Responding to Jennifer

This is a continuation of a discussion I provoked with this post.

There have been some good responses but let me highlight Jennifer's since she attempted to meet my challenge, and later asked me to comment on it. She wrote:

What would it take?

It would take you explaining why God should even bother with people who don't listen to Him even when He does show Himself. What does the world say when a person claims they were healed of cancer? They say, "we can explain that..blah blah blah". Tell me how a young man is prayed for an his short leg grows three inches on the spot. We aren't going to run and tell the news, they would sensationalize a powerful moment between a young man and God.

I'll tell you what...my 10 year old has a mass in her pancreas. I don't expect God to heal it. I will ask Him to, but with all the toxins we depend on every day, why should God intervene?

When every single person on this planet gets on their knees and asks God to forgive them for their little part of messing up the planet and each other..for disregarding and ignoring Him and being so busy with churchy stuff or work or whatever..and we all stay there until we cannot physically survive any longer...if at that point, God does nothing I will concede that I am wrong and there is no god.

It is all the fault of man.

Jennifer, Jennifer. Why should God wait to answer your prayers until people pray? Don't you see this is a cop out, an easy excuse to continue believing in God? If God cares and we fail to pray why does he punish your 10 year old? Why doesn't he merely respond to your prayers? Why doesn't he just do the right thing regardless? After all, God should care about your 10 year old even if no one else does. Besides, if your God is the perfect parent, then YOU as an imperfect parent do not love your 10 year old better than he does. And since I am absolutely sure that you as an imperfect parent would not wait to heal your 10 year old until other people prayed, then why does God?

As regards to your response, besides everything else that God fails to do here, you have set up a test that will never happen for so many reasons, not the least of which because not everyone on earth will ever hear of your request. So why such an absurd test? Why not make it something that can happen? I'll tell you why you don't. It's because you fear that if your request might be within the bounds of reason it will never happen, that's all. So you testify against yourself here. You have blind faith, pure and simple. You never want to actually have a test that might show your faith to be false.

I had written:

Jospeh said...There would be FAR more gained morally if the sickos were STOPPED in the act...

Yes! Yes! Yes! Compare that to what we do as human beings. We lock these people up. We take away their freedom. We think this is a good thing. It helps people to live peacful lives.

Can you hear any sane person saying, yes, but freedom is so precious we shouldn't stop them? Sorry, but sometimes I have nothing else to say but "bullshit!"

We already have examples in the Bible where God took away people's freedom when he killed them, and we have Pharoah whose heart was hardened. So God can do it. Freedom isn't a good thing when it comes to sicko's, so where is God?

I'll tell you where. No where.

In response to this
Jennifer wrote:

OK..let's have God come tell us to build enormous prisons and then we will farm the land, sew the clothes, fetch the water and provide the medicine they need in order to keep them all alive. Sounds like a great way for the rest of us to live...support all the sickos so they can get free care.

Or..would you propose God supply all their needs through miraculous intervention? If that's the case, there are days I would rather be in prison!

Or maybe you think God should build this prison or create another planet for all the sickos but let us stay here. Those people won't suffer necessarily except to be abusing each other...then what is solved? All of the transgressors would be complaining like you are and saying how unfair it is for God to send them away.

I'm sorry, John, that is just idiocy.

I would like YOU to answer my questions.

The idiocy here, Jennifer, is that you think I am the one suggesting the things that YOU did. I am not. I am merely suggesting that a good God should limit the freedom of these sicko's just like he hardened Pharoah's heart for good purposes. I have suggested a number of ways God could do this, not the least of which is to plant thoughts in their minds, cause them to blackout just before assaulting a woman, make them have a flat tire on the way to rob a bank.

Listen, life has been very good to me when I compare mine to most everyone else in third world countires, and many even in America. I have not had any real physical suffering in my life. I've always had something to eat, I'm not butt ugly (well....at least my wife thinks so), and I have social skills that help me get along with many different people. But life is still difficult for me, sometimes very difficult. And here's my point. Why can't God make everyone's life face the same level of difficulties as I have? I don't need to be maimed by an attacker. I don't have to sit and watch my children as they are gunned down by a sicko. I don't have to suffer because some sicko decides to hurt me. I don't need these thngs to have a difficult life. I don't need these things to strengthen my character. I don't need these things to test my moral resolve. I AM ALREADY TESTED DAILY BY THIS LIFE ITSELF WITHOUT THESE ADDED PROBLEMS! And if that's true then neither does anyone else need them! I merely claim that God should stop these kind of sicko's dead in their tracks, just like we put them in prison, and just like he purportedly did in the Bible by killing some of them. It would be easy to do and he could do it without us even knowing he did.

Cheers to you. Nothing personal.