This Week's Assignment: When God Acts Immorally
I'll be tackling the following by Thursday. Feel free to chime in:
If God is good and if God is all-powerful (as conventional Christian theology insists) then why does God allow the total demise of a righteous man like Job? Or why does God reject Cain's offering? Or why does God permit the Canaanites to be slaughtered?
Answer these questions from the perspective of someone trained in 1) the Deuteronomic school, 2) the priestly school, and 3) the wisdom school. Note the prophets' own unique way of rationalizing suffering and God's seeming unpredictability. Which of these, if any, corresponds to your own modern understanding of God and the problem of suffering?
Choose two of the following calamities to discuss what kinds of divine comfort, if any, does the Hebrew Bible offer to victims of 1) slavery, 2) racial genocide, 3) forced dislocation from homeland, 4) sexual abuses, 5) terminal illness, or 6) death of a loved one?
|
Comments (2)
2:28 PM
would a comment from 4) the heretical school, be sufficient? ;-)
5:00 PM
Solomon talks about this in Ecclesiastes 7. He focuses on karma, though he does not talk about that word. A righteous man perishes in his righteousness while a wicked man prolongs life in his wickedness. Nowhere does the Bible say that we as Christians get a free pass from suffering, except for in the end.
Solomon points out two distinct flaws in the karma system. He talks about men who love God and live Godly lives and die young. His second problem is a rightness that is wrong, us being right in our own eyes.
Anyway, I am sure that was off topic a little but I thought it might be useful.
Post a Comment