Is God a Dead Beat Dad??

reply to post by FlyersFan


It would benefit you if you understood drug addiction recovery, for it is no different than any other condition of weakness. Like one who is addicted to drugs or alcohol, they must give their weakness over to the higher power before it can be taken from them. You will not gain faith until you have hit rock bottom. You are obviously not there yet so prepare to have more taken from you before your heart is made peaceful again. Those who have been given much, much will be asked and those who have been given little, very little will be asked.

Originally posted by ben91069
Until you believe first, and accept that faith is the way to find him, you won't find the reason why you suffer. That is the first step.

I think that's a very unkind and uncharitable thing to say.

You don't KNOW what kind of faith she has. You read what she has written and then come in and proclaim that she will "get all the answers" if she has your view of your own deity.

I saw a message on a Christian board about an accident that was in the news and all the posters wrote that they prayed this terrible tragedy would help the family "come to Christ." Two days after, the MOTHER of the person killed wrote a VERY angry message on the board saying that their beliefs about the family were wrong and that it was very hurtful for her as a Christian to see this group of evangelicals saying that this tragedy would "help them" (already Christians) "come to Christ and repent."

I think you're doing the same thing to her. You haven't been through what she's going through. You don't know the years of pain and searching for answers and you don't know the deep faith that was there to begin with.

I don't think she deserves such a shallow and unthinking answer as "you just need to know God and you'll understand everything."

From what I've seen on the evangelical boards, even their hardest-core members don't understand why their deity behaves as he does and why they suffer. They come up with "answers" that seem okay until another tragedy strikes and they have to ask "why, why, why" again.

Sorry if this sounds angry. Your advice seems very heartless, uninformed, and somewhat cruel.

Originally posted by ben91069
You will not gain faith until you have hit rock bottom. You are obviously not there yet so prepare to have more taken from you before your heart is made peaceful again.

...and that's just plain heartless.

It really is.

I really dislike the "oh, you're not of my beliefs so you haven't hit rock bottom yet -- PREPARE TO SUFFER MORE!" statements. A good look around at people who are happy and people who have survived tragedy will tell you that it's not a correct view. Folks of many faiths and no faiths find answers that satisfy them.

That's... shockingly heartless to someone who's going through grief and pain and has just been handed another slap from life.

I think kindness and sympathy and a listening heart are called for.

reply to post by FlyersFan


When I was a kid, we had the Most Boring Preacher Ever. Sermons never ended. So to amuse myself and keep quiet, I read the Bible while he droned on and on. I rea the whole thing, including the parts they never talk about. I started at Genesis and ended at Revelation.

I wondered why God needed to have children sacrificed to him (the 3,000 little girls of one tribe he ordered obliterated.)

I wondered why he'd let his priests sacrifice the priests of another god on his altar and offer them as a burnt offering.

I wondered why he wouldn't let a soldier with his legs blown off into his holy of holies (Chaplains let them in, but the Bible says that imperfect men or men who have lost their testicles to testicular cancer aren't allowed in.)

I wondered why Jesus was so rude to his mother.

I wondered why there wasn't any mention in the Bible of babies going to heaven even if their parents were unsaved or whatever. The chaplains and priests and ministers all said they did but the Bible didn't... andd talked about having to eat your babies as punishment if you were a heathen.

Then I read about Odin and thought he was much nicer and much more merciful than Jesus ever was.

I didn't fully deconvert until I was in college and found some Pagan groups. But every time a minister would get up and preach "the word" I would start reading the WHOLE Bible chapter to find out exactly what it was all about.

I like Odin MUCH better. No "you're thinking wrong thoughts", just "men have their fate and they can change it but it's hard here on Earth."

No did you here? God is an atheist.

Oh... .and I'm sorry to hear about your troubles. I know these must be emotionally difficult times for you.

reply to post by Indellkoffer


Two shaaa, but we're all going rocked by the big one anyway.

Originally posted by ben91069
You will not gain faith until you have hit rock bottom.

Guess you missed the part where I said that for 25 years I believed unconditionally and totally ... deep prayer every day ... scripture and the writings of the saints daily .... medication ... contempation ... a personal relationship with God our Father .... a few 'close contacts' where the divine actually touches the soul (and I don't mean the self induced kind where you whooooop it up in a fundamentalist type church and think yourself into a frenzy).

I had faith.

Then I looked at what was happening to the innocent.
And recently, my own unanswered prayers for very simple things.

I turned to God in the complete trust and faith of a child to a father. All I asked for was doctors who could properly diagnose me and drugs that I could take without the bad side effects. Instead, I get snotty doctor after snotty doctor after snotty doctor that didn't know what they were doing and misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis. I got wrong drug after wrong drug ... with all the bad side effects ... weeks of anxiety attacks, physical side effects, HALLUCINATIONS, and a husband who had to take a week off from work to babysit me while I had nasty side effects from wrong drugs given by SNOTTY doctors who were misdiagnosing me anyways.

And yes, I prayed for the doctors before going to them too.

