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Reply Subj: Re: Widening Reply... Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 at 09:42:11 am EDT (Viewed 3 times) | |||||||
Quote: Quote: All of which means that on the bright side I have a pretty clean slate to define and develop the Spectre, but on the nagative side I don't want to spoil the character as envisaged by a poster I have no contact with at all. Quote: I can ask him for his opinion, if it really bothers you? I'm in contact with him. Unless you think he'd really want an input or would wish to jump back onto the board I don't think it's neccessary. Quote: Quote: Swerving into theology for a moment, a question almost everyone asks at some point is "If there's an omnipotent, omniscient, loving God then why does he let good people suffer and die?" The hard Christian doctrinal answer is that the alternative is to intervene and take away free will choices from people.Quote: That doesn't really hold up to cover the innocent children who die horribly though, it's not like they made a choice that led them there. Christian doctrine holds that bad choices - sin - have damaged the whole of creation throughout time (original sin). It's as if creation is like a pocketwatch and only one tiny component needs to malfunction to break the whole thing. Hence humans live in a creation that includes disaster and death The world is therefore unjust and bad things happen to the undeserving. God could stop that happening, but only at the cost of robbing humanity of their free will. Christians then add in the idea that God loves humanity so much that to resolve this insoluable problem he performed a rescue mission though Christ, freeing people from eternal consequences of bad choices and making right tragedies through eternal life etc. This is very hard stuff to talk about and should never be spouted glibly or offensively. I recall a training course on bereavement I once attended where the chaplain of Guy's Hospital in London spoke of a very difficult experience he'd had on this (turn away now if you don't want to be harrowed). On the children's ward was a girl with chronic diabetis. It was her eighth birthday so her parents bought her a special cake of the special chocolate layered with the kind of icing that diabetics can eat. They brought the cake to the hospital only to hear the news that the child had died half an hour earlier. The parents were devout christians and had been praying for their daughter's recovery. The father was so angry at his daughter's death that he stored down to the hospital chapel and hurled the cake at the crucifix on the wall, leaving the image of Christ spattered with the dripping icing. The chaplain found him thee weeping. The chaplain's argument was that Christ accepted the man's fury becuse the father had to let it out; that Christ suffers worse than cake-throwing to comfort those who hurt; that he suffered to take away some of the father's pain; and that he died in pain to offer an innocent child eternal life. It's as close to an understanding of how a supposedly-loving God can allow some of the things that happen in the world as I've ever heard from the church. | |||||||
