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Recommended: God's role in evil
Beginning with the understanding that God as written in biblical text is all powerful, all knowing, and good we then seek to more deeply understand how it is that God allows evil to exist. From the initial text in the Bible referring to the creation of Adam and Eve we are able to see the step-by-step creation of the different elements in our world. With the creation of elements came the assimilation of a guideline or law to follow. Understanding of this initial and key guideline could be one of the main contexts to understanding the first concept of wrong, how wrong came to exist, and why it is allowed to continue. Also the generalizations that are made and the multiple interpretations they hold in different contexts is another example of how we are encouraged to come about our own perception and belief based on what we understand overall of God being good and seeking love for us and from us, and the desire for God to give us the opportunity to learn, make mistakes, and return to him as the prodigal son did. I do not intend …show more content…
This story does show an understanding that bad choices and evil (in this story the evil is the dishonour of asking for ones untimely and undeserved inheritance- undeserved as it was to be used with ill intent) will come about. This is an understanding and not a rule to alleviate wrongs done. The understanding is evil is and will happen, but the opportunity to turn evil into love exists as well. The father’s love and reception after being treated dishonourably is the shining example of the allowance of not only the opportunity to make good and evil decisions, but for the opportunity to understand those choices and return to receive love and forgiveness. (Luke
It is perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to a Christian how God and evil can both exist. Many of the greatest minds of the Christian church and intellects such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas spent their entire lives trying to solve this problem, and were unsuccessful (Erickson, 2009, p.439). However, this dilemma is not only an intellectual challenge, but it is emotional. Man feels it, lives it. Failing to identify the religious form of the problem of evil will appear insensitive; failure to address the theological form will seem intellectually insulting. This conundrum will never be completely met during our earthly life, but there are many biblical and philosophical resources that help mitigate it.
In the short story “The First Born Son” by Ernest Buckler a father named Martin has an objective to have his son David live and grow up on a farm like he had. Unfortunately, as David grows up, he soon realizes that he is not suited for the farm life, and develops a wish to live in the city. David struggles with the farm life and Martin finds himself having troubles living with his son when he discovers David’s wish to live the city life rather than the farm life.
Jesus’s Parable of the Prodigal Son, found in the book of Luke, Jesus extols the power of repentance and forgiveness, as the lost son is welcomed back by his father after he repents.
Adams Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Orphan Master’s Son, amazingly depicts the disturbing lives of North Koreans and government horrors through its simplistic language with relatable characters. The Orphan Master’s Son takes place in North Korea and revolves around Jun Do, who is the son of an orphan master, but who receives the shame that Koreans place on orphans. Then he enters the military where he learns different fighting tactics and becomes a professional kidnapper for the North Koreans. For his reward, the government assigns Jun Do to a listening position on a fishing boat where he becomes a hero for fighting the Americans with a story that the fishing crew and he invented to keep from getting placed in a prison camp after to one of their crewmates defects. Jun Do then goes to Texas as a translator, where he learns about freedom and other cultures. When the mission fails the government sends him to a camp where Jun Do’s name and identity die.
Bigger Thomas wasn’t just one man but every man Richard Wright, the writer of Native Son, had encounter in his childhood and adulthood. Wright had encountered a nice Bigger, violent Bigger, and a Bigger Thomas who hated the white society. He combined all of these Thomases and created Bigger Thomas in Native Son. Bigger filled with enrage and fear of the whites accidentally kills a white woman and tries to run away, but only to end in a prison cell waiting for his punishment. Bigger’s definition of himself and the white society had limited his possibilities of having a greater future but Bigger could have went to the right path if he had controlled himself and his choicies.
It also follows that God, not as benevolent as could be hoped, prefers the maximization of good (2) as opposed to the minimization of evil (1). This is disquieting for the individual who might be the victim of suffering a “greater good.”
The Real World and How it Really Works. Parable of the Prodigal Son. Does your mother or father ever give you more than enough money when you go on trips with friends or out of town for a school event? They always give you way more than you need in a lifetime, you ask for twenty and they give you double of what you need.
