Let’s suppose I accept that God, even Jesus, is real, divine, the creator, all of it, what is the support that God is all loving and all good? I can’t help but take away that if God exists he must be a trickster god or take some joy in watching the suffering of people. By people, I don’t mean the slaughter of this or that tribe in the bible or wars or, insert any atrocity, I mean the suffering of some random individual in some corner of the world that is suffering and calls out to God. Something where there is no lesson to be learned by the greater society, just something that any loving being would see and know, this isn’t right or just and intervene.
My guess is, if I were to ask an actual apologist, I would get something about free will or, maybe, the forces of evil in the world and I’ve seen the gymnastics from some of the most vocal and those with the most online followers. I simply have not seen where, in the bible, it says in no uncertain terms that God is good, all loving, all caring, and won’t let the innocent suffer in this life just for the promise of something better in an afterlife.
This is what has been on my mind lately and why I’m posting it here.
BTW, I did a couple of quick searches for “all loving” so if there is already a thread on this topic, please point the way.
-craig
If there was no suffering then you’d just be laying there like a heroine addict who can’t feel anything anyways after so many years. Be thankful for suffering because without there cannot be joy.
Wars are inevitable despite what a Pacifist dreams of. The town used to be farmland until the farm had to many babies, and now the farm needs to plow over the town because there’s too many babies to feed supposedly.
Thank you for the reply. Your response prompted me to go back and reread my post and I can see that I buried my key question in what I wrote.
My question is, what are the texts that tell us directly that God is all loving and good? I agree with parts of your response about good doesn’t exist without bad but I have an easier time reconciling suffering within Taoism than I do with an all loving god.
Where are we told that God is, in fact, all loving and good and not not a trickster?
Thank you.
Steefen October 16, 2024 at 1:13 pm – Reply
Bart’s Former Expectation:
There is an all-powerful and loving God in this world.
Steefen:
You got that idea from Jesus and Christianity. If not, where did you get that?
Hebrew Apocalypticism is a failed hypothesis.
The prophets of Hebrew Apocalypticism are false prophets.
“If there is a God, he certainly is not the one proclaimed by Judeo-Christian tradition.”
In addition to Hebrew Apocalypticism being a failed hope and a failed hypothesis,
Temple Judaism was destroyed.
Both in Hebrew myths and Sumerian myths, the gods tried to kill all humans. Humans and their sinful ways are a cause for suffering. But, if God gives his Son, God will stop suffering caused by geology and the nature of humanity: God will save believers and stop the nature of Earth and humanity.
Although the Bible insinuates that the Creator is God, the Elohim are not the Creator of the Universe.
The geographical/spatial scope of God in the Bible is Ancient Canaan, not the Solar System (4.6 billion years), not the Galaxy (13.6 billion years), not the Local Group, not the Laniakea Cluster, not the Universe (13.8 billion years) overseeing an estimate of 100 sextillion stars/solar systems and 200 sextillion planets without suffering.
Limit God to the Earth, 4.5 billion years, asteroids hit us.
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So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
1 John 4: 16
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4: 7-8
If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
Matt 7:11
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, with whom there is no change or shifting shadow.
James 1:17
He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things?
Romans 8:32
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you!
Isaiah 49: 15
Furthermore, we have all had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them. Should we not much more submit to the Father of our spirits and live?
Hebrews 12:9
I will make known the LORD’s loving devotion and His praiseworthy acts, because of all that the LORD has done for us—the many good things for the house of Israel according to His great compassion and loving devotion.
Isaiah 63: 7
Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
1 Peter 5: 7
God loves us. Didn’t he let his Son be killed so we not perish but have eternal life?
John 3: 16
That is extreme to the point of pathological criminality.
Would God let the world be killed to show his love to his Son?
Thank you, both, for your replies. I’ve read the blog posts about suffering and I’ve seen videos of Bart’s lost faith and I understand his point of view.
Robert, Thank you for the references you added as well.
For me, one thing that I simply don’t understood is how can a reader of the bible come away from the story and have as a key take-away, that character God/Jesus/Spirit, he sure was an all-loving being. I think I would be more open to the separation, or subordination of Jesus to God, where God struggles with being all powerful and created Jesus as a reminder to himself that being all powerful can lead to, something other than being all-loving and Jesus is the yang to god’s yin. That all things must exist in balance. The problem with perfection is that it can never change.
