Mysterious ways

[Dadthelion]

Hi.

There's been four people I know die this year.
All good people and all young, one was a mother with young children.

Any religious posters care to give a view why a loving deity would let this happen? The misery and suffering these deaths have caused to lots of people is unbelievable.

And tragedies happen all the time. I'm not looking to knock anyone just interested how people square it with their beliefs.

To me it seems the work of an unknowing, non caring universe or is it God moving in mysterious ways?

HI Dadthelion. I am not what you would term a religious poster, but I felt the need to say hello and give you my own unconventional (probably) perspective on the whole situation.
I square it with my beliefs (rightly or wrongly) that we each have a path in life, and that we are in control of our own destiny to a certain extent. Now, I will quite probably be shot down in flames for stating this, but this is what I believe, through my own personal experiences. I believe that our loving creator allowed us to experience all and every aspect of a physical life that we could, unfortunately this means the hurts and the loves, in all manner of means.
We each will not know the true reasons until it is our time to pass and be reunited with the knowledge, however, until that time we must make the best of whatever we have - if it's caring for those who have lost loved ones, or being the ones ourselves.
I also know for a fact that our loved ones who pass never leave our sides. This may or may not be of some comfort, and again - my reality and what I know to be true for me.
Thinking of you and sending love and extra angels to assist you and all who are grieving the loss of someone in their lives x
IB

The Gnostics express it thus: God can either be two of the following; all powerful, all knowing, all loving. He can never be all three.

Some groups would say that a "miraculous" healing as God's intervention, but mutter about humans being unable to understand God's plan if a good/young person dies in horrific circumstances. I guess cognitive dissonance comes into it.

And others would say "shit happens to good people, and good happens to shit people, there is no reason".

I'm in the latter category.

But I do know that loving life, every second of it, finding ways to use the pain and grief that come our way to make us better/stronger people - if religion, faith or humanism/atheism, can be used to build that strength, then that faith/whatever has served a purpose.

I lost my mum last year at the age of 65 she went to bed and had a massive stroke was in a coma for a week then passed away, everything we were saying to her i wonder wether she heard us or not as there was such damage to her brain. Ive had so many say to me that it was the best way for her and i can imagine it was as im sure she knew nothing but my god its so hard to have my mum my best friend taken away like that over night.. we were literally talking Easter eggs and fish and chips as it was over Easter. Coming up to a year and thinking was there anything I could of done to stop this from happening. It hurts so bad to not have her here, i miss her so much. It has got a little easier over time though but my god i miss her. x

I also know for a fact that our loved ones who pass never leave our sides

Take this FACT to James Randi then and collect the $1m - you could give it to the local homeless shelter.

This is one of the hardest questions to answer and I don't know that I can. I go to a lot of funerals and in the last 6 months that has included a stillborn baby, a toddler, a young man who died of cancer in his 40's and a mother who died suddenly leaving a husband, children and grandchildren all confused and lost by her sudden death.

I'm still working on why this all happens. The best I sense I can make of it is that life isn't fair and it isn't fair because we live in a world that is set up as a world full of change so we have plate techtonics that lead to earthquakes and tsunamis and DNA which has mutations that lead to bodies that fail and fade. If you add to that the notion of free will which means that we can choose how we live and treat others then the potential for things to go wrong is high.

It is almost impossible to imagine a world without change. It is almost impossible to imagine a world where a divine being intervened every time there could have been an accident but why this doesn't happen when it is someone I love that gets cancer, dies young or gets murdered hurts.

My faith that God is in the mess as a result of the events of Easter is what keeps me going. Did I say it was tough? Yes it is and I have to work with this as part of my vocation is to I pray with the dying, wait and cry with the bereaved and sit with those who are angry at what has happened.

No easy answer I'm afraid - I wish there was.

Free will - not just ours but the free will of the person who ran into you.

Illness comes to everyone randomly.

Everyone finds this difficult. Including Jesus.

There's no simple answer. Something is clearly a bit wrong with the world, as John Henry Newman said. A loving and knowing God can't offer everyone happiness all the time - not in this life - because of that wrongness. Clearly if it was fixable it would be fixed.

The issue is really about our freedom to err. For example, many illnesses are caused by - for instance - eating a poor diet/ripoff food and poor wages/poverty/stress, manufacturing/chemicals in food/air/water... We are meant to die easily and well, to make a transition to another state of being, but we don't because we live in a world made imperfect mostly, though not entirely, by our difficulty in loving one another. Even the Boxing Day tsunami was made much worse by our reckless environmental exploitation.

(Remember though that death isn't, as it were, all bad ).

'Everyone finds this difficult. Including Jesus'

I must have missed his post on the subject.
Sorry couldn't resist ;-)

Thanks for the posts, it's all still as clear as mud to me.
I'll have to ponder some more.

Hello

My Father didn't create the world so that He could treat you all like a Sims game

The bad things that happen are random and often due to the actions of others.

He is alongside us in our suffering and we must look after each other when suffering occurs.

Jesus' posts can be found in the Gospels. At one point he cries.