What is good and evil and where did it come from? Everything in the world was created from the one God. The God theory infused all things in the world and that live beyond it. From this viewpoint good and evil both derived from the God law. They have both lived since the construction of the world. Yet, evil was in a dormant form at that juncture. Evil is in our mind, not inside our aspiring heart (http://www.srichinmoy.org/spirituality/spirituality/good_and_evil).
Has evil always been around, or did man create it? One could trace evil all the way back to Adam and Eve; however, evil came to them, but it was not in them. When did evil become part of a person? No one knows, but evil has been around for a long time and unfortunately is discovered by everyone. In many great classics in literature evil is at the heart or the theme of the novel, including Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. This classic book demonstrates the growing up of two children in the South and illustrates the theme of evil by showing how they discover, how they deal, and how they reconcile themselves to the evils they experience.
A father’s love for his sons is often unspoken. Fathers will rarely say to their sons that they love them, but the sons know they really do. This love is strong, but held in reserve. Is it a sign of weakness if a father tells his son he loves him? This idea can be debated on both sides. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son from the King James Bible, a father openly forgives a son who just blew all of his inheritance money, and has returned home. The father is filled with so much happiness that he throws a party for the son. An older son of the father thinks it is unjust that the younger son gets a party for messing up. From the Parable of the Prodigal Son, of the King James Bible, there are three main messages.
The lines that define good and evil are not written in black and white; these lines tend to blur allowing good and evil to intermingle with each another in a single human being.
In the case of the raising of the widow’s son by Elijah began with the woman and her family receiving the incredible and miraculous provisions of God since the visit of the prophet Elijah. Each day, their flour and oil was sufficient for them showing the continual miracle of God on their behalf. But then suddenly a change occurred. The happy days of provision was soon met with darkness, a sickness and death of the son. By loosing her son, not only did the widow loose her only son but also any hope of a future. The son would grow and would provide for her in her old age, but now the son has died. After the death of her son, it seems as though the widow blamed Elijah but more specifically she was in guilt over some sin in her life or her past. Elijah would meet
For instance, Zeus’ divine sense of justice is distorted because he places his ego before impartiality when he declares that he is “going to give [humans] Evil in exchange for fire, their very own Evil to love and embrace” (Hesiod 25). Zeus reveals that he will create evil because of the Prometheus’ actions, compared to evil coming into existence because of Prometheus. This slight distinction is compelling because the concept of evil does not exist until Zeus releases it onto humanity. One can argue that evil exists due to Prometheus and that without his actions, Zeus would not have made the final decision to release “Evil in exchange for fire” (Hesiod 25). However, to refute this, it was not Prometheus’ action of stealing fire back to humankind that initiated evil, rather it was Zeus’ decision to punish Prometheus that led to the creation of evil. Essentially, Prometheus does not go against the gods because Prometheus’ actions were not considered wrong by the gods until after the occurrence. On the other hand, in Genesis, Eve acknowledges that lest she be doomed to die, she should not eat from the forbidden tree; however, she “saw that the tree was good for eating…and she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave to her man, and he ate” (Alter 12). In this case, Eve’s own actions brought evil to humankind. God did not make the final decision to release evil, rather, evil is released due to how Eve utilized her free will. The commonality between both works is that both Prometheus and Adam and Eve disobey their respective gods. Comparatively, the main distinction lies in the divine-human relationship in both works and the blame that is placed on the introduction of evil. In Genesis, Adam and
children. The students’ body will consist of children, youth and young adults. Before the lesson, the students will participate in several songs and group Bible memory exercises. Target length of this lesson is 30 minutes.
God is the source of evil. He created natural evil, and gave humans the ability to do moral evil by giving them a free will. However, had he not given people free will, then their actions would not be good or evil; nor could God reward or punish man for his actions since they had no choice in what to do. Therefore, by giving humans choice and free will, God allowed humanity to decide whether to reward themselves with temporary physical goods, and suffer in the long run from unhappiness, or forsake bodily pleasures for eternal happiness.