Formica Counter Tops Pt 2

The continuation of an on going conversation.

The issues here are:

1. The perceived cruelty of God, as Father, toward the individual man in allowing suffering.

2. The murder of the innocents, in the plagues of Egypt.

Hope that helps...

One great paradox of parenting is that just as the joy of the child is the joy of the parent, so too it is true regarding their pain as well. In avoiding pain for our children, we also avoid pain for ourselves.

So yes, the natural tendency of a parent is toward the protection of their child, but to spare a child from every pain in life is also to rob them of every lesson that comes with it.

In short, you can only tell a child so many times that the oven is hot. They can know that you're right, or they can learn that you're right, and those that must learn by experience will do so.

I generally try to avoid the rabbit hole of OT deaths that people find objectionable, simply because of the time involved and the Pandora's box we potentially open. But here I'll take exception.

Let me start by saying that many people not following their logic to its conclusion like to say that God can do whatever he wants and so because something isn't done it is simply for lack of want on Gods end. This is untrue.(Of course this presupposes that what we see is all that there is, which we have already acknowledged to be untrue.)

I suppose in a sense God can do anything he wants, but only because what he wants does not violate his own nature and that is the thing he cannot do or he is not God at all. So God as the source of the law cannot be in violation of it, or again he is not God.

A forced love is no love at all, so we are given the choice to love God or rebel against Him, but there is no middle ground.

We are allowed reason and freewill, both serve as blessing and curse, and God sometimes spares us the folly resulting there from, but allows us to suffer the consequences resulting from them at other times.

The extra mile always becomes the expected mile I have found, so the view is more often that we are  suffering some divine punishment, more so that realizing the grace afforded us when we are spared from our own undoings.

All that said, and as previously noted, those who choose to live in rebellion against God are not innocent and as harsh as it sounds,  suffer as those who are not innocent.

Which brings us to the paradox of being a child, that they benefit and suffer for the decisions of their parents and those before them.

That is the best I can do here for now, and it's not a very good at that,  however here is a link to a pretty extensive and insightful article about this very subject: http://christianthinktank.com/killheir.html

I have a half am hour left to sleep, please stop making me think.