a loving God and the Tsunami

[martha]

If it weren't New Year's Eve, and a delicious enchilada dinner with my husband weren't imminent, I could explain my views more clearly than I can now.


oops



Dinner is served. I'll be back later.

 

[namkcuR]

I don't believe in God.

There are dictators that won't allow their own people to be free.
The leading cause of death for pregnant women in the USA is murder, most of the time by their husbands.
AIDs is taking hundreds of thousands, millions, of lives, in Africa every week/month/year
People commit suicide at an alarming rate
There are countless homeless people in every city on Earth
People kill innocent people in the name of their religion on a daily basis. More people kill in the name of their religion than for any other cause.
9/11 happened
This tsunami happened
Over a thousand young people have died in Iraq

To scratch the tip of the iceburg. And I'm supposed to believe in God? No thanks.

I believe in no religion. I believe in a greater being, but not one with any kind of conciousness, no deity, nothing even close. What I believe in is more of a spiritual thing, a lifestream kind of thing. When a person dies, their soul goes into this lifestream, and meshes, mixes, into all of the other departed souls. Then, when someone is born, their soul is taken from this pool of souls, and because 1/1000 of that soul could be taken from the remnants of 1000 different souls, every single soul will be unique. And if any one departed soul's portion of this new soul is larger than than the other departed souls' portions...that's re-incarnation. I hope I haven't confused you all. But that's what I believe in. A lifestream, where souls begin and end. And it has no conciousness, it doesn't cause anything that happens on Earth, it's not even aware of anything that happens because it has no conciousness.

 

[nathan1977]

From the perspective of a person who does believe in a kind and loving God--

I'm not surprised by events like the tsunami. The world was not created by God in a fallen state -- it became that way because God is not the only force at work in nature and creation. God's plan is always for life to prevail, but His are not the only purposes. The Bible teaches that the Devil seeks to thwart God's purposes, and is a thief, liar, and murderer.

My father, a preacher, says it best -- if you attribute even half of the things to the devil that you ordinarily attribute to God, you might begin to get a better sense of how the world works.

And has it occurred to people that the sign of God's presence is not in the tragedy, but in the survival? More people could have died than did -- this is not in any way to minimize the shocking loss of life, but to say that God may have been working alongside those who survived.

So far as karma is concerned, it's my view that the only force stronger than karma is grace. ("She moves outside of karma.") It may have been Grace working that allowed anyone to survive at all, because in reality, considering the pace of the tsunami, the time of day, and all of that, then more people probably SHOULD have died than did.

IMHO, we give God too much credit when bad things happen, and too little when good.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

I do not believe that God 'caused' this to happen nor that it was a part of his/her/its plan. This was a NATURAL disaster, easily explained by science, I do not believe God played a part in it. From what I believe, ever since Jesus God has essentially sat back and is watching over us.

What she said.

Angela

 

[Saracene]

From the perspective of a person who does believe in a kind and loving God--

I'm not surprised by events like the tsunami. The world was not created by God in a fallen state -- it became that way because God is not the only force at work in nature and creation. God's plan is always for life to prevail, but His are not the only purposes. The Bible teaches that the Devil seeks to thwart God's purposes, and is a thief, liar, and murderer.

What always interested me about this explanation of how the world works is, why does God allow Devil to exist in the first place?

 

[martha]

Before you go on, may I suggest some study of the subject on your part. And after that, years of thought and further study. It's so much more complicated than you think. If you prefer to keep your understanding simple, fine, but please don't dismiss the concept because you don't want to know more about it.

The tone of this is condescending, and I apologize for it.

 

[Liesje]

What always interested me about this explanation of how the world works is, why does God allow Devil to exist in the first place?

Lately, after taking some theology courses and studying the creation narratives, I've come to believe that there is no such "Devil" as a "Satan" that is the opposite of God. I think it's more of a cold-is-the-absence-of-heat type thing. There is only God and not-God.

 

[babyman]

there isn't anything bad that happens because of the will of god, god promised to us he will bring HIS reign at the right time, and when this will happen all the innocent people will come back to life, the suffering, the evil and the death will be flush away. everytime when something bad happens we must make our faith stronger and stronger, because it's the only salvation way, god didn't create us like toys, he created us because of love, and we must believe in what he's saying to us. don't give any guilt to god, trust his word, even when it seems to be the hardest thing to do, we must never doubt about god, never

 

[babyman]

What always interested me about this explanation of how the world works is, why does God allow Devil to exist in the first place?

the devil threw a challenge to god rebelling against him, he said that he had the same power to take his place, and that god was false and stuff like that. but god didn't cancel him because otherwise the other angels would have believed that the devil was right, but he will cancel the devil in the apocalypse, the devil knows that he's gonna be destructed, and the evil that you see it's only the devil's fury, all the catastrophes happen because of the devil. but god will resurrect all the deaths in the days of the apocalypse, he will make all the things clear, there will be no evil more, no death, no sorrow or pain, there will be only god's reign and an eternal life...........this isn't fiction, or preacher's speeches.......this is the truth, the only one

 

[Anthony]

Well, Irvine was looking for personal reactions, so I won't go on about scripture and what I'm supposed to believe.

I do believe in God, (or at least, used to) but my belief of It has been shaped and reshaped over the last few years many times and I still don't have a fixed idea of it. I don't think thats particularly wrong, as God is so much bigger than my biggest idea to begin with, should It exist, and so, why shouldn't my idea of It constantly change. I have never been given a direct experience of It, I can't speak in anything more than intellectual concepts.

But above everything else, I'm an emotional person. I can tell you all that the last few days have depressed me terribly, as with many others, and more so with my entire being screaming out that there is no God. I neither have the strength nor the will to refute those emotions. Its the age-old classic notion that 'if there is so much pain in the world, how can there be a God?', but its perhaps even worse, because I have always tried to make the idea of God so flexible. I have never believed in a God that judges or tests, nor have I ever bought the idea that God isn't in control of all things. It is God, if It can't control everything, then what on Earth, or Universe, is Its function? I don't believe in the Devil or that It is the cause of all pain, but rather, I believe that if there is a supreme being, this being is in charge of both love and hate, joy and pain. C.S Lewis used to say that he didn't think that God particularly wanted Human Beings to be happy, but that It wanted them to love and be loved - 'to grow up'. God was therefore, in charge of the pain in our lives as well as our joy. I did, for a while, subscribe to the idea of Karma - that we do reap what we sow, whether its in this life or the next... but ultimately; that is not good enough for me.

That is what is perhaps, most disheartening and angering for me; no idea or concept of God is good enough to provide an explanation for the sheer loss of life. I hate it. I fear the idea of Death even more and the idea of God disheartening as patronizing.

Ant.

 

[Kieran McConville]

This whole thread disturbs me, frankly. There ARE such things as natural disasters. I don't perceive that notions of God's will or a Godly life as lived by people on earth, should be tied to natural events in this way. We know why the tsunami happened, it happened because of a shift in plates under the ocean floor. A similar shift happened last week south of Tasmania but since it moved in a different manner, nobody was affected.

Storms and droughts also bring their own afflictions. Asteroids can and may hit the planet. None of these things are directly God's doing, and I don't think they should have any implications for our belief in a loving God. The only real significance I guess is how people deal with events that come along.

I guess, simplistic as it may be, I subscribe to the idea that the world is a stage, and God may have put the stage there and us on it, but he doesn't write the script.

 

[NotAnEasyThing]

It's interesting to see so many different ideas about God and life. I've already posted my personal response but I wanted to just add this.

Perhaps our understanding of these things is skewed by our limited perspective. If the concept of God means anything, surely he must be far beyond the comprehension of our little brains. Just like the back of a beautiful cross-stich can look ugly and chaotic so our perspective of life may only be a small part of a yet to be completed work. I remain confident that one day all this will make sense.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I guess, simplistic as it may be, I subscribe to the idea that the world is a stage, and God may have put the stage there and us on it, but he doesn't write the script.

I agree, very well said

The apocalyptic notion that the tsunami is some sort of vengeful act perpetrated by God is so sick and twisted. I know you didn't mean to suggest that in any way Irvine, but I'm sure someone somewhere in this world might actually believe that way.

It is natural to question God in a time like this, I happen to think he wants us to.

