Is God Always Good?

[Jaebius]

So, smoting? What about if a person came forth with an accusation against a person which stuck, in court, in front of witnesses and jury, etc.? And that person went away to jail forever. Is that "smoting" for righteousness' sake? I mean, they've clearly become a non-entity in terms of "future deliberations of the body politic, yes?

Yeah, I don't really sense what you're talking about here Bette. I'm not really sure how it fits into the conversation.

 

[Waterfall]

So, smoting? What about if a person came forth with an accusation against a person which stuck, in court, in front of witnesses and jury, etc.? And that person went away to jail forever. Is that "smoting" for righteousness' sake? I mean, they've clearly become a non-entity in terms of "future deliberations of the body politic, yes?

Yet it's possible that love could salvage their soul. A different kind of love.

 

[Waterfall]

The whole thing is funny. I don't even have to try.

But do you ever think there is a love that anyone is even capable of, only aspire to?

 

[BetteTheRed]

I keep on thinking of the love of a mother for their child, even if they end up as a serial killer. I've heard a couple of interviews with Marc Lepine's mother that are heart-breaking.

 

[BetteTheRed]

...and sometimes I wonder sadly about "dead mothers" - those who die in childbirth (more common world wide than we think) or of AIDS, and can't guide their babies.

 

[Waterfall]

...and sometimes I wonder sadly about "dead mothers" - those who die in childbirth (more common world wide than we think) or of AIDS, and can't guide their babies.

I think of these things too, but I'd rather turn in comfort to a God that doesn't have a part in that. I think the true God weeps too.

 

[Jaebius]

I think of these things too, but I'd rather turn in comfort to a God that doesn't have a part in that. I think the true God weeps too.

"And Jesus wept." - John 11:35 (WYC).

 

[BetteTheRed]

I get "God weeps". You and I weep too. However, that doesn't make godde, nor us, not complicit in what goes down.

 

[Delightful Life]

The Jews knew the joke:

Man plans, God laughs

 

[Seeler]

Waterfall - you ask the darnist questions. Thought-provoking. I can imagine a theologian spending months, or years, pondering this - researching what has been written, consulting with collegues, submitting his paper for peer review, before publishing. And I'm sitting at my computer first thing in the morning trying to answer. Here goes -
- what is good for one of God's creatures may not be good for another. The preditor and the prey. The wolf or the cuddly bunny. The Inuit hunter or the caribou. The misquito or the trout that feeds on it or the person who eats the trout or the misquito that pesters the person.
- all that lives must die - or there wouldn't be new life. We grow old, out bodies wear out, we get Parkinsons or something else. Eventually we die and our place is taken by someone else, hopefully during our lifetime we have made a difference and the world of our grandchildren might be a little easieer than the world we leave behind.
- free will - much of the suffering of the world is brought upon us by our own choices -(I did a funeral for a young man who drank too much at a beach party, toook aa canoe out in unfamiliar waterss in the dark, and drowned.) Selfishness, greed, and love of power or status can cause untold suffering - and often this suffering effects a great number of people (ie war, exploitation)

Difference between OT God and NT God - I think it has more to do with our understanding of God than with the nature of God.
And remember that history is written by the winners - the OT was written by the Hebrews (Israelites). They saw God as being on their side. If they won it was because God guided them; if they lost or life got difficult it was because they did something that annoyed God and God withdrew the bleessing temporarily.
Right now I'm rereading the OT so I'll take Saul as an example. God guided Samuel to annoint him as king. God blessed the Israelites and they were successful in defeating the people who had lived in the land for centuries. But then God withdrew the blessing and God withdrew the blessing from Saul and gave it to David. Why? There had to be a reason, some fault with Saul. So they realized something that Saul had done to anger God - it was something that many of us today would consider good. Saul spared the lives of the women and children and took the king captive rather than killing him in one of the many battles fought to gain control of the land. In doing so he disobeyed (in their minds) Godd's direction to kill everyone. Good or bad? It depends upon how you look at it.

And of course we could consider the whole idea of an interventionalist god. Does God interfer with the day to day lives of people? Or is God more like the parent of an adult offspring who watches from the sidelines, praying and hoping that the child will be honest, kind, successful, etc but who can no longer step in to solve their child's problems for them.

And God weeps.

 

[Luce NDs]

We are told the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same, yet the OT God seems to be capable of doing what would be considered bad if we were to do it. This is explained away by many of us having learned to say, "God's ways, are not our ways."

Christians proclaim God as synonymous with love, yet it seems to destroy the world and most who are in it, is not very loving.....but again it is explained away by saying we were being punished for our disobedience, which is to be accepted as a form of love.

