How to explain why God lets bad things happen?

1) Free will has nothing to do with the fact that the exercise of another's free will might violate your own rights. That is why God gave commandments - what is permitted and what is not permitted. God forces no one to follow His laws; but warns about the consequence of violating His Law.

The wages of sin IS Death (separation from God).

2)Death again is what befell mankind when Adam and Eve sinned and introduced corruption into the creation. They alientated themselves from the Creator and sought to live independent of Him. This introduced all the evils you see in the world today.

Death is not voluntary; but neither is life. You are alive, you will die; and yet God provides a promise through Jesus Christ that all who believe in Him receive forgiveness, justification and eternal life.

3) God had promised there is a day of reckoning coming. God is able to reverse every evil thing men suffer - even being murdered by others; because He has power over life and death. Jesus Christ Himself was murdered by evil men; but God, knowing beforehand what would happen, accepted the offering of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world, putting the punishment of the wicked upon Him, so that all men might repent - that is, turn away from their evil doing, and find forgiveness.

Jesus Christ bore your sins on the cross - that isn't fair, but those are the facts, according to the testimony of God the Father who raised Him from the dead. There is hope in none other. No one who ever lived promised eternal life, and proved He was able to deliver on His promise by raising the dead to life; and according to His own prediction, being raised from the dead Himself.

There is a day coming when God will separate the evil from the good; the sheep from the goats; the the wicked will know eternal punishment for their sins; but the righteous will inherit eternal blessings in the Kingdom of God. I am completely convinced these things are so, because many years ago God made Himself real in my life in a way I could never forget or deny. He showed me love and granted me peace and joy and forgiveness; even when my thoughts were against Him; and He has led me into a deep and lasting peace, freedom from fear and anxiety, and has made something meaningful out of my life.

Here is how that can happen for you........

http://www.campuscrusade.com/fourlawsflash.htm

God saved this man from death........

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3682855866...

1. Free will also means other people can exercise their free will upon you. If they are stronger, they succeed.

2. Death is a part of life, and we can't stop it from happening. This has nothing to do with free will. Think about how crowded the world would be if no one ever died but they still kept having babies.

3. God doesn't directly control everything. Anyone who says so is naive. The Bible certainly doesn't claim it. That's what free will is, the ability to control some things yourself. He made us, He loves us, but if we exercise our free will and make something bad happen, He doesn't take away that free will just so nothing bad ever happens.

We live in an imperfect world. We can hope that we really will see Heaven later, and that it will be perfect. But we don't know. That uncertainty is why we need faith. You can't have faith in a sure thing. You can only have acceptance. The leap of faith, however big we see it to be, is what determines how we see God.

This is probably best left to a theologian, but I think I'll give it a whirl.

Regardless of what you read or think you may have read, the Bible never promised us a safe and uneventful journey while on Earth. In fact, the Bible does not go so far as to promise us tomorrow as we know it.

The Bible is riddled with tales of tragic events, thus is life here on Earth.

The Bible does however tell us that if you believe in Him, you shall have everlasting life.

Now here is where it gets pretty dicey. All of this requires faith, not more, not less. You must believe that God exists and have full and complete confidence that the Bible has guided you correctly and you believe in God and trust that the Bible is an accurate depiction of this being. All without an ounce of proof. This sort of belief is called faith.

I'm not here to attempt to convince you or your atheist friend of the existence of God, and anyone who attempts to do so is on a fools folly.

If I had any worthwhile advice for you or your friend, I'd simply suggest that you try to be a decent human being and hope all works out as you expect. If you really mess up, a prayer can't hurt..

But think about it. If your friend is right, then in the end, we simply rot. But you would never know anyway, so how could it harm you.

I probably should have left this to a theologian.

Ask this Friend of yours why she believes death is the worst possible thing that can happen. "OMG he/she is in heaven how awful." (doesn't sound so horrible to me.) And tell her this as well: If God stopped us from committing every sin then us not sinning is worth nothing. Sure when I was in High School answering tests I didn't cheat but that's because the teacher was in there watching me. And if God doesn't let us make our own decisions then what is free will worth. Free will isn't being able to control everything in life that happens to you its the ability to make certain decisions and think freely. True God does control some things but not everything. Do you realize everything you do sets of a long change reaction that changes the future.

True Story: Once a boy was about to commit suicide and was emptying his lockers at school so that his mother wouldn't have to go through the trouble after he was gone. As he was carrying the books he slipped and fell losing all the books, but a boy whom he did not know saw him walked over and helped him get them up. He became very close friends with the boy and he decided not to commit suicide and went on to graduate from college. Because of that one action hundreds of lives will be changed.

