Why does an "all powerful" God stand by & allow bad things to happen?

Question

Don't blame it all on man, or you will not be able to explain such things as wild animals eating children, or accidents from winds, floods, and fires.

Pearly gator--- I thought that He gave his only begotten son to redeem us.

Ambey -- are you implying that this god will murder your children in order to test your loyalty;and is he that insecure or vain?

DS-- if this "devil" with his free will is as powerful as your god then he is not really "all powerful".

Flandargo--your good and evil theory doesn;t fit when a child is blown away by a tornado. You should spend your time searching for truth jnstead of pretending to already have it.

Mary eva--These accidents of nature that you suggest were caused by man, happened at times even before man warmed up the planet.

AW--He's not "making life possible" for those children & others who were killed in his presence.

Paul-- If your god "heals' as you claim, why does he allow their affliction in the first place?

Kj7gs--- I would hate to believe in a god who would murder a man's family to test the man's loyalty to HIM.
If my god was so vain or insecure I would stand aginst him.
If he's the only god---what's he afraid of?
Is there something wrong w/ demanding to be "worshiped"?

Kj7gs---He gave his only son ----to please whom, or to apease whom? Himself?
Would you allow you son to be murdered to
make sure your commands were followed by others?

Answer 1

All things work to the good of GOD!!!
What we perceive as bad, is according to GOD'S WILL, to draw us closer to him.If you never suffer, do you think you would believe,have faith or pray? We all will bear a cross, but in doing so,we will be blessed by having our Heavenly Father carry us through. Our experiences give us wisdom, which helps us help others. Remember GOD IS LOVE.By his love and Grace do we sometimes suffer. But be thankful, because somewhere in that suffering, someone is praying for you and you're learning how to Love like GOD!! Say it w/ me "I AM MY BROTHERS KEEPER!"

Answer 2

I believe that this moment on earth is just a brief period that is part of a huge timeline of events that started before I was born. From God's point of view, this is just a nano-second of time, and then we go to a better place. This life is an education, a place where we can gain some perspective, make some choices, and see how we can react to things.

When I think of it that way, anything bad that has ever happened in my life becomes a learning experience. Even the way I am going to die. Everyone will....the only difference is the manner in which it happens.

Life is pretty short. Once we comprehend eternity, this life is really going to seem like the blink of an eye in which we were able to glimpse what is really important. Would you know what joy is, if you had never experienced suffering?

Answer 3

Because we caused it and cursed all creation ourselves. HE ALREADY HAS DONE SOMETHING ABOUT IT - DIED ON A CROSS SO EVERYONE COULD BE SAVED FROM THE SECOND DEATH AND TO WASH AWAY OUR SIN AND HEAL US.

Why do yu think he kicked us out of perfection and out of the Garden of Eden? We asked and chose it ourselves and this is why there is suffering, however God is gracious and does heal people with afflictions and suffering even today.

Man became so sinful that God had to start again and send a world wide flood which left plenty of evidence of dead things buried by layers of sediment. The consequences of these curses such as the flood is why there is earthquakes and Tsunami's and so forth today.

It says in the bible that the whole of creation groans and endures in pain from now until judgement day.

Answer 4

God does not think for you, especially when you're adult; But rather the stated purpose of scriptures is learning: Rom 15:4. And when the God shew is ended properly, as Pauline written, it never happened, nor ever will happen when all are both saved by grace and made aware by truth what they're saved from: law. Mean while consider it as if a spiritual training course with the safety switch turned off, to make it more interesting & realistic.

Our Father, deliver us from evil: Mt 6:13
We are delivered from the law: Rom 7:6.

Only an adult can commit adult-ery; But even when the adult woman(church) did and was brought to Christ for judgement, what she heard was neither do I condemn(law) thee: go(learn) and sin(law) no more. And the interesting part of the story in John 8 is after the second uprising of Christ who twice stooped and twice finger wrote in the ground (perhaps wrote grounded and groundead is what those who would accuse and condemn get), well then all the accusers and condemners had fled.

The GRACE of our Lord Jesus Christ with you all. Amen.

Answer 5

It´s not all God´s doing, there is a devil too, and he has free will to do many bad things such as the ones you mention, so that people like you can blame it all on God and not belive in Him...But God is so good that he is paciently hoping that you will get to know the truth and be saved... maybe then he will become the roaring Lion and punish all the bad...

Answer 6

Firstly, your view.

In psychology class, we learned that humans tend to concentrate on the bad. Have you ever seen a notice saying, "Good Dog"? No, it's always, "Beware, BAD DOG!" When a completely white sheet with only one small black dot it presented to people and they are asked what they see, all they saw was the one black dot; they did not see the rest of the sheet that was spotless!!!

2. A better question may be, "Why does God actively cause good things to happen to bad people"?

3. I cannot supply you with a better answer that that given by Augustine, "God ....... would not allow any evil in His works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness ...he is able to bring forth good out of evil."

4. You do realize that for a long time now, the existence of evil has been used by atheists to promote the non-existence of God. The syllogism is this: (A) Premise 1: If God existed there would be no Wrong, because God would be aware of Wrong, he would desire to prevent Wrong, and he would be able to prevent Wrong. (B) Premise 2 : Wrong exists. (C) Conclusion : Therefore, God does not exist.

But how does one define wrong or evil? Is it subjective or objective? If subjective, then what is evil for you (e.g suicide bombings) may not be evil for me!! But if is is objective, who determines or set that absolute standard? Someone who spans all culture and time. And JUST who could that be? The argument actually backfires!!! Instead of proving that God does not exist, it actually does the opposite.

Answer 7

all things work for the good of God, even tragedy. As for wild animals eating children, why are those children not being supervised and allowed to be placed in harm?? That would be the fault of man. And fires tend to be started by man so that is also the fault of man. Winds, floods are phenomenons of nature, they happen. If God only permitted good things to happen, we would not need to rely on Him, which is all He wants from us.

Answer 8

Let's turn this around then -- do we all deserve only good things to happen? Job had horrible things happen to him. Did God say, "there, there" and apologize? Nope, and that surprised me too when I read it. Job got blasted with questions that had him falling on his face before the Almighty. He deserved absolutely nothing, and that's my answer to your question. God could abandon us completely if He wanted, and we would have nothing to say without doing a Job rerun. So why why why did he go so far as to send His own Son, a Perfect Lamb, to die an agonizing death on a cross, for a world that doesn't deserve it?

That one I can answer. I dunno...

BTW I enjoyed reading your responses to the other postings. Good to see some thinking going on.

Answer 9

Gee I've posted stuff like this and I'll be happy to do it again.

God is allowing things to happen because he is allowing Satan and us to rule over ourselves. It started in the Garden with you know who, Adam and Eve. When they decided to disobey God, they really decided to choose for themselves what was good and bad. Including Satan, he also challenged not Gods power but his right to rule over his creation.

So in other words God is allowing us and Satan to prove if they can do just that successfully. Of course God has allowed time and people to try every type of government possible, we and Satan are unsuccessful. Because Satan is the "god" of this world, The bible clearly says good and bad will happen , and unforeseen occurrences will befall. ( means being at the wrong place at the wrong time). But God will correct all this, including those that have lost their lives. Which is why there will be a event called the resurrection of the righteousness and un-righteousness.

Answer 10

He gave people free will. He would be violating that if he interrupted us when we wanted to do something bad. As far as natural disasters and things like that are concerned, he is involved in these things in letting nature run its course and yet at the same time keeping life on earth possible.