There are consequences for our actions, much like our parents would invoke if we misbehaved or criminals would receive for their actions, but still, shouldn't a God that is considered purely love be above all that?
Humans are capable of invoking justice or consequences.

God is love and where we would want to reside when we die but how can a God that punishes and kills even live in Heaven? So is the God we worship always Good IYO? Or are we worshiping the wrong God?

Can love be dangerous and fickle ?

 

[Luce NDs]

He God of the NT is a newer iteration of God. More likeable. More sympathetic. The vengeance is still there, but now it happens after you're dead, and it's eternal.

Yay?

Can a mire mortal power escape eternals ... it appears binding ... like the dark velvet band charging onward blinding in speed ... Geronimo ...? What's on-iMoes? Moe being a big eye'd Gurl ... well networked ... extensive psyche ... yet the concept is still beyond humans that go for the emotional state ... purely!

Thus lost thoughts and horizons thereof? --- James Hillman ...

 

[revjohn]

We are told the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same, yet the OT God seems to be capable of doing what would be considered bad if we were to do it. This is explained away by many of us having learned to say, "God's ways, are not our ways."

Which is true.

Apart from that Christianity has always held that God is the final arbiter of what is good. Good being an umbrella term which includes right and just and not simply pleasant.

It is a nuanced understanding of good which goes beyond simplistic expectations.

Christians proclaim God as synonymous with love, yet it seems to destroy the world and most who are in it, is not very loving.....but again it is explained away by saying we were being punished for our disobedience, which is to be accepted as a form of love.

In fact, the world has never been destroyed by God. Especially if we take the narrative of scripture at its most literal. Never destroyed. Some remnant is always left and what comes next is built on the foundations of that remnant. The scriptures also describe God as both Husband and husbandman.

Husbandry is the practice of keeping things healthy and productive and of necessity, it participates in reductions that appear drastic, in order to mitigate against future disaster. Before moving away from Brantford a little over a year ago the city of Brantford was on a campaign to stop the spread of the Emerald Ash Borer. Part of that process was the felling of thousands of trees within the city bounds. Arborists spent the better part of the year identifying infested trees, setting a perimeter (because we know how far the little critters move once the larvae pupate) and felling target trees within that perimeter).

Thousands of trees, all of them members of the Ash family. Some infested, others not. All came down. Some city blocks were effectively denuded. Small trees, large trees, trees in front yards, trees in backyards, trees in public green spaces.

It was a sap bath. It was ugly. It was tragic (if you are partial to trees) and, it was necessary.

If it stops the spread of that invasive parasite it will have been the right and good thing to do.

Or, consider chemotherapy.

It is brutal and harsh. Nobody has ever commented on it being relaxing or refreshing. Unless they were being sarcastic. It is poisoning healthy cells and cancerous cells all at the same time in the hopes that the good cells reproduce and the cancerous cells don't.

When it works it is absolutely the good and right thing to have done and everybody who has survived cancer because of chemotherapy may still tell you that they never enjoyed it they are thankful for it because without it death would have taken them sooner.

No matter how terrifying a thing may be if it defeats or prevents something worse it must be a good.

How good? Always a matter of debate.

There are consequences for our actions,

There are also consequences for our inactions. Alan Doyle might have a lot of company in wishing for a consequence free life but few seem to remember that Doyle also understands that a consequence-free existence is a life where nothing needs to matter. If nothing needs to matter what is the point? Where do we draw the line between what is good and what is not good?

much like our parents would invoke if we misbehaved or criminals would receive for their actions, but still, shouldn't a God that is considered purely love be above all that?

Who says God lives free of consequence? Who says that even when God gets smitey God is pleased with it afterward?

How many scholarly studies have there been about stress and depression in dentistry? And yet, Orin Scrivello sings that one song and the stereotype of Dentists getting into dentistry just to hurt people runs wild. But back to the studies. Strange don't you think that dentistry which has actually advanced good health (making it a good thing) is also something most of us wish to avoid isn't it. Even a routine scaling, cleaning and checking of teeth can be quite a trying 15 minutes or so and, if you aren't a very attentive flosser you probably leave bleeding and sore. Need a cavity filled or a root canal and there is one person doing their best to make sure that you don't feel pain during the procedure but man you feel it afterward.

And why is there so much stress and depression in dentistry when they actually prevent most, if not all patients from experiencing tremendous pain at some future point?

Working conditions play a huge role. Even if you know that you are preventing major pain in the future you can't feel good about creating pain and discomfort in the present.

No good deed goes unpunished right?

