy creating sinful creatures like Satan, fallen angels and Adam and Eve, so He seems to have quite of a sadist nature.
Anyway, I have a few questions to ask you pal, if a newborn baby dies just minutes after his birth, is the cause for his death somehow related to the original sin or not? After his death, where will he be going, Heaven or Hell?

rainbow walking

Greetings GP,
There seem to be two basic flaws in your presentation of the dilemma of suffering, well, not so much flaws as just overly broad generalizations needing clarification.

First, suffering on the basis of righteousness/un-righteousness isn't the real dilemma. All people experience suffering of some degree sometime during their lives regardless of their moral condition. Getting stung by a bee or hit in the head with a baseball entails a degree of suffering.

Rather than righteousness/un-righteousness being the focal point of the dilemma I suggest that innocence/guilt is a more precise description of the question. After all, it's quite possible, (and usually true), that a person may be completely righteous in some specific incident and experience suffering while being a totally depraved individual in some other specific area of their lives. So the question of righteousness/un-righteousness doesn't get at the heart of the matter. It only opens the door to further questions of what exactly constitutes righteousness and who decides these things. So to eliminate as much mist inducing symbolism the question is less obscure when presented as a "why do the innocent suffer?"

Secondly, you failed to differentiate between the two basic causes of suffering: suffering caused by humanity and suffering caused by natural events such as tornados or earthquakes.

I believe the question of suffering as it relates to innocence is more succintly apprapos when initiated by human flaws that can further be divided into suffering created by intention and suffering created by accident.

Having elucidated the distinctives should enable us to more thoroughly examine each of the causitives and compare them to the fundamental christian explanation for their presence in our world. For instance, I fail to see how a person suffering the loss of their family to an indiscriminate flood in Kansas can be traced back to A&E, (although I'm aware that many fundamentalists try to do so by claiming that even the elements were affected by the Fall).

Whether the intent of the original author(s) of Genesis was to convey that all suffering, regardless of its construction, was introduced at the Fall isn't so easily discernable just from the text. The various biblical characters and their situations as depicted seem to lean towards that suffering which is caused by human error or depravity although some natural catastrophes in other books such as Job seem to be attributed to divine agency. I think it safe to allow that primitive man's basic lack of knowledge of nature would lead to his concluding all natural catastrophes to be acts of an angry God either directly or permissively. This in itself should discount any claims that natural catastrophes can be included in the question of suffering in relation to mythic explanations to causation.

All of which leads us to the human factor. Whether or not the A&E story is taken literally or figuratively or discounted altogether, it defintely attempts to address the question of suffering from an innocent/guilty standpoint.

The description of God shedding the blood of innocent animals to cover the naked bodies of A&E are a classic depiction of the innocent suffering because of the guilty. The original intent of the sacrificial rituals was to convey to the tribe the awful consequences of evil. The sacrificial lamb was to be raised up within the family as a child such that affection and attachment to it became a given. In this way the sacrifice was more personally felt and the guilt associated with the sacrifice more intensely experienced. Later, as the priestly duties became more defined, the sacrificial lamb was allowed to be purchased thus a distancing of the intent was perhaps inadvertantly allowed to creep in until the sacrifices became virtually inneffective.

We do know that many of the tribes during that period practiced human sacrifice of their children to appease their various gods, so we can see that the sacrifice of an animal in lieu of a son or daughter did represent a step in a more civilized direction.

The bottom line, IMO, is that there resides within each of us a predatory beast whose appetites will, and often does, compel us to act in ways that bring suffering upon some innocent party. Perhaps a genetic throwback to a time more primitive and savage when truly only the strongest survived? I see the A&E story as a primitive tribes attempt to identify the beast and control it. Consequently, I also believe there exists within each of us a compassionate, caring avenging angel that will, and has, caused us to risk life and limb in selfless acts of courage to save total strangers. Both creatures living in the same skin. Religion, properly administered, is an organized attempt to empower the angel to triumph over the beast. Unfortunately both the organization and the organizers are just as much inflicted as those among them to whom they attempt to minister.

But, alas, a new day is dawning and a new set of ministers armed with more precise and detailed knowledge of the human condition and its causes are beginning to make their presence known. The scientist, poised to displace the preacher, seems to have more practical and effective methods at his disposal to tame the beast. Whether he can also devise a means of enticing the angel remains to be seen. The way I see it from here we have two choices...Medicated or Dedicated.

Mindfully Submitted
rainbow walking

Philosoft

Fine, but now you must deal with one of two greater problems; either:

1) You must defend your tortured logic that we can know that there is an alternate perspective but we cannot know what the perspective is.