Jesus is a very interesting character until someone wants to insist that Jesus and God are one. My simplistic brain goes to this place of a split personality or parasitic relationship like Venom.
What prompted me to post? I simply am unable to read the bible and come away with an all-loving understanding of this character from the story. I find I have to remind myself to not stand with my jaw dropped open when someone wants to tell me about the all loving god. I decided I would rejoin the blog here and post and ask, what is it I’m missing that others are seeing or hearing.
Thank you again for your replies. I appreciate the responses.
-craig
If the tricks lead to causing murder then it’s a Sin. Tricks can also be part of creating love. Whatever ideas people have about the nature of God that have a psychological effect on them in love is usually what they believe is the truth about God.
That’s why there’s like thousands of religions out there.
You could say it as that Adam and Eve lied to Cain and then Cain killed Abel. Cain killing Abel and the deceptions that caused it were the first Sin. If the deceptions do not cause murder then it’s not a Sin.
Cain had to do a scientific experiment and prove that it wasn’t actually the disobedient eating of fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil that was the cause of death. Abel died because the rock crushed his skull.
The Problem of Evil is not that bad things happen to good people but the existence of Creation itself.
God is Absolute, lacking nothing, free of want or desire. God cannot create something greater than Himself since there can be none greater. God cannot create something equal to Himself since there can be only One. So anything He creates must be lesser than Himself, capable of flaw and imperfection. God created the possibility of Evil. Without God, Evil cannot exist.
Why create at all?
A truly good God would not create. Creation exists, therefore God cannot be truly good.
1 Corinthians 15:28
When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.
I was not sure I was familiar with this passage, so I’ve looked it up under ‘all in all’ on (bible gateway). What I think I understand here is that God is not yet all in all but will be when he puts everything under his feet; the last enemy being death.
“God is Absolute, lacking nothing, free of want or desire. God cannot create something greater than Himself since there can be none greater. God cannot create something equal to Himself since there can be only One”.
That’s like, your opinion man.
But really, when an evangelical wants to convey that God is perfect, all loving, all good, where does he or she turn to show me that is written? I may be repetitive here but, when I read the bible I simply don’t leave with the message that God is perfect. God seems pretty flawed. In fact, how can a perfect being create something that is not perfect? That seems like it would be considered an imperfection. Also, creation 1.0… destroy. creation 2.0… destroy. creation 3.0… and so on.
“A truly good God would not create. Creation exists, therefore God cannot be truly good.”
I think there is merit to this point. And again, I think I could be closer to God if he were a being seeking perfection rather than be perfection. However, in seeking perfection through creation I’m not sure I can accept that destroying your earlier versions is all loving.
I may be getting stuck in a rabbit hole where it’s getting hard to follow what I mean. However, I truly appreciate the conversation.
-craig
Crwilburn
when an evangelical
wants to convey that God is perfect, all loving, all good, where does he or she turn to show me that is written? I may be repetitive here but, when I read the bible I simply don’t leave with the message that God is perfect. God seems pretty flawed
Steefen
An evangelist wants people to become Christian
more than they want you to read the Bible.
When you read the New Testament, even Jesus questions what God did in the Hebrew Bible.
Luke 11:11
New International Version
“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?
God is not yet all in all but will be when he puts everything under his feet; the last enemy being death.
So The Almighty will at long last rectify a problem he caused in the first place?
That’s like, your opinion man.
Well the point of my piquant little illustration is to highlight the incoherence of the “Omni” God concept. God might be all-loving or all-powerful or all-knowing or all-present but the difficulty comes with making the claim that He could be all those at once.
…the influx of Neoplatonic and then Aristotelian philosophy which church fathers and later theologians used to build classical philosophical theism.
If it hasn’t been done already somebody dearly needs to write a book aimed at a popular audience about the importance of Greek philosophy on Christianity. Like a lot of folks I was raised with the idea of a “pure” Judeo-Christianity only later corrupted by pagan ideas.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert