Without mentioning free will, why does God stand by and do nothing when people are harmed?

Question

Does He enjoy it? Does He get a lewd thrill out of it? Please, stay on topic, answer the question as it is asked, and don't make this personal.

MzJakes, your analogy doesn't fit. Letting a child learn from their own mistakes is not what was asked. I think I left 2 words off the end of the question - "by others."

Modifying your analogy, would you allow one of your children to rape or kill one of your other children without you trying to intervene? Would you pull for the stronger child and let them do what they please to the other? Yet it seems that God enjoys child abuse more than anything and pulls for the abusers.

Answer 1

We are the creators of our own destiny and reality. No one and nothing else has anything to do with it!

Answer 2

God will not interfere with Science, or nature, since He created it. He will not interfere when someone gets a disease due to their own actions.
Sorry, but it is hard to answer to your question without discussing free will.

He is not standing by. He is watching HIS children make poor choices.
Would a parent run around fixing every little thing for his or her children? Doesn't a good parent let a child grow up and make mistakes so that he can learn?
That is what God does.

My best friend has had to let her children suffer for their mistakes rather than doing what she really wanted to do and fix everything for them. They would have HATED her had she intervened. As it was, they have learned and are still learning from their mistakes.

IMO, you are making this personal by dictating us how we can and cannot answer.
I also know that you hate Christians and don't believe in God, so you are doing your best to put restrictions on us so that there is no way we can answer to your satisfaction. As we would never be able to do that anyhow, this is a moot point.

Have a nice evening! Sorry if I did not help.
I hope you receive satisfaction from the replies and get what you want from this.

Answer 3

Because there is justice beyond this world, and what seems unfair to us here on earth will balance out in the end. (See the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in the gospels for an illustration.)

The existence of suffering is a thorny question for all men and women of faith. The entire Book of Job in the Old Testament is devoted to this issue. The ultimate answer is that we are to trust in God's wisdom, which far surpasses our own.

Suffering is also an invitation for us to help those in need, as the Good Samaritan did in the gospels, lend a hand even to someone that would normally be perceived as an enemy. Good can be brought forth from evil in this way, and love can triumph over hate.

Answer 4

God has a plan that we cannot comprehend. No one knows why he allows horrible things to happen, but I know that everything that happens is according to his will. Maybe God allowed someone to be hurt so that they would appreciate the things they have. or maybe he has a plan to reveal something to that person. Maybe they will now be able to help others that go through that same situation.

Also some bad things do happen because people do not obey.

1) Honor thy mother and father so that your days on the earth may be long

2) The wages of sin is death

Answer 5

God doesn't stand by we simply push him away. We constantly say we can fix things ourselves instead of letting God handle them. If we would be obedient then we would be able to see God because he's always there. Our problem is we don't want his help until we've dug a huge hole that we can't climb out of, that's when we want his assistance, and even then most of us don't even say thank you. So the question isn't why does God stand by and do nothing? The question is how does God still have a heart that functions properly when we constantly break it by not obeying.

Answer 6

Why does a parent watch and let his/her child fall when learning to walk? One learns much more from failure than from success....even painful failures, perhaps even moreso.
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Fair enough.

The question essentially becomes, 'why do bad things happen to good people?'. This, of course, is a question asked by virtually everyone since the beginning of time. The answers are not easy are rarely satisfying and rely on one having some faith that this life in this world is not all there is. Rather, it is life in the world to come where all accounts are ultimately settled.

But how does this work? God, in his infinite mercy, wants to reward the good and punish the evil. However, it is only the rare individual that is wholly good or wholly evil...and the amplitude, if you will, of reward and punishment is much greater in the next world than in this one. Therefore, God 'punishes' the good in this world for their few misdeeds when the punishments are relatively easy so that He can bestow great reward in the next completely unfettered. Conversely, the wicked receive the full measure of their reward for their few merits so that there's nothing to mitigate their punishment in the world to come.

This answer, while true is admittedly unsatisfying. It's difficult to come to grips with why innocent people become the victim of abuse or disease. All one can do is take comfort in knowing that any suffering experienced now will be replaced in far greater measure with reward in the future.

Answer 7

I agree with Stephanie's answer. Also because it is a test to see if any person would take the moral responsibility to help those in harm. Of course God does not like people to suffer, but wants to see there are any good people who will do any thing about it so He can reward them. Life, after all, is a test to see who is worthy to enter the gates of Heaven.

Answer 8

Love your logic. This cannot be answered by the free-will folks with any responses other than "it's a mystery" or "it'll all work out in the end." And, if the atheists are correct, God is mean since he knows everything and orchestrates the universe to our detriment.

The only thing that hasn't been thought of to this point is the possibility of men being inherently evil since the fall of Adam and God not being under any obligation to man whatsoever to rescue him from his troubles. Only common grace keeps mankind from total debauchery, and even this has reared its ugly head at different points in our world's history.

Is God required to do anything? I say no. We have long since lost the ability to have fellowship with God, and therefore we simply do this to ourselves and the only ones exempted from this evil would be the ones he has chosen as his own from before the foundations of the world. They get a new heart courtesy of the Holy Spirit working within them in spite of what sins they had committed before their salvation. And even these see through a glass darkly. They still struggle with the sin that is inherent in their nature.

Answer 9

How do you know that God does nothing? It is perhaps the natural order of things in the form of karma. There may be a lesson there for both the perpetrator and the victim. None of us can claim to know God’s mind. I do know that when my family chose to make me the object of their incest that I thought for a very long time that I had been forsaken, ignored by God. I was extremely angry at Him. I now know that He did give me what I needed to not only survive, but to make me the person I am today, and to give me something special to help others who were in the same situation I was in. Somehow that makes it worthwhile. I absolutely believe God gets no joy in our being injured, however He may delight in our growing closer to him due to being a victim, and our ability to help others who are going through similar situations.

Blessed Be

Answer 10

Well like it or not most of it has to do with free-will. I think with most things, at the very least, we can learn from bad things that God allows to happen. And God can bring good out of any evil humans create. As I have been to some dark places in the world, I would say that for the rest of those things we'll have to wait and ask Him.

Answer 11

God creates people with a foreknowledge of how their lives are going to turn out. The Bible says he is all-knowing and knows the past present and future.

So if the Bible is true, then God creates people for pain and suffering, he also creates them for an eternal torture in hell.

God Created Lucifer, knowing how things would turn out, yet did it anyway.

God is either non existent or extremely cruel.