Scrivello isn't even a real dentist, why do we think he has insight into the minds of those practicing dentistry.

Humans are capable of invoking justice or consequences.

Justice is a consequence it is not in contrast to consequence. Typically justice is compared to mercy and contrasted with injustice.

God is love

God most certainly is. Is love never just? Does love give license to all manner of behaviour?

A number of years ago I spent two weeks in ICU with doctors and nurses (for the most part) attending to a rapidly spreading infection. The fact that the doctor in charge of my case was a useless dullard who was eventually made coroner because there was not much more harm he could cause is beside the point. My family doctor was in my room to see me every day. And every day he expressed as much poison from the wound in my foot as was possible. I white-knuckled the bed rails and did everything I could not to convulse and try to pull that foot away. It was agony.

Every single day we went through that for 14 days.

I never saw the doctor assigned to my case once. Not once.

Every single day my family doctor would show up, check nodes and glands to see how far the infection was spreading. Every day he would express as much poison as he could in a pathetic attempt to slow the spread of infection and when the infection climbed toward my hip he told me, quite candidly, that if things did not slow or stop soon it was going to be my leg or my life.

Hospital politics come into play and I am discharged so that I can be readmitted three days later for surgery.

The instructions given to me for those three days? Stay off the foot and get as much poison out of it as I can on my own. So, for three days I did what I had watched him do. I expressed poison from my wound and it hurt every bit as much while I was doing it as it did while he was doing it. Of course when you wind up white-knuckling your own foot you manage to get more of that puss out. Where he relented because of my pain my pain pushed me further. And I didn't do it just the once. I was up to three times a day because remember, it was my leg or my life if things didn't change.

One ridiculously quick exploratory surgery later we had the wooden sliver responsible for the infection out and antibiotics could get on with doing their thing.

So. Which doctor was the good doctor? The one who was present every day causing me pain, telling me might leg might have to come off or I might die or the stunned ass who I only saw when I had the stitches in my foot removed? And to be perfectly candid, he didn't do anything to remove the stiches that I could not have done myself.

Which doctor did good?

Now, I got to know my family doctor fairly well after that. I know that he enjoyed none of that ordeal. I suspect that in some ways he suffered as much as I did. He sent me to the hospital and it was the hospital that assigned the goof-up to my care. For 14 days he sat and watched a patient of his get worse while a colleague did nothing more than look at an x-ray. Never examined the wound, never laid hands on the foot to see if and what was awry. Never asked for a history of the event in which the injury occurred.

But yeah. 14 days knowing that every time he came into my room I was going to experience pain till I started to see white.

And I have never respected a physician more than him because of it.

And today, if I saw that idiot who nearly cost me my leg and was able to recognize him I have one good leg to stand on while I plant a scarred foot up his backside.

If I wanted to.

But lets get back to this "magical God" the God who can make all things right and never needs to punish anyone. The one who could end suffering and doesn't and is such a tremendous disappointment. Or worse, is such a monster for refusing to do what we would do if we had the power.

Baloney.

We can barely manage to treat one another with respect as it is. How quickly things would go off the rails if we had divine smiting authority the next time some jerk cut us off in traffic.

But yeah God's a monster. Sure.

and where we would want to reside when we die.

Some years ago my family doctor got old, retired and passed away. His daughter went into medicine. I hope she is even half as good a doctor as he was. I have had the pleasure of having several family physicians since Dr. Henry hung up his shingle. I expect all of them did as much as he did to earn the privilege to practice medicine.

None of them really hold a candle to him. The new doctor we have is different in that regard. He actually gets things done very quickly. It has been a year since my last physical. At my age I probably should be more diligent in getting them done. I am a grampa now so I should be more attentive to my health. Previous doctors were fine not seeing me unless I felt I needed help. This new guy, apparently he spoke to my wife about not having seen me recently.

I doubt that he is looking forward to causing me pain or discomfort.

There is this one part of the exam I don't much care for. I expect that is on the agenda. And honestly, I'll take that over what could happen next anyday. So I have a call to make.

but how can a God that punishes and kills even live in Heaven?

You think a God who refuses to punish or kill deserves heaven more? So the moron doctor I had who never once caused me pain and appeared quite content just to take a leg off later (if it didn't interfere with whatever more important thing was taking up my case time) is more deserving of a good reward than the doctor who saved my leg (albeit quite painfully)?

That is twisted.

So is the God we worship always Good IYO?

The God I worship is always good. The God I worship isn't always pleasant and isn't always fun. The God I worship doesn't always pat me on the head and tell me I am a better minister than everybody else. The God I worship doesn't look at my screw-ups and say not to worry about it ever, that it doesn't need to matter.