OR

2) You must apologize for a god that deliberately created us with a particular perspective of 'good' and 'evil' and then procedes to employ and entirely different (and unknowable) perspective to allow those things which we humans judge to be the most pointlessly evil.

Heck, you might even have to tackle both of these dilemmas in order for your argument to have any existential weight.

Ted Hoffman

tercel
How so if we have God? Maybe God decided an ignorant life is better for man than an informed life?
So satan is Gods dog and he has let him loose on us and then he will punish us for all the times we let satan screw us?
He must be a very wise God.
How many times does God find it necessary to use his foe to achieve his mischievous whims? Perhaps they are sitting somewhere laughing their f****** heads off as we strive to unravel whether they even exist?
Ah, what a loving God. Great sense of humour.
By portraying Satan as Gods buddy and accomplice in creating mans suffering?
Oh please!
Instead of throwing "mystery" at us Tercel, why dont you go and pray about it (with God, everything is possible, remember? and ask, and it shall be given unto you) and come back with an answer that makes sense. Can you do that and save us a lot of pain?
Please?
Rainbow Walking
Stung by a bee? Now why does that sound familiar?
I think what we are looking at is not a dilemma, but a paradox or a situation that does not make sense:
The Good-people suffering in Gods world.
Why would one analyze human suffering from the innocent/guilty standpoint?
Is suffering supposed to be caused by sin?
And in the process undermine the importance of justice while dealing with evil?
Why would someones first born suffer (eg the Egyptian firstborns) for sins they did not commit?
Couldn't the omniscient God find a way of teaching the bad in evil without throwing away justice?
Please meantion books that support the idea that Hebrews or Jews practiced human sacrifice (are you talking about Abraham and Isaac?) prior to Jehovah.
Why do you think this is so? Do we need a beast in order for us to act as we do?
Did God also have this beast when he made Job suffer? Wasn't Job innocent too? Did that same spirit make God kill the Egyptian firstborns or did he have so much talent that he did not need the beast to bring suffering upon the innocent?
Are those the only two creatures in the skin or have you left out some?
This is a false dilemma. It could be none of the above.

Pomp

Welcome back, rainbow walking.

rainbow walking

Intensity: I think what we are looking at is not a dilemma, but a paradox or a situation that does not make sense:
The Good-people suffering in Gods world.

rw: di·lem·ma (d¹-lµm“…) n. 1. A situation that requires a choice between options that are or seem equally unfavorable or mutually exclusive. 2. Usage Problem. A problem that seems to defy a satisfactory solution. 3. Logic. An argument that presents an antagonist with a choice of two or more alternatives, each of which contradicts the original contention and is conclusive.

par·a·dox (p²r“…-d¼ks”) n. 1. A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true: the paradox that standing is more tiring than walking. 2. One exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects: “You have the paradox of a Celt being the smooth Oxonian” (Anthony Burgess). 3. An assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises. 4. A statement contrary to received opinion.


rw: I think dilemma is the term best suited to this discussion. The question of why innocent people suffer in a world allegedly created by an all good God is only an assumed dilemma to the skeptic for the sake of argument. It is only a paradox to the Christian believer who assumes the world to have been created by an all good God. Where the skeptic does not assume the world to have been created the question of good or innocent people suffering poses no paradox or dilemma. Since the OP was clearly issued from an antagonistic perspective the view is more accurately defined as a dilemma for the fundamentalist believer to resolve in order to justify his claim that the world was created by an all good God. The standard fundamentalist response is to label it a paradox for which no resolution is possible.


Intensity: Why would one analyze human suffering from the innocent/guilty standpoint?


Rw: Because there is a degree of suffering caused by human indulgence or ignorance that does affect innocent people. I was careful to differentiate between the various reasons innocent people can suffer. The reason I think the innocent/guilty depiction more clearly defines the dilemma than the righteous/un-righteous depiction is because there are no known recorded cases where a man has been righteous his entire life whereas there are numerous cases where a person, regardless of his moral position, has been innocent and yet suffered some indignity or another. Making it a case of righteousness/un-righteousness opens the door to mystical obfuscation where the believer can wiggle out of the dilemma by declaring the sufferer to be paying for past or future sins. Using innocence as the standard makes the dilemma immediate and forces the believer to concede the paradox. It also corresponds with the A&E story where A&E suffered due to their alleged transgression while innocent animals lost their skin to provide A&E with an out.

Intensity: Is suffering supposed to be caused by sin?

Rw: According to the A&E account…yes.

Intensity: And in the process undermine the importance of justice while dealing with evil?


