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relationship between God and human
personal responsibility in the world
personal responsibility in the world
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Since the beginning of time, it has been human nature to be curious creatures and try and explain all experiences in life. Questions such as where we came from, how we got here and more importantly why we are here. Religion has always been a way to explain our existence on this planet. More recently, our Lord who came and saved us from our sins is a perfect example of how we explain our way of lives. God is the overseer of us all and He loves us and wants what is best for all His “children.” Curious creatures as we, humanity, are we tend to ask questions of why bad things happen to good people if He oversees and cares for us all.
Theodicy
Theodicy comes from the Greek word Theos meaning God and dikē meaning justice. Theodicy by translation
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God once promised us that His direct interference in our matters would no longer happen and that He would let us be responsible of our own lives (Ge 9:11 New International Version). In essence, we are all responsible for the evils present in this earth. Every malevolent action, every deprived action we commit is a direct responsibility of our own decisions. For example, if I choose to steal something from any store, why would God stop me if it was a decision that I made and free will was given to me. It is not saying that He could not stop me if He wanted to, He chooses not to because he promised that he would not interfere directly again. It could be by his hand that I trip on my shoelace and drop what I stole and therefore get caught but he did not directly untie my shoe and made it so. Explaining in a way we can all understand, if your boss tells you what to do how to do it and is on his high horse and expects his team to follow the probability of that happening is slim to none. On the other hand, if your boss encourages you to grow and gives you the guidelines for you to operate in you are more likely to flourish and be successful at any task you are given and therefore excelling at your job in its entirety. I believe this is how God wants us to flourish in our faiths and our lives to reach Him and what He demands of
On the other side of the argument, the point about God not wanting us to become dependent on him doesn’t quite make sense to me. I think we should be able to be dependent on God that he is not going to let disasters happen. People say that disasters happen for a reason, but no one can honestly say that the Holocaust or other things like that happened for a reason. Hopefully one day I can decide if I believe in God or not, but for now I am settling on the fact that God may or may not exist. I would like to believe that such a powerful God exists, but I can’t wrap my head around him letting so much evil happen in the world if he does exist.
In his essay, "The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy," Peter van Inwagen alleges a set of reasons that God may have for allowing evil to exist on earth. Inwagen proposes the following story – throughout which there is an implicit assumption that God is all-good (perfectly benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient) and deserving of all our love. God created humans in his own likeness and fit for His love. In order to enable humans to return this love, He had to give them the ability to freely choose. That is, Inwagen holds that the ability to love implies free will. By giving humans free will, God was taking a risk. As Inwagen argues, not even an omnipotent being can ensure that "a creature who has a free choice between x and y choose x rather than y" (197)1. (X in Inwagen’s story is ‘to turn its love to God’ and y is ‘to turn its love away from God,’ towards itself or other things.) So it happened that humans did in fact rebel and turn away from God. The first instance of this turning away is referred to as "the Fall." The ruin of the Fall was inherited by all humans to follow and is the source of evil in the world. But God did not leave humans without hope. He has a plan "whose working will one day eventuate in the Atonement (at-one-ment) of His human creatures with Himself," or at least some of His human creatures (198). This plan somehow involves humans realizing the wretchedness of a world without God and turning to God for help.
I doubt that anyone believes they control the God they pray to. In fact, those who pray to God usually pray for God to control the events of their life. But those who believe in a Law of God, a universal creative power that operates according to Its own divine nature and purpose, sometimes believe they can control the infinite power of God. Perhaps it is because we believe in the law-like nature of Life, not a controlling and intervening deity, that we think: If God is not in control, then I might as well be. It is similar to the notion that you are in control of the vehicle because you sit in the drivers ' seat. It is like the delusion of parental control, or the confusion over which end of the leash sets the pace. Think what you like; you are not in control of anything or anyone. You may choose. You may guide, direct and influence. You may push and shove, but not control the creative power of
Today, we see evil everywhere like murder, rape, stealing, injustice is all shown daily on the news. Philip Yancey in “Where is God When It Hurts,” shows throughout the book evil, what evil does to people and the world. For example, evil caused Donna to have leukemia (Yancey 250). Theodicy was created to defend others when people say that ‘God causes evil’ but in realitic God does not cause the evil that happen in the world it humans that causes evil.
