{"id":3963,"date":"2010-12-09T08:03:02","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T12:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeasprayer.wordpress.com\/?p=3963"},"modified":"2010-12-09T08:03:02","modified_gmt":"2010-12-09T12:03:02","slug":"thoughtful-thursday-an-almighty-good-god-allows-an-evil-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/thoughtful-thursday-an-almighty-good-god-allows-an-evil-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughtful Thursday: An Almighty, Good God Allows an Evil World?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Human Brutality, one of the World's worst evils.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here is a response to a difficult subject: Evil and human suffering. Your comments are valuable here. Thanks for reading.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The following are comments from a former classmate Marty Schoffstall <\/a>as placed within the comment section on\u00a0blog site<\/a> of Theology Professor Ken Miller.<\/p>\n

From Marty:<\/em><\/p>\n

Dr. Dorsey [professor of Old Testament Studies<\/a>] says that the story of the prophets (a rather large portion of the canon) looks like this:<\/p>\n

(1) God Is Allowing Wickedness\u2026<\/strong>
\nFor a season\u2026. and the wicked to succeed in their opposition to Him to temporarily triumph over Him (and over those loyal to Him). He may allow them to spurn Him, mock Him, humiliate him, or persecute those who remain loyal to Him.<\/p>\n

(2) God is redirecting their evil\u2026.<\/strong>
\nto accomplish his own good purposes. The deeds of the wicked play into God\u2019s hands and are used by God to further his own semi-secret agenda. [During this time when evil appears to prevail], God\u2019s children are encouraged to: (a) Trust God, (b) Wait patiently for the time when God will intervene and right all wrongs, (c) Remain loyal and obedient to him.<\/p>\n

(3) Finally, God dramatically intervenes\u2026<\/strong>
\nto defeat his enemies. God is vindicated the wicked are punished; and those loyal to God are rewarded.<\/p>\n

Now as my old friend friend Dr. Cunningham from UVA who was a very competent Roman Catholic Theologian on the side used to say:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026mercy and justice are always in tension. We want mercy for ourselves, and justice for the other\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually we grow a little wiser and want some mercy for the other as well; however, we can never give up the concept of justice completely. Some decisions are so revolting (like genocide) that they must rigorously opposed, some people are so broken (like serial killers, serial kidnappers, etc) that we invest enormous time and money in the criminal justice system to stop them, they are horribly corrosive to society, they must be stopped.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How do you respond?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Good God Allows an Evil World?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[280,281,6,12,673,13,873,875,927,23,1177,1428,1472,1510,41,2841,2879,2948,79,3416,3702],"class_list":["post-3963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality","tag-atheism","tag-atheist","tag-bible","tag-christ","tag-christian-theology","tag-christianity","tag-criminal-justice","tag-criminals","tag-death","tag-evil","tag-existence-of-god","tag-genocide","tag-god","tag-good-god","tag-jesus","tag-religion-and-spirituality","tag-richard-dawkins","tag-sam-harris","tag-suffering","tag-theodicy","tag-wickedness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisadelay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}