We can and will see God reflected in the outpouring of help and in the glimmers of hope in an unbelievable tragedy like this. He has given us the hearts and the minds and the love to deal w/ tragedy. That's just how I prefer to look at it.

It is a struggle to find peace w/ tragedy in the world and in our personal lives, if you believe in God it's probably the ultimate struggle. But I do think it is possible.

 

[Irvine511]

This whole thread disturbs me, frankly. There ARE such things as natural disasters. I don't perceive that notions of God's will or a Godly life as lived by people on earth, should be tied to natural events in this way. We know why the tsunami happened, it happened because of a shift in plates under the ocean floor. A similar shift happened last week south of Tasmania but since it moved in a different manner, nobody was affected.

Storms and droughts also bring their own afflictions. Asteroids can and may hit the planet. None of these things are directly God's doing, and I don't think they should have any implications for our belief in a loving God. The only real significance I guess is how people deal with events that come along.

I guess, simplistic as it may be, I subscribe to the idea that the world is a stage, and God may have put the stage there and us on it, but he doesn't write the script.

but God created the stage that just swallowed up 200,000 of his actors. this is why natural disasters must be viewed in a different light than things like genocide or war or whatever. this is a flaw in the design of the thing itself, not what people have done with the thing.

if you take the view that the universe, and necessarily all things in it from emotions like love to supernovas to tsunamis to the coconut falling from the tree, was created with love and logic, then natural disasters are directly linked to that love and logic -- what we call God -- and we must then hold that responsible. storms and drought and earthquakes are, therefore, God's doing. the asteroid that will one day hit the planet was, theoretically, sent by God. this is the train of logic that i don't necessarily subscribe to, but it strikes me as 100% consistent if one is to believe that there is such a thing as God's plan and that God created the universe. the tsunami was directly God's doing. to call things like natural disasters the work of Satan, or some such bullshit, is to make pathetic excuses. and it is precisely because of consistency and logic that i always arrive at agnosticism.

basically, if God has ordered and designed the universe, there can be no such thing as the inexplicable. this, however, strikes me as 100% inexplicable, and i don't think i'd buy any explanation offered to me for such mass tragedy even if it came from the lips of this God itself. it's things like this, combined with silly insistancies upon specific checks and balances of human behavior so righteously delivered by the devout, that make me want to reject this particular God -- if this is his world (and natural disasters are different from human-on-human tragedy) and these are his rules (as the literalists of the Bible so insist), then the moral thing to say is that i don't want any part of it. what drives me crazy are silly self-affirmations of "at least it wasn't me" to "we need to realize our common humanity" and "life each day like it's your last." these Hallmark-style, gooey statements make me want to vomit.

i guess i really want to hear from the devout, literal, highly articulate Christians on FYM. i need to hear defenses, not excuses, of God in the face of something like this. how can you continue to subscribe to a belief system that logically indicts the Creator as the cause of mass death and suffering?

gosh, hope i'm making some sense. quite a night last night. happy 2005, y'all. donate to the Red Cross.

 

[Irvine511]

just want to add that i'm not trying to point fingers -- i really do want (and need) to hear other viewpoints.

 

[Angela Harlem]

There's a shock factor in the sheer numbers of this tragedy. These deaths are no more or less senseless and unexplainable than other random or accidental deaths. Every day people die for no valid reason from nature or causes which are completely out of human control. This isn't new. It's the toll which is.
Is it some form of population control which nature or God imposes on us? That's just as hard to stomach. Yet it's our egos which make us cringe at that thought. As humans we have no food chain which will keep our numbers manageable. Instead we have disease as our largest killer, accidents, mother nature.

I only have more questions, not any worthwhile opinion to add which can help you irvine.

 

[sue4u2]

Who's to say this wasn't suppose to happen? What I mean is considering what it must take to maintain a planet, keep it rotating and in proper condition to maintain it's people, a few adjustments were designed in at stragetic times in it's on going deveopment. As cataclysmic as this is, what if this part of Asia or hemisphere was about to dissapear altogether and this plate shifting prevented that?
I know this isn't what you are looking for Irvine511 and I can't explain Faith either. I just know I have it.

