re: So The Same "God" That Allows Pedophiles To Run Rampant In His Churches Is Going To Assist

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Sorting for Heaven/Hell is doable. A Tsunami hitting a village and killing 80% of its inhabitants doesn't have the same sort of purposeful hand guiding it.

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Says who? Why can’t the God that created all things control all things, including nature?

God sent the great flood, droughts, plagues of Egypt, and will destroy the earth with fire at the end of all things. Jesus calmed storms and raised the dead. Why cannot this God be in control of hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, tsunamis, volcanoes, meteorites, earthquakes, and other “natural” events?

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Hell is meant to be a punishment, our life on Earth not so much (lots of people aren't being killed by said Tsunami despite carrying at least one sin).

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The lives of every human being belong to the God that created them. He has the authority and freedom to take the physical lives of any person at any time. He owes no one life, and especially everlasting life. So why can’t He take the lives of some now instead of 10, 30, or 60 years from now in old age?

God does punish sin here on Earth in various ways. The Bible has many examples of people being punished on Earth, including with death.

Because all people sin and all sin deserves death, God is just in taking the lives of every single human being, whether for specific sins committed or general sin, so He is not unjust or evil to take the lives of any at any time.

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Ok, so to my point...

Why doesn't god send something to take out these evil fricks?

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He has His good reasons.

Examples from the Bible include patience for repentance and storing up wrath for a final judgement.

While atheists like to point to the conquest of Canaan as an example of immoral butchery by God through Israel, they don’t seem to understand the depths of depravity of the Canaanites that God was being patient with and then judged. These peoples and tribes worshiped idols, obviously, but they also butchered their children as part of their worship, including cutting them in half while still alive, and burning them alive as sacrifices. They engaged in beastiality and temple prostitution. God was patient with them during the entire time Israel was in Egypt, and because they did not repent, God judged them by displacing them.

The same thing happened with Israel. Over and over again, the people of God sinned against God by doing the same practices mentioned above through adopting the practices of the Canaanites and God judges them through war, plague, and even slavery and dispossession and then redeems them when they repent. The book of Judges is basically this as a cycle.

Jesus, Himself, predicted judgment on Israel for their rejection of Him as God and Messiah. This judgment was accomplish at least in part through the destruction of Jerusalem and diaspora in 70 AD.

All that to say, God has His reasons for not immediately destroying the wicked. He may be being patient with them for their repentance, or He may be allowing them to build up their account (so to speak) so that they will receive His infinite wrath, in this life or the next.

Either way, what we need to consider is that we are equally deserving of God’s anger because of our own sins against Him. We are no better than the murderer or rapist because we have anger and lust in our hearts each day. We reject the God who offers salvation and we hurt and ridicule other image-bearers of God. We have sinned against a holy God and deserve His wrath, so we need to turn away from those sins and believe upon Jesus Christ, the only name by which men are saved from that wrath.

God has been patient with you, in particular. He has let you live the life you have for as long as you have, waiting for you to stop your unbelief and trust in His Son by faith. You have been given the gospel of Jesus Christ—that you have sinned and must trust in the sacrifice and obedience of Jesus for His righteousness and acceptance before God—and offered eternal life and avoidance of everlasting judgment. I hope you choose life.

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Why doesn't god send something to take out these evil fricks?

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Because, believe it or not, Christian doctrine teaches that God desires that all men would come to know him. He is patient with delaying the day of judgement on all men to give them ample time to repent of their sins. Doesn’t mean they’re absolved of all consequences, just means that they can be redeemed from their sin.

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Says who? Why can’t the God that created all things control all things, including nature?

God sent the great flood, droughts, plagues of Egypt, and will destroy the earth with fire at the end of all things. Jesus calmed storms and raised the dead. Why cannot this God be in control of hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, tsunamis, volcanoes, meteorites, earthquakes, and other “natural” events?

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Let's say a Tsunami hits a village and kills 18,549 out of the 25,921 people who live there.

There is no way for God to have intended those exact people dying while all others were spared.

Realistically what happened is that most of the people who died were either extremely young or old or lived right on the coast.

The wave didn't come in and chase down specific people. That's retarded.

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So why can’t He take the lives of some now instead of 10, 30, or 60 years from now in old age?

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Because he's allegedly just. Imagine if our justice system deemed someone guilty of murder but let them run around for 20 years and THEN put him in jail.

Is that just compared to quite literally every other murderer who had to serve time immediately after their conviction?

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Let's say a Tsunami hits a village and kills 18,549 out of the 25,921 people who live there.

There is no way for God to have intended those exact people dying while all others were spared.

Realistically what happened is that most of the people who died were either extremely young or old or lived right on the coast.