Not all things happen for a reason, but there is reason behind all things.

I'm an ex-Catholic but i'm not an atheist. I guess you too got jumped by atheists right? Let me give a little background and see if it helps a little. You must understand as a Spiritual person you have joys and responsibilities in life while you walk your path. One of your jobs as a spiritual person is to uplift those around you and leave your mark on life's big questions such as the infamous Problem of Evil. The questions your friend asks is common actually and justified. But your friend must understand that the Problem of Evil is one of the most difficult questions of life to answer. Philosopher's have been racking their brains over it for centuries. Neither theists, agnostics, and especially not atheists have completely squared out this question. But thankfully we have received many thoughtful and helpful answers by the people of the past and our spiritaul leaders and intellectuals of today!

Another thing, skeptics need to really stop taking the Bible so damn literally. They know that the majority of Christians actually don't hold evangelical beliefs at all, and no they don't believe(and i don't) that God is some white bearded man in the sky. That was just an artistic representation from Michaelangelo. By the way, the man depicted to be God in the painting isn't actually God. If you look closely it's actually a diagram of the human brain.

Anyways, a good teacher to learn from if your interested would be Dr. Mike Murdoc. I don't know if you've heard of him be he might have some helpful information to share on his program but it comes really late at night, you may have to check online. But one thing the man said that stuck with me is that, well obviosuly, God does not literally control everything. The will of God is rarely done, that's why even Jesus had to pray for the will of God to be done. God never teaches by sickness and death. God teaches by people and pain! The reason He gave people free will is so that they can finish the work that God began so that humanity can be glorified!

My experience as a former Catholic boy. Since i was a child i never took anything i read literally off the bat until i got to study it so the material would sink in more. I never thought that habit would be so helpful to me in life! I got the big picture very quickly as a child. The point of Geneis being that humanity was the architect of its own destruction. This was my old understanding of the problem of human suffering. At the time, i fully agreed because i tell you, everytime i turned my head it was always people tearing their own worlds apart. I always saw people as so ruthless to themselves and to eachother and to the very ground the walk on it's no wonder why God wouldn't really show the same pity. I actually had an easier time understanding God through nautre, i always espoused if you can understand nature you can understand the Divine but this is my path though not yours.

Yes we all suffer, some more than others, and a lot of bad things happen in this world without interference from God. But God gave us His only son to teach us and guide us and did not interfere when He was humiliated, ridiculed, betrayed, tortured and ultimately killed. He was showing us that He too was willing to suffer for our sins because He loves us. God also does not interfere with nature, for nature too has free will and God wants to see how we handle it and help each other overcome. This life is nothing but a test and because of free will, it is up to each one of us to decide whether we're going to pass or fail.

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All God wants is that you would turn to Him at any circumstances. Most of us only turned to Him in bad times, but neglect Him in good times. Besides, there are also natural laws in here. It's not like you get drunk, and drive, had accidents and hope you don't get arrested.. Miracles do happen if it's something to do with His heart's deisre, His Kingdom.

Because we all have a choice to be good or too be bad, her rape argument was dumb, he had the choice to rape her or do the right thing and leave her alone, she had no choice because of the path the dude took and it affected her. God lets things happen for free will, we dont live in paradise anymore, in adam and eve, eve had the choice to eat the apple but was infuenced my the snake, and adam had the choice to bite it or leav eit. a coversation between jacob and richard from loss really helped me understand why god lets all the evil out, in the show jacob is like god and he turns richard into his adviser, like a priest or pope if you may.

Jacob: I wanted them to help themselves. To know the difference between right and wrong without me telling them. It s all useless if I have to make them do anything. Why should I have to step in?

Richard Alpert: If you don t he will. [referring to the Man in Black] AKA the devil

god gave us free will, why would he force us into doing the right thing and not listen to the bad. Take away suffering and death and hurt if we bring that ourselve with being selfish hummans. He loves us, but like a father he gives us disipline. There are aithesit and he gave them the choce to belive or not to.Yess god can be an ***, but he knows why, it s a choice. He wont intervene with that. As for the whole death that we dont have a choice in that we do, we can die and live forever by gods side or die and go to hell, when she said that the girls mom didnt have achoice wether her mom died or not is because thats a choice for the mother not her. you cant chose something for some one else. i dont know if you get it but yeah..

