The Resident Christian's Personal Rant Date Friday, April 19, 2024 - 08:12 AM PST Topic Rant OK. Just to warn you, this is Schizo the Christian suddenly poking her head out of her cave. This is not an attempt at evangelization. This is merely a rant about all the arguments people throw at me about how mean God is. I figure, if people can post things that are anti-Christianity, I can post something in defense. So don't say I didn't warn you! OK. One of the biggest arguments I get against God is that He's a big meanie because He makes bad things happen to people. That's bullshit. People make bad things happen to people. People rob people. People act cruelly to people. You might say, why doesn't God stop the bad people from hurting the good people? Well, define bad or good person. Where do you draw the line? For one thing, every "bad" person has something good about them, and every "good" person has something bad about them. There is no perfectly good or bad person. And even if you could separate the human race that way, think what God would have to do to keep bad people in line. Scenario - bad person about to mug good person. Raises knife, but a cosmic force field keeps the knife from stabbing. Or he trips over a crack in the pavement. Or he suddenly receives an irresistable urge to give the victim his own wallet. What happens here? One person in the scenario has just lost his free will. That's what happens. And that's what God won't do. He won't steal anyone's free will. That's what made the mugger bad, after all, stealing the victims free will to decide what to do with his money! So if you want to be bad, you can! Your conscience might bug you, it might get into deep shit, but you can do the bad thing if you want. God won't strike you with lightning to stop you. OK. Some things happen bad to people that other people didn't directly do. Like a genetic disease, or an act of nature. Which means that God is supposed to somehow fix all genes in all babies before they are born, and control all breezes and slitherings of the earth's crust so no one gets a splinter. Well, I suppose He could do that. He could keep Mid-western Joe from having his house smashed to bits by a tornado. And who knows how many times He does that? I think God knows exactly who is in the path of that tornado, and has it all under control. Ooooh! Do you know what that means? It means that God let something bad happen to someone DELIBERATELY! Well, what's wrong with that? Parents do that to their kids all the time! Parents take the training wheels off their kids bikes and let them fall and scrape their knees. If they left the training wheels on forever, that wouldn't happen! But you'd end up with a teenager that never learned how to ride a bike. Maybe that's what God's doing sometimes. Teaching people things, helping them to learn lessons they otherwise would never know. Expanding their horizons. It's uncomfortable. It's difficult. But it needs to be done. And the people still have free choice. They can decide to learn, or they can figuratively keep pushing the bike with their feet so they won't fall over. It's up to them. And believe me, I've been through enough shit in my short life to be able to say this. I haven't had an easy, coddled life. Obviously, there are people out there who have been through more than I have, but I've been through enough to see. And I'm sure there are a lot of you out there who have been through shit and let it teach you, and can say, like me, that now you are glad it happened, because it made you bigger, stronger, and better able to cope with other things that come up. That's part of life. It's what makes life real and not a game. If life were too easy, we'd all kill ourselves from boredom, rather than a few from pain. And don't say I'm making light of suicide, either, because I've been there too. And even that has taught me something. And about the people that die, and you may say, what have they been taught? Why is it such a tragedy to die young? We all have to die sometime. Sure, it hurts more for those who loved the person, because it wasn't expected. But does it really make a difference to the person who died? If you believe in an afterlife, then the person just went there a little earlier. If you don't, and believe that you just end, then that person doesn't even know it died. And as for those who mourn, it's pain, and it teaches, if we let it. Why should God shelter us from pain? His job is not to shelter, but to support. He doesn't throw shit at us, but helps us through and teaches us when it comes. And that's what I think, based on my 24 years of gritty experience. That's my rant. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=92