I've completely forgotten why God doesn't intervene

[Alameda]

or isn't there a reason?

We are all aspects of God - one consciousness, imo. This is what it means when some people say we have free will: not because God lets us have free will, but because we are free will in action.

It depends what your definition of healing is. Do you mean actually making us nearer perfect or making us feel better in which case many things are capable of making us feel better.

It seems like you're suggesting it might be preferable to die young and in pain than live a long and healthy life? This notion beings me onto the inherent dangers of belief in god, especially when people who hold such notions get to make decisions in government based on the very fact that they believe in god.

Cass, but this is what I really really can't comprehend - that you can give god the credit for healing your mum yet don't blame him for the tragedy you've suffered. He just can't lose can he?

I had a baby in the most 'miraculous' of circumstances but I do not credit god - just bloody good luck. In the same way losing my friend to a brain tumour was bad luck of the worst kind.

But there has never been a properly attested case of a miraculous healing that stands up to proper scientific analysis.

I think the idea of an interventionist God is/was a way of trying to understand an inexplicable natural order (volcanos, earthquakes, storms, floods). And then, because of the near Eastern religions turning into, or already being, religions of the book, that ancient way of interacting with the universe got set in stone.

And also, we don't really understand most of it, most of us, because we don't have the right cultural knowledge. Even in the canonic gospels, the MASSIVE resonances of Jesus as Logos are mostly missed - we just translate it as Word, but it's also Number and Harmony of the Spheres and Mediator-between-opposites and Judge, and it has this whole back story in platonic Greek philosophy, and the writer of the Gospel was certainly referencing all of that. And we hear it at Christmas and we mostly just don't get any of that at all because we don't know enough ancient Greek philosophy. So we read the bible through this weird lens of 2000 years of accretion and cultural change and the actual message is lost, to a large extent.

And that's just in the canonic Gospels. Having read some of the Nag Hammedi literature (Gospels as old as the canonic ones, but that didn't make it into the canon of Christian scripture), and having read writings by people like Cynthia Bourgeault (The Wisdom Jesus etc), I'd rather understand the Christian message as a radical path to spiritual enlightenment/oneness, with a totally different method from the eastern paths (Buddhism etc). It's not so much about heaven-later-after-you-die-if-you-have-faith, it's about heaven - participation in the divine spark - right here, right now. And it's about God is Love where God=Love=the object, not the subject. God isn't an interventionist or non-interventionist God; "God" is a way of describing the power of transformed love. And in a way, through transformed love (eros becoming agape), miracles CAN happen, all the time - because it's all about perception.

I sound completely mad, don't I?

(but it's nice to randomly encounter AMIS in the distant reaches of MN!)

So, once again all good things are down to God's account, the bad things are down to chance. Why????

oh I forgot about this thread

am torn between God = bollocks and God = a monster who can watch suffering and distress and choose not to stop it

Are scientists watching mice endlessly circle a labyrinth monsters?

Even if there is a creator, it is entirely possible that he is benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient, but we just aren't so important that we would warrant an intervention into our measly little lives.

Alam - you forgot god = beyond our notion of moral behaviour so still omnieverything but just appears to be ominotbothered.

And still we have the scriptural promises.

(mind you he promised not to drown mankind again- round our way that one's looking a bit shaky too!)

Do you not see the irony of what you're saying Cass? All bad = chance, all good = god. It doesn't stand up to the most basic of scrutiny?

God didn't cure your mum, a twist of fate did. God didn't kill your MIL, a twist of fate did. It's two sides if the same coin not a whole different coin!

I suppose that if you believe in an abrahamic god then you have no choice but to try to rationalise the irrational. If you believe in the power of prayer and your prayers are not answered all you can do is trust god knows what he is doing. That is probably easier to bear than having to abandon the foundations of your faith.

I can understand why people do that, but it doesn't mean they are right to. In any other area of life you learn stuff and develop as you learn. When it comes to faith so many people seem to think they can't, or more probably, shouldnt move on and find themselves wrestling with concepts that they cannot reconcile with their experiences.

