Understanding God's Love

[regreib]

Could a God of love create cancer cells, rattlesnakes, and earthquakes?

Please no simplistic, cookie cutter answers! Think about the depth and degree of God’s love before answering. Please don’t demean or denigrate God’s love.

christiantraditions.webs.com

 

[Trishie]

God doesn’t create earthquakes etc. The geography and geology of the earth does. The earth has a molten core. The continental plates have edges. And humans have compromised the health of the planet in many ways.

God doesn’t create cancer cells. We pollute our atmosphere, contaminate our food sources, we eat the wrong foods laced with additives and dangerous fats. We succumb to stress, and a whole range of things we do over time can even damage our genes and sometimes we pass on those damaged genes to our descendants.

Rattlesnakes developed their protection against predators and in order to kill prey, as have so many creatures by camouflage, by developing scales, horns etc, by developing poisons (and not only animals but also leaves of many trees)in order to protect themselves from predation.
God doesn’t cause accidents, we do, God doesn’t cause illnesses, but quite often we do, however obscurely.

A great many things that humans blame God for, are caused in some form or other by humans.

 

[Deefraz]

Could a God of love create cancer cells, rattlesnakes, and earthquakes?

Please no simplistic, cookie cutter answers! Think about the depth and degree of God’s love before answering. Please don’t demean or denigrate God’s love.

christiantraditions.webs.com

We cannot fathom God’s wisdom in creation, nor his ability to bring about all things for the good of those who love him. We cannot say he would never allow these things because we cannot completely understand this wisdom. They call for our deeper trust in the one who is and knows everything seen and unseen. I believe that God could allow the creation of those things, even though they sometimes have undesirable effects on humans. You must also know that there may be good that comes from them, perhaps not even initially felt, but that ultimately good results…if anything I think it calls for us to trust more deeply in the truth that he will never leave us or forsake us, no matter what we may experience.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

Cancer cells are disordered cells. I think that is part of the disorder Adam caused by his disobedience.

 

[NoelFitz]

God does not create evil, as this is the absence of good.

Why did God let his Son die on the cross, as there was no need for this?

Why does God create people who will end in hell for all eternity?

 

[Trishie]

God does not create evil, as this is the absence of good.

Why did God let his Son die on the cross, as there was no need for this?

Why does God create people who will end in hell for all eternity?

1. Noel, people choose their own fate by their behaviour. [See Jesus’ description of the judgement of souls in Matthew 25 verses 31-46] If you live a life of practical kindness to others, that is, obey the command to love God above all and others as self, then you are choosing heaven, choosing God. This is Jesus’ teaching and He’s the one who should know, and he’s the one who judges souls…but note, He separates them by how they’ve lived their lives even before they fully understand, simply because it is we who choose or reject life lived in love.

If you don’t, then you are rejecting God’s love, which is the source of all light, beauty, and goodness, then you’ve made a choice that deprives yourself of that love beauty goodness, which state we call hell. Reject the light, and you have darkness.

God didn’t create anyone for hell. We choose where we shall be by or acceptance or rejection of God’s love during life. We reject it if we choose to live in selfishness. No one is born for that.

1. Even with all the kindness in the world we don’t merit heaven. We cant climb that Mountain ourselves.
   So God became incarnate, one of us, to lift us up to God.
   Because Jesus came amongst us, all we do for others we do for Him, who is man but also God…as Jesus also explains in the gospel passages I mentioned above. Only through Jesus can we truly love God and truly live in God’s grace. That applies for everyone.

 

[NoelFitz]

I read:

If you live a life of practical kindness to others, that is, obey the command to love God above all and others as self, then you are choosing heaven, choosing God.

Not so. If I live a life of kindness, yet have one unforgiven mortal sin on my soul when I die it is hell for all eternity for me.

Any sin against the 6th and 9th commandments is grave matter, as is direct disobedience to the law of God and His Church.

Therefore if I missed Sunday Mass once, without a valid reason, and die without genuinely confessing this, it is “hell with all its torments, and for all eternity”.

 

[Trishie]

You think God has so little mercy that if you have lived the most faithful life you can, He will not have mercy on you and not give you opportunity of repentance? God is just and loving and in His great mercy, would offer you that grace. God is not trying to trick us! Nor is God capricious. I trust in God’s mercy and don’t live in fear of tripping up on mortal sins. I have no interest in committing them. But I do know God is sincere and good and that He loves us and gives us every opportunity to repent.

 

[fhansen]

I read:

Not so. If I live a life of kindness, yet have one unforgiven mortal sin on my soul when I die it is hell for all eternity for me.

Any sin against the 6th and 9th commandments is grave matter, as is direct disobedience to the law of God and His Church.

Therefore if I missed Sunday Mass once, without a valid reason, and die without genuinely confessing this, it is “hell with all its torments, and for all eternity”.

Well, Scripture says that man judges by appearances while God judges by the heart and St John of the Cross, a Doctor of the Church, says that in the evening of life, we’ll be judged on our love.

As with all laws, we need to read by the spirit of our Catholic laws rather than merely by the letter. The principle behind those laws is sound to the extent that they’re fostered by the question-and this is the the only important question - ‘How, then, shall I love’?

 

[NoelFitz]

Many thanks for replies to me.

I have raised this issue and have been told that metaphors and Hebraism are used in the NT.

Remember “Many are called few are chosen. Depart from me, you cursed. Tormented in these flames”.

I enclose a few quotes.

But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?

But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell.

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

 

[fhansen]

Many thanks for replies to me.

I have raised this issue and have been told that metaphors and Hebraism are used in the NT.

Remember “Many are called few are chosen. Depart from me, you cursed. Tormented in these flames”.

I enclose a few quotes.

There’s a principle involved-a principle of justice-that states that evil will not coexist with good forever, that those who choose to hate, to adamantly reject love and goodness continuously, will get what they want-existence sans love and goodness. We don’t know much more about it than that but most who’ve been victimized and terribly abused by this world want to know that justice ultimately exists somewhere in this universe. The Catholic faith teaches that God’s love and mercy trumps His justice, however, and we’ll know later how that plays out. Meanwhile, we trust His wisdom and know He’ll be more fair than any of us have the capability or wherewithal to be.