These are all fabulous questions youre athiest friend came up with but I have a better answer to the main one which covers pretty much everything; I will get to that in a second. Here are my answers to your friend but do continue reading:

1.) Free will means God does not force us to do anything. He is uninvolved. Therefore, if someone is stronger than another, they can control others. Not God's fault. It's the weakness of the individual. Natural selection, I think they call it?

2.) Again, the definition of free will is confused. In this case, your friend is asking why we aren't given the abilities to defy reality and science. Everything deteriorates; we are no exception.

3.) God does feel the pain and sorrow that we feel and pities us for our stupidity; frankly, I do too.

Alright now for the good stuff, How to explain why God lets bad things happen, Please Read:

*Remember, human's in general are innately selfish.

Everyone uses the "We have free will, we cause our own misery" which is quite true but does not explain tragedies such as natural disasters and the like. So here is my answer. If God would save people in suffering, who would he save? I'll use a specific example: Lets go to the bottom of the hieararchy: those in severe poverty, let's say, in Africa. Financially, they suffer the most, yes? So logically, those would be the first God would save. Now who next? OH! Those homeless people who didn't necesarily have a huge choice in their success. God will save them next. hmmm...next? how about further up the hieararchy: those who went bankrupt. Yep God will now save them. Well, God saved them, now he definately has to save those who just lost their job, and then those who cant pay their rent and then those who can't get out of their parents house, and then the little children who dont have enough allowance? Do you get my point? Where does God draw the line? Where does he decide that one particular situation is worth saving, and those in lesser pain don't receive his help? That line does not exist! It's impossible to say which situation is worthy of helping and which isn't. So, If God is going to save people from suffering, he has to save EVERYONE, those experiencing the most trivial to the most tragic situations. What does that mean? No pain, no dissapointments, equal opportunity for everyone? Sounds like a Utopia, but there definately are some flaws, considering that we are still on Earth not in Heaven, and we are still human.

Flaw #1: The experiences each individual goes through, good or bad, shapes their character and personality. So, no one goes through any bad experiences? Their goes a whole diverse selection of possible personalities.

Flaw #2: The social structure collapses. Sounds great for the socialists, but it's quite unrealistic. Why does it collapse? Because people climb to the top due to their successes not their failures. Those who are below have experienced more hindering failures is all or have brought it upon themselves. But remember? God won't allow any dissapointments, tragedies, even the most trivial. So, no one experiences dissapointment, everyone has equal opportunity. No one is higher than the other. Follow my logic?

FABULOUS! So now we have less personalities to choose from and now, we all experience success; Each individual life starts to mesh. Our experiences are the same due to our equal opportunities and lack of failure. We loose our individuality. In an extreme case, which I think quite possible: give it a couple thousand years in that situation, and we will all be exact clones of each other. No individual, we are all the same. Sounds pretty boring to me.

Flaw #3: So man turn to God during hardships. With no suffering, what do we need God for? We have our little bland Heaven on Earth. There goes a lot of saved down the drain.

Flaw #4: So let's say God does find that magical line to draw. He saves those in suffering the most and we only have the trivial matters. Remember when I told you we are selfish in nature? Us humans already have problems being understanding, compassionate and showing just an ounce of consideration for the other humans on this planet. We connect with each other and find understanding through experiences, personal ones, ones we've heard about. We see other's sufferings and we pity them, ultimately giving us some value for other's lives. So if no one goes through tragedies, our consideration skills would flop. We wouldn't see what happens to people in those various extreme cases and we wouldn't have so much of a connection with others. So, yes, even though its hard to believe, we do have the possibility of becoming even more selfish. I think you can figure out the chaos that would stem from there.

This is just something I thought up, and Im sure that my assumptions hold many flaws, but there is enough logic to see that the structure of humanity would go for a turn downward.

Your question is certainly one of the age-old dilemmas. Of course I have wondered about it too. Here is what I think the answer is: God has given humans all the intelligence they need to solve their problems -- like curing diseases once considered incurable, building earthquake buildings, etc. But we humans exercise our free will to NOT apply our mentality to the earth's evils. Sure, there is medical research that occasionally comes up with cures. But if the relatively much more VAST amount of money spent for learning how to kill better -- if that money were spent on learning to heal better, more healing would take place. But people want to spend their money where they can get the most returns -- weapons manufacture,lobbying _against_ the public interest, etc.

So it seems to me that God is not the one who "allows" bad things to happen. Sad to say, it is us human who really allow it.