I have been on a journey through several schools of spiritual thought over the years, not because i lack commitment, but because i think the only choice is to be honest with yourself and reject anything that you do not intrinsically believe to be right or true, whether that may be one element of faith, or the whole kit and caboodle.

I guess the difficulty with all these discussions is that having a religious faith does change your perspective - certainly any attempt I make to explain how I square these things in my own head is going to be a very personal one, and probably won't relate that well even to other believers, let alone atheists, because it's not something that there is a single agreed answer on. Some of the things that other believers say dont make any sense to me at all, because I've come at it from my own angle and landed somewhere different from them.

Part of that is the whole Bible thing - I'm a liberal Christian, and view the Bible as a useful account of God's interactions with humanity, but believe that it was written by people and can only explain what they thought and felt at the time of writing. So, I do not believe in The Flood, or the Garden of Eden, and even view some things in the New Testament as "religious truths" rather than "actual historical facts".

But hey, its an interesting subject to debate even if we don't end up reaching any conclusions!

(Waves to ommmward - yes, I'm getting involved in bunfights over here more now that DS is at uni!)

Why do believers feel that the more prayers, the more chance of being heard?

Even when I was an evangelical Christian, I couldn't accept the injustice of that. So some poor soul with no friends has less chance of being heard?

It just sounds so wrong, and so arrogant.

Yep, and prayers asking god to guide surgeons hands while operating on a loved one. If he can do that why not just heal the loved one anyway without the inherent risks of an operation?

I think that is a fair approach, AMumInScotland. If you think critically about your faith and come to conclusions that resonate with you, then you are at least being true to yourself. This makes more sense to me than feeling you have to swallow the whole package and tie yourself up in knots trying to accept things you don't fundamentally believe to be true. At some point (at least in my case) there comes a tipping point where, after doing this over and over again with various elements of faith, there was only the stripped down core left, a bit like emptying a room. I don't like living in an empty room so i've started to move some furniture back in, but if it doesn't work i boot it out. Rubbish analogy but i hope you get what i mean!

Yes, I get you RedMolly. I do have moments where I wonder if I've taken out enough of the "furniture" of Christianity to need to rethink my own labelling, but I don't think I've quite gone that far yet. I may need eventually to say I'm a believer in something who was brought up in a Christian tradition, but as long as I can say the Nicene Creed without crossing my fingers behind my back, I reckon I'll keep calling myself a Christian.

I like your post, ommward!

As an intermittently churchgoing agnostic I probably have no right to comment really... but I hate the idea of a God who jumps in at will to save the lives of people he likes the look of. Surely if there is a God he created the whole system and has to let it play out on its own terms.

To my mind the value of prayer consists not in the hope that it might persuade God to change his mind ('actually I was going to let that child die... but 934 MNers have persuaded me to intervene' ) but in the comfort, support and sense of togetherness it gives those who are praying. As indeed the case of poor Aillidh rather movingly demonstrated.

I think, redmolly, that there isn't a "whole package" that anyone has to accept - faith is not such a propositional thing - and like aMiS states, it takes a critical approach to what is a complicated set of texts (with all their cultural and historical background) to approach one's understanding of one's faith and beliefs.

And as Mooncup says above, if God creates a free-will system, it has to play out, otherwise it isn't free-will. And prayer is not about "changing God's mind" because God does not actively "intervene", but is about changing our own hearts and minds. Also the comfort and support and togetherness that comes from united prayer is a source of strength.

I thought the bible was pretty clear about god intervening though? Jesus doesn't seem to be suggesting that prayer is mere meditation.

All this calls to mind Sagan's fire breathing dragon.

I completely understand the comfort, support and togetherness people feel from united prayer, and I do even understand that someone might glean some strength from that knowing they, or their loved ones, were being prayed for.

What I don't understand are those who pray openly for a specific outcome (let's be honest - for a miracle), with the conviction that their prayers are going to be answered.

Why would they expect God to grant a miracle to one family, and not another, just because of the volume of prayer?