There is a lot of evil in the world, and much of it happens unexplainably. In the history of life on Earth bad things have happened and evil has caused problems. In relation to some world wide events, 6 million people died in the holocaust, 65 million people died in the war, 800 thousand died in the Rwanda genocide and 230 thousand people died in the 2004 boxing day tsunami. There is a lot of human suffering in the world, but there is also suffering of animals too. A lot of suffering in humans is due to other humans, however some of it can be caused by non-human causes, such as natural disasters etc. Under religious beliefs god was the creator of life on Earth, so if he was all good, powerful and knowing then he would be capable of at least preventing natural disasters from erupting as they cause life to undergo suffering. Likewise, capable of preventing human suffering from natural disasters, i.e. saving people from hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes etc…
The problem of reconciling an omnipotent, perfectly just, perfectly benevolent god with a world full of evil and suffering has plagued believers since the beginning of religious thought. Atheists often site this paradox in order to demonstrate that such a god cannot exist and, therefore, that theism is an invalid position. Theodicy is a branch of philosophy that seeks to defend religion by reconciling the supposed existence of an omnipotent, perfectly just God with the presence of evil and suffering in the world. In fact, the word “theodicy” consists of the Greek words “theos,” or God, and “dike,” or justice (Knox 1981, 1). Thus, theodicy seeks to find a sense of divine justice in a world filled with suffering.
Some believe in the power of grace and almost do not believe in the existence of free will. There are those who grace creates the best in people, while free will plunges us into sin. And the last kind of people are those who believe there is a clear need for, and free will is a myth. God said that If you obey my commandments - will live - if not, you die. Here God tells us what to do as I command and get reparation, if you disobey, you will get punished. Is not that what can be called free will - the right to choose their own destiny (Erasmus, 1961, pp.
Well, one has to consider the other option, which would be almost a robotic following of the Lord by humankind. God, being the ultimate good, chooses the ultimate good for his creation, which is free will, a better choices than involuntary obedience. God chooses to be a father to his children, instead of the mastermind behind a well-oiled machine. God creating free will is a perfectly good act. It is what we did with that free will that gave birth to evil.
Theonomy Theonomy is a term for the belief that the moral law of God is to be applied as a standard of righteousness for governing individuals and society. The term comes from the Greek for "God's law" and is the concept that all of the moral laws (excluding the non-ceremonial and dietary laws) given to Moses and recorded in the Pentateuch are binding on people of all nations forever. Theonomy posits God's law as the only standard for regulations in every human institution: family, church, and state. Theocracy is the term for a nation ruled by God and God's law.
Is free will actually as free as we like to believe? Does God, or life’s Chairman, poke around in our heads and make us think what he wants? The Adjustment Bureau is a romantic comedy of Western metaphysics that dives remarkably deep into the heart of contemporary Christian debates. A film intended to raise queries, yet still afford the ‘happily ever after’ we all so desperately yearn for. The Adjustment Bureau agents (angels), with the magic hats (halos), who travel through multidimensional doors (the gates of heaven), and answer to the all-righteous Chairman (God), managed to provide a piece of rhetoric beyond one’s wildest imagination: “I think that’s the Chairman’s real plan. That maybe one day, we won’t write the plan. You will.”
Freud, Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche criticized the wrong motive for the religiosity of some people. Some people actually believe in God because of guilt, fear of punishment, because of the inability to solve their problems, because of
The Divine Command Theory is an ethical theory that basically proposes that God is the sole distinguisher between what is right and what is wrong. The textbook describes that under this theory, God commands what is moral and forbids what is immoral. Critics of this theory state that if God is the sole decision maker of morality, immoral actions could be acceptable if He willed it, and thus, God’s authority would be subjective and arbitrary. However, proponents contend that God would not allow immoral actions because he is omnipotent and all good. To follow the Divine Command Theory, one must believe and trust that it is in God’s nature to do good, and He will not act against his nature. By believing in this, one would dispute the critics’ argument by proving that God his not making
People are constantly trying to make their lives easier. Darwin theorized that this was part of "Survival of the Fittest." That the easier we make our lives, the more like we are to survive. Religion is one more way, along with self-starting coffee pots, that we have developed to make our lives easier and ultimately more bearable. Assuming that there is some "master plan" that we can't see makes. Religion is simply a self-made, self-serving idea.
The relationship between religion and ethics can be chronicled as how religion relates to the use of experience and critical reasoning to study morality. Many of those who practice religion believe that there is no need to understand why their religion believes in particular morals because all they need to know is what God says is morally correct. It doesn’t matter to them the reasoning behind why certain things are morally good, while other things are bad. This rejection of critical reasoning, however may prevent those who feel this way from truly understanding all the particulars of their own religion.
A belief in God is relevant in our world today based on a number of reasons. Through God, human beings get direction on how to conduct themselves in the world. The word of God enlightens humans on evil, unjust, and worthless actions that they at times fail to acknowledge in both their conscious and unconscious states. God castigates the evil that man embraces. God does not dictate evil on man; however, man is the author of his own evil deeds. God is necessary in the modern world as a representation of good deeds. He directs people to follow a proper and fruitful path that leads people to their freedom. Freedom of a human being should not infringe other people’s rights. God provides a guideline on how to operate without infringing other people’s rights. To ascertain justly means of operation, God promises punishment on individuals who break the law (Hatina 29). In the absence of these measures, human beings behave within the scope of