Here's a scripture quote for you .... remember this? ... (paraphrase) "who among you, when your child asks for a piece of bread, hands them a scorpion? So your Father in Heaven will give you good things when you ask for them." I'm pretty sure that asking NOT to have really bad reactions to medications, and to even get the proper diagnosis and medications, isn't too much for a devoted daughter to ask for from a 'loving Father'.

I had faith and trust. It was betrayed. Either that or I misplaced it to begin with. On top of all the physical abuse I've taken from Him, I'm heartbroken over all this as well. He killed my trust and faith. Human heartbreak over the loss of a lover is much easier to take then heartbreak over the loss of a Father-God that you trusted in believed in. It is dispair. It is literally Hell.

Now instead of having faith and trust all I have is 'putting up with Him'. So how, exactly, have His actions made my faith build? It WAS already sky high. Now it can't get much lower.

I put up with it because I have no choice.

Would you explain how His actions - the punishment of the innocent or the faithful - will lead to a 'building of faith' in Him?

Originally posted by ben91069
Until you believe first, and accept that faith is the way to find him, you won't find the reason why you suffer.

Maybe

OR maybe 'Faith' during suffering is just human psychology inventing a bandaid for the mind ... gotta' explain the unexplainable suffering, make excuses for it .... or else we'll go crazy when we finally realize there is no good or ultimately helpful reason for it.

Picture a parent sitting next to their child in the Cancer ICU ward .. watching the innocent child suffer through chemo and cancer pain ... a child who they have just been told will now ultimately die a very painful and horrible death. What reason does that innocent child have to suffer through all that pain .. in terror ... and without understanding why?

Look .... I love my child. She's a good kid. I wouldn't inflict the above scenerio upon her on purpose. I don't go into her room and beat the crap out of her, all the while saying that if she trusted me and loved me she'd not put up a fuss when I beat her for no reason and without explaination.

I can better understand a Hindu or a Buddhist saying that there is bad Karma in the world and some people have a higher calling to cleanse it through suffering than I can understand the thought that innocent chlidren (and adults for that matter) are just supposed to sit here and get beat up and somehow this is supposed to make us love The One Who does the beating.

Originally posted by ben91069
It would benefit you if you understood drug addiction recovery, for it is no different than any other condition of weakness.

I'm going through God addiction recovery.
Trust in Him ended up giving me a broken heart.

[edit on 8/23/2010 by FlyersFan]

reply to post by Indellkoffer


When you sit down and actually read it ... and I mean READ it ... it's kinda interesting, isn't it? Some good things are in there. Helpful things. But there are also major contradictions and large chunks are stolen from both the Summerians and the Egyptians. Heck .. many of the Psalms were taken from Akenatens hymns of worship to his sun God Aten.

'God' tells Moses not to kill, but then tells him to wipe out the enemy .. every man, woman, child and beast. Except of course the young unmarried girls who he gives permission for his soldiers to keep as sex toys.

They never read that part outloud at my church either.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
I'm going through God addiction recovery.
Trust in Him ended up giving me a broken heart.

You know I've been thinking about you and your situation a lot...

I wonder... do you feel angry at God? I think you do, but I don't want to assume...

This is a problem with religion and belief in God as I see it. Generally speaking, when good things happen in a religious person's life, they "thank God". They give Him the glory, credit and praise for bestowing them with wonderful things. But when bad things happen, they don't blame God. Instead, they say they are being tested, challenged, it's from Satan, or explain it as 'sometimes in life, these things happen.'

I think that's a double standard. If you're (generic you) going to credit God for good things, why not hold Him responsible for bad things? Especially when you've served Him your whole life? Why is it sacrilegious to get upset when God doesn't see fit to answer your prayers or comfort you in your suffering? Why doesn't he allow you to feel better? It's really infuriating to some people, I'm sure. And I totally understand it.

I actually wonder how you can still believe He's even there. I know you said you've had experiences, but so have I. I've had experiences that I couldn't explain by what I know. But I don't attribute them to "God" just because I can't explain them otherwise.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything, but I am having trouble understanding how these inconsistencies can add up to a belief in a supreme being.

I mean, if you believe in God, do you think he's punishing you? Ignoring you? What kind of God would ignore the horrible suffering of those whom he loves? How can there even be a God out there who cares for you? I just don't get it, I guess.

Is it your position that: Yeah, there is a God, he's just a total jerk. ?

[edit on 8/23/2010 by Benevolent Heretic]

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
do you feel angry at God?

Angry in general (it's one of the 5 grief steps)
Confused.
In the "God' area ... betrayed and therefore heartbroken.

they say they are being tested,

Yeah, that gets me. I don't go to my daughter, who is a good kid, and beat the crap out of her all the while telling her it's a test to see if she will still love me when I inflict misery upon her and I don't even bother to say why. If I know enough not to do that .. then you'd think a 'Father' God would know even better not to do that to a 'child', right?

why not hold Him responsible for bad things?

Bingo!

