Is there any way to believe in a god that

[Anonymous]

This is where the Just World Hypothesis kicks in. In psychology, we talk about the concept of a God who will eventually make all things right again, on his own tmeline. SWK quoted James E Talmage saying “everything we suffer in this life has a compensating blessing in the next provided the trial is met with patience”.

I know this sounds hollow, and I’m not sure I necessarily believe it, but I wanted to share the counterpoint to this argument.

Personally, I see God as The Watchmaker. He set up a universe with laws which create a basic sense of structural order, gives people agency, and then lets the forces interact. He steps in when it suits him, and his rules, agenda and reasons for stepping in are not clear.

[Anonymous]

I reckon God’s perspective is very different from our’s. He sees our mortality as a very short time. Any suffering is relatively brief, and then the innocent and sanctified will return to Him.

Also, parents place their children in harm’s way very regularly. We send our kids outside to play and they get injured. They go to school where they are teased. We watch as they interact with the world and people and are repeatedly hurt. They learn lessons. I think this is what God does with us, but on a grander scale.

[Anonymous]

Don’t feel bad if you can’t make this whole paradox work. The greatest minds in the Christian world have worked this problem for 2,000 years and have yet to find a perfect resolution.

This area of theology has it’s own special academic name: “Theodicy.” It’s the question of why there is evil in the world.

The basic assumptions:

1. God is all powerful.

2. God is all knowing.

3. God is all loving.

God doesn’t want suffering to happen. He knows everything in advance, all possible outcomes and variables. He has power to change anything and everything. No part of God is evil. He is perfect. He created everything. So how can there be evil?

The way to generally attack the problem logically is to redefine one of those three divine characteristics (assumptions), usually changing what “love” means (harsh lessons can be a form of love, etc.)

Old-Timer wrote:

Then redefine what you believe God is.

See how simple that answer was?

I tend to find Ray’s solution more palatable. Most of the other solutions have a tendency to dismiss the reality and suffering of evil, even glorify it. It’s pretty messed up if you think about doing that too much. It works better for me too to redefine what God is to match the evidence. That isn’t a traditionally accepted resolution though.

[Anonymous]

rebeccad wrote:

Is omnipotent and Loves his children and Answers prayers?..I just can’t reconcile all three together.

Here is my question: Think of a child that is repeatedly abused, that child is goes to church every Sunday and prays to God to stop his abuser. The abuse continues…The traditional reasoning just doesn’t work here…Sometimes the answer is “No”…God lets wicked people be wicked so his judgement is just…God can’t intervene in free agency…why not inspire people who are supposed to be in tune to find out about the abuse and do something about it? Or drop a tree on the perpetrator, or give him a bad case of Parkinson’s disease…If I knew my child was being hurt, I would stop at nothing to protect them. I can’t reconcile my feelings about a loving God that wouldn’t do the same…Why should I bother with an aloof detached god?…I can see no way to answer these questions without redefining what God is.

It is definitely possible to believe in a god that is not going to fix everything that is wrong in the world because that’s almost exactly what I believe basically that God will answer some prayers but not others and intervene in some cases but usually just let random events play out and let people make their own decisions even if it negatively impacts many others. One way to support this belief if you want to is simply to allow God more flexibility to be what he really is (if anything) rather than expecting him to be and do exactly what we think he should which is probably never going to happen based on past history.

Maybe God just doesn’t have the time and energy to worry about every single thing that happens in the universe. In other words, maybe God is not really all-knowing and all-powerful to begin with but is basically working almost non-stop trying to create order out of chaos just like life in general. Also, maybe God defines what is good or most important differently than most people do. For example, what is good for the lion is completely awful and unfair to the zebra, wildebeest, etc. So why didn’t God just make all animals vegetarians? I see it as being more of a big picture approach to a work in progress involving billions of years and billions of creatures rather than a scripted and pre-determined puppet show where everything that happens was directly controlled or allowed by God.

Would any of this make God worthless? Maybe for some people it would, but not for me. Just because God clearly hasn’t done everything many people think he should that doesn’t necessarily mean he can’t or won’t ever do anything for people and hasn’t ever done anything for them. The way I see it, as bad as things seem to us sometimes they could easily be worse in most cases. In fact, without God I would expect something much worse than what we have to the point that there would not be anyone with the consciousness to think about questions like this to begin with but I guess that’s a whole other debate.

[Anonymous]

Brian Johnston wrote:

God doesn’t want suffering to happen. He knows everything in advance, all possible outcomes and variables. He has power to change anything and everything. No part of God is evil. He is perfect. He created everything. So how can there be evil?

The way to generally attack the problem logically is to redefine one of those three divine characteristics (assumptions), usually changing what “love” means (harsh lessons can be a form of love, etc.)

I agree Brian. For me I was only able to fully accept God’s knowledge of me and His love for me after sacrificing the concept of His limitless power.

I believe that this is pretty defensible within Mormon doctrine. We know that God can not lie or he would cease to be God. It would seem that His continuing status is predicated on his following certain rules. We don’t know what all the rules are but we can speculate about justice and mercy, opposition in all things and free agency. We also believe in eternal progression. If God was once a man that has progressed to the point of being God is it fair to say that he has progressed as far as He is able? That there is nothing more to learn?

There has also been much written about the redefining of “love.” The classic talk about the current bush is but one of these examples (The bush cries out at the pruning but does not realize that it is necessary to form the bush into what the Master wants it to be). The idea is that God specifically shapes your life (including things that are crushing trials) in order to help you reach a full potential that only He sees. This approach is also very defensible within Mormonism.

But Yes, I agree that the problem of evil requires a sacrifice or altering of one of these three “omni” attributes.

[Anonymous]

I think it is in God’s nature to let us figure things our for ourselves.

The Kid who get abused and goes to church may have to go through some counseling. If he takes the high road he will move on this his life after the counseling is complete. If he chooses the low road he will wait until he is strong enough to put his abuser in his or her place and then move on.

Christ tells us to turn the other cheek. I have chosen to turn the other fist and hit the abusers cheek. That’s just me though. God allows me to do this because I have the agency to do so.

Life is a journey. My journey is different than your own. My leahona might be pointing in a different direction than yours. Sometimes I don’t even bother looking at where it is pointing and set out my own course. Some will end up in the same place and others won’t.

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