Rw: No, I don’t think the original intent was to undermine justice. Keeping in mind that this particular religion was predicated on the concept that “ the thoughts and intentions of a man’s heart are evil from his youth onward” what I see in these rituals and rites was a sincere attempt to address the evil while it was still in the mind before it became a reality. There are two separate but clearly related threads running through these spiritual teachings. One revolved around sin and the other around the Law. The sin aspect was best expressed in the NT when Jesus made the comment,” whosoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed sin already in his heart.” The original intent of the concept of sin was a sort of mind control and related to the subjective internal thoughts of the man. When this failed to contain the consequences of sin it was later congealed into a set of Laws issued as commandments from which the twin concepts of justice and mercy evolved. But the sacrificial rituals were designed to make a man think about his actions before they became a reality. A primitive type of preventive maintenance.

Intensity: Why would someones first born suffer (eg the Egyptian firstborns) for sins they did not commit?

Rw: There’s considerable speculation as to whether these events ever happened. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say they did. What evidence do you have that these firstborn “suffered” prior to their death? Perhaps they just fell asleep and never woke up? And do you feel that a person’s life being shorter than average to be a form of suffering? If so, would you say a person who died at the age of 65 suffered because he didn’t live to see 66?

But clearly the people who survived, the parents and relatives likely “suffered” a great deal of grief at this loss, but they were all affiliated with and worshipped the Pharaoh as their god…the same Pharaoh who had earlier decried that all male Hebrew babies were to be exterminated at birth by the midwives but the females kept alive.

Now, mind you, I’m not defending any of these atrocities but I ask you how different this is than the thousands of babies dying everyday somewhere in the world around us from malnutrition and disease while others live in the lap of luxury and revel in their splendor and riches? I’m of the opinion that too many self righteous people are too eager to accuse and throw stones at other peoples beliefs and the icons of those beliefs when they ought to take a look at the world they live in today and decide just how righteous they are to even dare to raise the issue when they do little or nothing themselves.


Intensity: Couldn't the omniscient God find a way of teaching the bad in evil without throwing away justice?

Rw: Obviously you want me to nibble on the carrot of omniscience. If you believe there is a lesson to be learned about the bad consequences inherent in evil actions then you already have all the justice you need. Perhaps if bad and selfish men could be taught to display a little mercy towards the innocent there might be less suffering in the world today.

Intensity: Please meantion books that support the idea that Hebrews or Jews practiced human sacrifice (are you talking about Abraham and Isaac?) prior to Jehovah.

Rw: I didn’t say these tribes were Jewish or Hebrew. There were a host of other cultures and peoples living in the Mesopotamian region during the times depicted by the Noahtic and Abramic periods. The fact that Abraham was planning to offer Isaac up as a sacrifice indicates that such practices were not entirely reprehensible to these people meaning it was probably a customary ritual.


Intensity: Why do you think this is so? Do we need a beast in order for us to act as we do?


Rw: Have you never done something intentionally selfish and harmful to someone else? What made you do it? Why did you want to? I used the predatory beast as a metaphor to describe that aspect of our nature that often drives us to think of and commit selfish acts that harm others. Do you have a scientific name for it? A particular gene you’d like to introduce or a particular personality trait? Why do you pick and snipe at everything I’ve said? Do you really want to know or do you think you already know and are trying to set up a scenario where you can display your perceived superior understanding? If so, what makes you do this? Do you derive some form of pleasure from it? I never said we needed a beast. In fact, I alluded to the possibility that this tendency predates to a time when we were more beast than man. Why do you think people behave as badly as they do?


Intensity: Did God also have this beast when he made Job suffer? Wasn't Job innocent too? Did that same spirit make God kill the Egyptian firstborns or did he have so much talent that he did not need the beast to bring suffering upon the innocent?

Rw: Since I’m not a defendant of the Christian position perhaps you should frame these for someone else. It sounds like you’re trying to build a case for an un-just God, if one existed, which is irrelevant to this discussion.



Intensity: Are those the only two creatures in the skin or have you left out some?

Rw: This was a discussion on the suffering of righteous people which is a moral question. There is the moral, the immoral and the amoral. It was also metaphorical and not intended to be exhaustive. Is there a point to this sarcasm or do you just do the smartass thing on Wednesdays?


Intensity: This is a false dilemma. It could be none of the above.

Rw: And you support this assertion…how?

Veil of Fire

Everybody suffers; righteous and unrighteous (and, as I've said before, our nomenclature sucks).

Why?

(A) It's all about lessons and learning.
(B) It's karma, from this life or a previous one.
(C) Everybody has their own tests to overcome.
(D) What fun would life be if it were all EASY? About as much fun as a movie without fight scenes or a video game where you only fight forest imps!
(E) All of the above

MadMordigan

F) Because life sucks. Carry on.