 

[mofo82]

Here's my spin...
I don't really know where my beliefs are- if there is a creator or a God or small g 'gods', but I do understand that the world just isn't perfect, and one must do what he or she must in order to counter the world's movements. However the earth was created, it wasn't created without flaw, so if it helps to see that even non-human events can be imperfect, than it's just a reminder for me that you can never be too sure of anything, no matter how correct or perfect it seems. I tend to appreciate and recognize small menial things this way. Take as little as you can for granted I say. I call this my pessimistic optimism.

 

[martha]

this is a flaw in the design of the thing itself, not what people have done with the thing.




basically, if God has ordered and designed the universe, there can be no such thing as the inexplicable.

It isn't explicable. And no one can understand the way God works. Not even you. There is no "flaw." There is only that which we can't understand.

You can get pissed at God if you want, but don't you have to acknowledge a thing's existence to get angry with it?

 

[mofo82]

As a side note, again just my opinion/ thoughts, what one considers bad, another might consider good, so what's right and what's wrong? I don't know. I also don't know if I'm that important to be labeling the tsunami or any natural disaster as good or bad, because no matter what I think about it, it still happened. Was it nature's way of balance? Must've been, because the earth needed to react in such a way because it couldn't take the stress any longer. I'm more concerned more about the way people are reacting to the situation than the way the earth is reacting to itself. People just happened to be caught up in the mix. The victims weren't targets of vengance or hate (creations of human) but of circumstance, yet the circumstances could possibly be traced in some ways to the ways humans have changed the earth's operations (i.e. industrialization adding to global warming thus changing atmospheric conditions that eventually affect people and how we live. I guess I'm saying I will accept science, but not without a dash of God

I'm rambling.
Man, I just don't know. Just be nice to others

 

[Celticfc]

That of course, is based on the assumption that they are Christians, of which the vast majority were not. The major religions in those areas are Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism.

So they're not all going to Heaven, as you say. They're going to Hell for believing the wrong things.

Davec post IMO was about being resurrected and living in paradise on earth not in heaven.

 

[ZeroDude]

It's got shit to do with God, it was a natural event the world is dangerous even without people.

 

[Irvine511]

It isn't explicable. And no one can understand the way God works. Not even you. There is no "flaw." There is only that which we can't understand.

You can get pissed at God if you want, but don't you have to acknowledge a thing's existence to get angry with it?

i'm not pissed at God, because i'm agnostic -- i don't know if there's anything to get pissed of at. it's an event like this which can be explained by the science of plate tectonics in a brutal, amoral world. i'm fine with that. my question has been to the believers, and how they can reconcile a full-on faith and worship of specific notions of God in the face of such a tragedy, and i was originally looking for personal reflections on how such a thing can shake faith, or reaffirm it, or destroy it forever.

if i were a person of faith, i'd be asking myself this: if this is how God operates, whether or not we understand it, do we want a part of it? understanding that we cannot understand isn't going to bring back 150,000 innocents, and it strikes me as horrible that, if we are to subscribe to a belief in God, he would let such things happen and ask us to accept it's happening.

the moral thing to do, in the face of such tragedy, appears to be a rejection of this God.

 

[Rono]

Is it some form of population control which nature or God imposes on us?

I know you don`t believe this



If it would be a form of population control, he made a mistake. We, the western world are about 25% of the total population are using 75% of the natural recourses. So it would better for the world to kill us.

It is just a stroke of very bad luck but a chance for the rest of us to think about what should be done to reform our so called civilization..

 

[martha]

the moral thing to do, in the face of such tragedy, appears to be a rejection of this God.

Why? Because there was an event you can't understand? When did God ever tell us that we should understand what He does or doesn't do? The ways of God are beyond human understanding. You either accept that or you don't. If you accept that, it's a complete acceptance, with no exceptions. If you don't accept that, it also must be complete unacceptance, with no exceptions. That's where the problem of agnosticism comes in. It's the fence-sitting, hedging of one's bets. And that's why agnostics struggle so when confronted by an event of this enormity. Believers find ways of dealing with it. Atheists aren't concerned with the Divine implications of things. Agnostics want everything explained to them, and then get get pissed when those explanations don't measure up to their "moral" standards. It's GOD. It won't be explained to you. Ever.