I actually wonder how you can still believe He's even there.

Because of 5 different close enounters I've had in my life. I'm not talking about 'coincidence' type things .. or working myself into a frenzy type things. I'm talking about when something 'divine' actually touches the soul ... out of the blue and not expected ... and I don't mean where you feel moved or something... I'm talking about an outside force of huge magnitude that actually touches the soul. Completely supernatural and unmistakeable.

if you believe in God, do you think he's punishing you? Ignoring you?

Ignoring. Ignoring me. Ignoring the others who cry out for help. The people in the Tsunami. The children in cancer clinics. The parents of those children. All those suffering souls who, in their suffering, ask for little things like help getting the right medicine, or at least mitigation of side effects, for a quick death for their suffering child, etc etc

What kind of God would ignore the horrible suffering of those whom he loves?

Exactly. Would you call Him a 'father'?? Human fathers get thrown in jail for treating their human children like this.

As I said in the opening ... I understand that sometimes good comes from human suffering. I understand that sometimes it brings families together or that people reevaluate lifestyles or whatever. But how many marriages end because a child dies? How many people give up on a 'loving Father-God' because he didn't at least take some of the pain away or help to quicken a painful death? Suffering may bring out the best in some people, those who help the suffering for example, but it does destroy faith and for the most part doesn't do a darn bit of good.

Is it your position that: Yeah, there is a God, he's just a total jerk. ?

Yeah, there is a God, but he's totally fickle and I don't think He is Who everyone claims He is. He's big and in charge, so we have to put up with it.

Thanks for answering my questions. I just think if I were a believer in God, it would be really hard to say, yeah, I still believe in God, but he's not who I thought he was... It's an interesting point of view.

What Byrd said also holds true for me. I see my life as "what is" and I work to accept it as that. I lost my only baby, watched my sweet mother die of bone marrow cancer, I got cancer, my nephew and niece died in their 20s, I suffer with chronic pain and I see it all as "what is". In other words, this is what my life is. I can resist it and be miserable, thinking it should be different, or I can accept it as my life and deal with what I have. Not having a God to hold responsible helps me a lot. If no one is to blame, then it's just the way it is and where do I go from here? I carry on.

Best wishes to you...

Holy Smokes, FF. Tough questions. The OP covered everything I've read about it, and probably more, so you've covered all the bases, in terms of what to think; and what the available philosophies are.

I heard a minister once say that God doesn't give us cancer, or let us suffer and die in a ditch, that Satan does these things. But, I guess God would have the power to "override" these evil acts if he so chose.
Does he? I really don't know.

I sometimes say to people who are grieving that the suffering person chose ahead of time, to come back and experience misery, even though they don't remember striking the bargain. I'm not sure I believe it, but it's comforting, somehow. At least the suffering is "purposeful".

I heard Michael J. Fox once say when asked - if he is angry over having Parkinson's at such a young age....when asked if he ever asks himself "why me", he responded with "why not me"?

When my day comes to get the "diagnosis", and I assume it will, I'll try to remind myself of that.

In the meantime, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am you are so ill. I'd be frustrated, too, FF.

But don't let the anger and frustration get the best of you. Hope. You can't lose your hope. We don't really know what tomorrow brings.
Sometimes it brings something good. Don't lose sight of that.

reply to post by FlyersFan


Yes, reading the Bible is an eye-opener. I've read it many times, and still occasionally read it (for reference) and I like the sound of the language and things like that... but now it's more like re-reading (say) Lord of the Rings. Well, maybe not LOTR (Viggo Mortensen is yummy and I could occasionally entertain a fantasy or two of him giving up elf chicks and riding off with a much younger me), but much in the same way I read books of legends.

I don't think there is one answer for everyone asking this question. I read about something called a "locus of control" and how some people are more comfortable with the "control" being in the hands of someone else (husband, deity, whatever) and others are more comfortable with the "control" being in their own hands.

I'm the second type. Betcha could't guess!

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


Wow... that's a lot of pain to endure. I think it takes a lot of courage to say "I'll be the one in control" and to move forward.

I don't KNOW that -- it's just the way I am. But it does take a lot of courage to move forward through tragedies like that which break so many other people.

That's it. God .. I"m done. I have no more hallelujahs or worship in me. I get it, you have all the power so I have to put up with you beating on me, but I no longer like you at all. You've pushed me too far. Not that you care, I'm sure. The past five years ... heck ten years ... have been difficult enough but you just had to turn up the volume didn't ya'?

Don't mind me ... I"m just freak'n tired of being sick and now He's added more health crap to the weight I have to carry.

And the sad thing ... others have it worse.

Just more of God showing us His 'love and mercy' for us, His 'children'.

ARGH!

Saw this thread, thought of this video. I never had you on the same page as Sam Harris
m.youtube.com...

9 million children die every year before they are 5 or
A tsunami every 10 days For a year killing only children under 5


So not only a deadbeat a psychopath too

Almost exactly 10 years later .. And I'm still asking the same questions ....