hale_bopp wrote:
calandale wrote:
Some of us see this as the fundemental issue of our faith. Sorry to bore you.
I'm just sick of hearing him whine on about god and blaming the entity for his problems.
He did not even mention his own problems, hale_bopp (nice Eye of Sauron by the way). His issue is with the apparently completely arbitrary nature of the God portrayed in the book of Job. Loss of children and having his wife tell him to curse God and die (well she had lost her offspring as well and her husband was afflicted with boils) do not appear to be adequately compensated by a restoral and indeed increase of his livestock, though new children are also born. His three best friends are convinced that he must be really evil to have merited all these exemplary punishments from God, whose answer when it comes does not appear to address the rather reasonable questions that Job and the reader are left with. And the problem of evil and suffering more generally IS a serious issue, which the book of Job does not appear to remedy exactly.
Elsewhere in the Old and New Testament another issue many people have is with the harshment of God's judgement (at least preferable to amoral and arbitrary suffering some might argue). It is a distortion to separate Old and New Testament in a dichotomy of justice and mercy, law and grace, works and faith etc. These aspects are spread through both Testaments (hence my wrath with Flagg in another thread over his remarks about the alleged difference between the Islamic, Christian and Jewish concepts of God; the Qur'an similarly combines mercy and justice (some may balk at this word here).
Within one book of the Tanak (Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim, "law/instruction, prophets and writings") also known as the Hebrew scriptures or Old Testament (I will try to avoid the latter term from here on in as it may offend Jewish readers) Yeshayahu/Isaiah words of mercy and judgement sit side by side within the same chapter, even sometimes the same verse. To begin with the first chapter:
Hear O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD/YHWH has spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
The ox knoweth its owner, and the ass (donkey) its master's crib: but Israel does not know, my people does not consider.
Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they have gone away backward.
Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. (Isaiah 1:2-5)
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil.
Learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool
if ye be willing and obedient, ye shall see the good of the land. (Isaiah 1:16-19).
Actually within each of those passages there is not really any absolute dichotomy between mercy and justice. There is a passionate concern for social justice as well as religious fidelity to the LORD evident in the pages of this book. More later; for now I shall say that in the context of that time or our own, delayed judgement would not be merciful, it would be apathetic and callous indifference to human suffering and evil to allow oppression to continue indefinitely.
Actually, I have decided to close with
In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.
In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the earth:
Whom the LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance."
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You are like children playing in the market-place saying, "We piped for you and you would not dance, we wailed a dirge for you and you would not weep."