 

[Kieran McConville]

A flaw in the design of the world? Not really, the plates under the earth's crust are always moving around. That's why the west coast of America gets earthquakes, that's why the continents aren't all sitting where they used to be. It just is.

If, by some great good fortune, this tsunami had instead occured in such a place that the wave hit coastline where no people lived, would we even know about it?

In the nicest possible way, I can only reiterate that I believe it is exceedingly dangerous to pin God's hand on all natural events. And I believe in God.

 

[Irvine511]

A flaw in the design of the world? Not really, the plates under the earth's crust are always moving around. That's why the west coast of America gets earthquakes, that's why the continents aren't all sitting where they used to be. It just is.

If, by some great good fortune, this tsunami had instead occured in such a place that the wave hit coastline where no people lived, would we even know about it?

In the nicest possible way, I can only reiterate that I believe it is exceedingly dangerous to pin God's hand on all natural events. And I believe in God.

if god created the world, he created those plates that created those tsunamis that killed 150,000 people. there's a reason why natural disasters are often referred to as "acts of God."

 

[Irvine511]

Why? Because there was an event you can't understand? When did God ever tell us that we should understand what He does or doesn't do? The ways of God are beyond human understanding. You either accept that or you don't. If you accept that, it's a complete acceptance, with no exceptions. If you don't accept that, it also must be complete unacceptance, with no exceptions. That's where the problem of agnosticism comes in. It's the fence-sitting, hedging of one's bets. And that's why agnostics struggle so when confronted by an event of this enormity. Believers find ways of dealing with it. Atheists aren't concerned with the Divine implications of things. Agnostics want everything explained to them, and then get get pissed when those explanations don't measure up to their "moral" standards. It's GOD. It won't be explained to you. Ever.

two things.

1. agnosticism is, to me, a position of honesty. of admitting that there are things you can't ever know, and trying to maintain integiry by precisely not going 100% in either direction. yes, believers and non-believers deal in different ways, but the agnostic looks at the two and sees two different, self-referential belief systems that are designed to reinforce their bottom lines, if you will, by explaining a disaster through their own prisms of understanding that in turn perpetuate only that specific belief system.

2. you're missing my point -- i'm not demanding an explanation from God, i'mm totally comfortable with knowing that i won't ever know the why behind such horror. what i am asking for are thoughts from those who are belivers (and non-believers) as to how such an event fits into their concept of a loving God. the idea that God created it all, and then let it go -- the watchmaker idea -- doesn't hold water in this case; for genocide, yes, not for natural disasters.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

Anthony, I know what you mean with some of the things you're talking about in your post-I've had some of those same questions before myself.

I still agree with the one who said that this was a natural disaster not tied to God, though, 'cause in regards to the talk of the creation of the earth and all that...I've personally had this idea for a while that the earth, and the rest of the universe, for that matter, was created through scientific means of some kind, and that after that was all created, God came about somehow and then evolution came about (still not sure how much of a role I feel God may have played in the evolutionary process, though). And since God would've come about after the earth was created, they wouldn't have had a part in creating the earth to do what it just did to these people.

Just a theory that's popped up in my mind . And yeah, this is a rather interesting discussion going on here.

Angela

 

[foray]

Martha may I ask a couple of questions, as this thread wont exist by the time I've had some years to study karma and give it the thought it needs. See, I like karma. I've made an overly simplified explanation for it in my own little bubbled universe but it relates to people as individuals. Are you referring to an all encompassing karma? Straight off the bat I know you dont mean that these people got what they deserved, as they didn't. I'm wondering if what you are saying somehow fits in with the larger picture of karma I have which entails overall good and bad, pain and joy, universal balance...I could be entirely off the wall here, but I wonder (and know there's no answers) but does this volume of suffering somehow link to the moments or instances of what it the absolute opposite? In the end it means us as individuals have lopsided lives. Some suffer unimaginable hardships and pain. Some lives are tragic and make us wonder how on earth any loving creator could allow it. Yet, if there's balance, this universe needs the contrary to balance it.
Humans tend to measure things I reckon. We look at ourselves and at where we fit. We look at the negatives, and we look at the positives, but is this karma stuff about putting them together?

I was hoping for a response to this post... from... anyone...