The wave didn't come in and chase down specific people. That's retarded.

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You have a very limited view of God’s providential power. Why can’t God direct each individual into the place that they needed to be in for them to die from the water? If God can’t manage such a feat, there is no need to pray to Him for anything because He can’t do much at all for us.

God directed all the events of Joseph’s life in order to make him 2nd in command of Egypt in order to bring Israel into Egypt. From Joseph’s dreams to the death of Rachel, from the brothers’ actions that culminated in kidnapping their brother and selling him to slave traders, to the traders’ actions of being in the right place at the right time to buy Joseph and then to sell him to a ranking officer in Egypt. So on and so on. God is in control, moving and positioning all things according to his great and sovereign plan.

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Because he's allegedly just. Imagine if our justice system deemed someone guilty of murder but let them run around for 20 years and THEN put him in jail.

Is that just compared to quite literally every other murderer who had to serve time immediately after their conviction?

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Yes, it is just.

You seem to be saying that it would be unfair and unjust to one group of murderers to punish them immediately while others are not punished immediately.

While justice might demand a murderer be put to death, it doesn’t demand when the sentence should be carried out.

You are comparing it to our own flawed justice system, but we actually do have differing outcomes for people convicted of murder. Some are sentenced to death while others aren’t. Those that are sentenced to death have differing wait times before their executions.

Not only that, but God is a judge that also shows mercy. Sometimes He commutes a sentence and sometimes He delays justice for a time to show mercy. However His justice is perfect in the end, because no one will escape it in the life to come. The only hope we have is to put our hope and trust that God allowed His Son to be executed in our place so that we can receive forgives and a pardon for our crimes against God. God offers a conditional pardon, and just as a king or president can commute a sentence, so can the God of the universe.

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Why can’t God direct each individual into the place that they needed to be in for them to die from the water?

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Free will.

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Yes, it is just.

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No, it's not. Being just necessitates treating everyone equal. If sin = death, then the deaths need to be uniform. Giving a child a painful terminal disease and letting a serial killer live a full, healthy, happy life until they die peacefully at 80 years old isn't an equal application of the same standard.

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Not only that, but God is a judge that also shows mercy.

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Which is the suspension of justice and yet another reason your ideal of a god is inherently contradictory.

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Free will.

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Who says God has to violate someone's will in order to direct them?

God can and does restrain thoughts and actions by various means, but He doesn't have to invisibly drag a person to a location in order to direct their steps.

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No, it's not. Being just necessitates treating everyone equal.

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Not necessarily. Giving someone what that person deserves is just, but the contexts and circumstances around giving that person what they deserve can certainly vary without justice being harmed. I gave an example already of how that works through the application of the death penalty in our own country for murder. Would you deny that it's unjust for one state to sentence a man to life in prison for murder while another state would condemn him to die? You used our current legal system to show how God is unjust, so I'm curious your thought on this.

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If sin = death, then the deaths need to be uniform. Giving a child a painful terminal disease and letting a serial killer live a full, healthy, happy life until they die peacefully at 80 years old isn't an equal application of the same standard.

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Why not? Both die in the end.

It seems you are wrapping all things into the punishment rather than looking at the punishment, itself. If two men are on death row and the governor gives one convict an additional week to show sorrow for their crimes and get a pardon and another convict gets two weeks to do the same, is that unjust of the governor by giving one of them an additional week of mercy before the sentence is carried out? And let's say that both men refuse to take advantage of that mercy, but rather spend their extra time obstinately refusing to apologize and show sorrow and both wind up being executed. Has justice not been served?

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Which is the suspension of justice and yet another reason your ideal of a god is inherently contradictory.

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A temporary suspension of justice is not injustice.

I find it interesting that you think God can't be both just and merciful, though.

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Who says God has to violate someone's will in order to direct them?

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We're not talking about directing. We're talking about a city's worth of people all being where they need to be in order for God to selectively kill certain people. Roughly a quarter million people died in the 2004 tsunami. The idea that he can corral that many supposed free will individuals into the precise locations they need to be in order to have them killed in the fashion he deemed fit it entirely ridiculous. You're not going to even allow for a 1 person error. Hell, God even deemed how long it would take each individual to drown. Maybe he allowed debris to knock someone out and they never suffered. Maybe someone was trapped in a building in a small pocket of air for a minute while the water rose then drowned.

We're not just talking about people just being in the general vicinity of the shoreline. We're talking about people needing to be exactly where they were. One step either way and whatever piece of debris that knocked them out misses and now they're quite aware they're drowning and suffer.

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If two men are on death row and the governor gives one convict an additional week to show sorrow for their crimes and get a pardon and another convict gets two weeks to do the same, is that unjust of the governor by giving one of them an additional week of mercy before the sentence is carried out?

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Just to be clear to anyone who is reading along, Foo needs this hypothetical young child suffering from a terminal illness and hypothetical serial killer who was never caught and died peacefully in their 80s to both be comparable to convicted killers on death row.

And yet, despite all of that, yes that wouldn't be just. It's no different than a teacher handing out a test to their class of 25 students, then giving each student a different amount of time to take the test. Some students quite literally get 1 minute, while others get 45 minutes.

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Why not? Both die in the end.

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See the above test example. What's unfair? Everyone has to turn their tests in the end. What difference does it make that some people get a lot more time?

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A temporary suspension of justice is not injustice.

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So if a 20 year old kills your wife, and he's ordered to serve the rest of his life in prison, but he's allowed to be free until he's 85, then he's put in prison, and dies at 87, justice was served? It's only temporary...

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I find it interesting that you think God can't be both just and merciful, though.

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Perfectly just. I can't say that I pitched a perfect game if someone got a single off me.

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I wouldn't knit that child together in it's mother's womb.

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That wasn't the question.

In that scenario, would you believe it to be immoral to kill the child in order to prevent massive suffering and death in the future?

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We're not talking about directing. We're talking about a city's worth of people all being where they need to be in order for God to selectively kill certain people. Roughly a quarter million people died in the 2004 tsunami. The idea that he can corral that many supposed free will individuals into the precise locations they need to be in order to have them killed in the fashion he deemed fit it entirely ridiculous. You're not going to even allow for a 1 person error. Hell, God even deemed how long it would take each individual to drown. Maybe he allowed debris to knock someone out and they never suffered. Maybe someone was trapped in a building in a small pocket of air for a minute while the water rose then drowned.

We're not just talking about people just being in the general vicinity of the shoreline. We're talking about people needing to be exactly where they were. One step either way and whatever piece of debris that knocked them out misses and now they're quite aware they're drowning and suffer.

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And an all knowing and all powerful God can certainly do such a thing. Just because it is outside of your finite capacity to consider it doesn't mean it's outside of God.

Also, God has told us that He ordained even the crucifixion of His Son from before the foundations of the world. That means He had to orchestrate all of human history to align to a point where Jesus would have been crucified in Roman-occupied Jerusalem the way He was by the people who were responsible, which means orchestrating the times and places of all peoples that led up to that point, such as the birth and elevation of Pontius Pilate. It's way more complex than what you're making it out to be, and yet the God who created all things, know all things, and can do all His holy will can and does make it happen as He sees fit.

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Just to be clear to anyone who is reading along, Foo needs this hypothetical young child suffering from a terminal illness and hypothetical serial killer who was never caught and died peacefully in their 80s to both be comparable to convicted killers on death row.

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I don't "need" that at all. I'm demonstrating a point about God's sovereignty over all people as the King of creation. All people sin and are therefore cosmic traitors against God, and He, as the "governor", can decide to show mercy to a "convict" as He sees fit.

You're making an emotional argument and I'm trying to show you the logical approach to the problem.

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And yet, despite all of that, yes that wouldn't be just. It's no different than a teacher handing out a test to their class of 25 students, then giving each student a different amount of time to take the test. Some students quite literally get 1 minute, while others get 45 minutes.

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It's not the same thing at all, because you're assuming some form of neutrality in the students that requires a "fair" (according to your own estimation) approach to the situation that they are in. I used the analogy that I did for a reason: we're talking about criminals receiving justice from a judge.

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See the above test example. What's unfair? Everyone has to turn their tests in the end. What difference does it make that some people get a lot more time?

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As I just stated: the situation you are providing is not analogous to the situation God is in as a judge. Your premise is faulty which is why you don't see why the conclusion is not correct.

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So if a 20 year old kills your wife, and he's ordered to serve the rest of his life in prison, but he's allowed to be free until he's 85, then he's put in prison, and dies at 87, justice was served? It's only temporary...

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If the convict deserves the death penalty for his crime and he receives it, then yes, justice was served. Whether I personally like the way it was dealt out is irrelevant to whether or not it was just.

We're talking about whether or not God is just, not whether or not we emotionally accept the ways of His justice.

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Perfectly just. I can't say that I pitched a perfect game if someone got a single off me.

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God is perfectly just. It seems you are having a hard time understanding the discussion we're having, as you keep pivoting to examples or analogies that are not comparable, or are addressing an emotional response to a truth claim rather than the truth claim, itself. I'm not arguing that it's easy to accept the ways of God, only that they are righteous and just in spite of how we may feel about them, because He is perfect and we are not.