The God I worship is always present. Whether I feel that presence or not.

The God I worship is the God that redeems pain and suffering in ways I cannot begin to comprehend.

The God I worship is the God who is slow to anger and quick to show mercy while never shying away from having to show either. In God's goodness and in God's wisdom God knows what is most needed and God will deliver that when it is up to God to deliver it. We like to sit in judgment over God from the secure smugness of our own self-justification.

Even though most of our circumstance is petty and we don't do a good job of managing that we feel adequately positioned to take a look at huge moments in time and point out how God screwed them up.

Hubris.

Or are we worshiping the wrong God?

My Presbyterian forebears used to remind one another that life was grim and life was earnest. I can do dour with the best of them. When I work at it. The grace of God I have experienced, particularly through agents of God's own choosing helps me to see that even in this grim and earnest existence there are moments of joy and laughter. Those moments become precious because they never become routine.

Paradise/Heaven is subjected to many different images. There is a marked difference between Christian and Jewish images. Christianity has given rise to wings and harps (which is nonsense--none of that is supported by scripture) whereas Jewish images suggest we each get our own vineyard and we each get to plant and grow and reap with joy knowing that we have no thorns or weeds to contend with, there will be no famine to worry about, everything will produce and all of our effort extends to the quality of what is produced not its quantity.

Given a choice between those two images (one scripturally supported in our Hebrew scriptures and the other a fiction which ignores scripture) I'd take the vineyard. If I am to spend eternity doing something I would rather it be in a garden making good things grow than plunking strings on a harp.

And, trusting God to be good, maybe my vineyard will be near Dr. Henry's and we can catch up.

And if, on my way to Dr. Henry's vineyard I have to pass the vineyard of some guy who turned out to be just as bad a coroner as he was a doctor then maybe we can both rejoice that in heaven he can make a garden grow and nothing about what was needs to be remembered.

If God was not so good. Grace would not be such a scandal.

 

[Luce NDs]

Which is true.

Apart from that Christianity has always held that God is the final arbiter of what is good. Good being an umbrella term which includes right and just and not simply pleasant.

It is a nuanced understanding of good which goes beyond simplistic expectations.



In fact, the world has never been destroyed by God. Especially if we take the narrative of scripture at its most literal. Never destroyed. Some remnant is always left and what comes next is built on the foundations of that remnant. The scriptures also describe God as both Husband and husbandman.

Husbandry is the practice of keeping things healthy and productive and of necessity, it participates in reductions that appear drastic, in order to mitigate against future disaster. Before moving away from Brantford a little over a year ago the city of Brantford was on a campaign to stop the spread of the Emerald Ash Borer. Part of that process was the felling of thousands of trees within the city bounds. Arborists spent the better part of the year identifying infested trees, setting a perimeter (because we know how far the little critters move once the larvae pupate) and felling target trees within that perimeter).

Thousands of trees, all of them members of the Ash family. Some infested, others not. All came down. Some city blocks were effectively denuded. Small trees, large trees, trees in front yards, trees in backyards, trees in public green spaces.

It was a sap bath. It was ugly. It was tragic (if you are partial to trees) and, it was necessary.

If it stops the spread of that invasive parasite it will have been the right and good thing to do.

Or, consider chemotherapy.

It is brutal and harsh. Nobody has ever commented on it being relaxing or refreshing. Unless they were being sarcastic. It is poisoning healthy cells and cancerous cells all at the same time in the hopes that the good cells reproduce and the cancerous cells don't.

When it works it is absolutely the good and right thing to have done and everybody who has survived cancer because of chemotherapy may still tell you that they never enjoyed it they are thankful for it because without it death would have taken them sooner.

No matter how terrifying a thing may be if it defeats or prevents something worse it must be a good.

How good? Always a matter of debate.



There are also consequences for our inactions. Alan Doyle might have a lot of company in wishing for a consequence free life but few seem to remember that Doyle also understands that a consequence-free existence is a life where nothing needs to matter. If nothing needs to matter what is the point? Where do we draw the line between what is good and what is not good?



Who says God lives free of consequence? Who says that even when God gets smitey God is pleased with it afterward?

How many scholarly studies have there been about stress and depression in dentistry? And yet, Orin Scrivello sings that one song and the stereotype of Dentists getting into dentistry just to hurt people runs wild. But back to the studies. Strange don't you think that dentistry which has actually advanced good health (making it a good thing) is also something most of us wish to avoid isn't it. Even a routine scaling, cleaning and checking of teeth can be quite a trying 15 minutes or so and, if you aren't a very attentive flosser you probably leave bleeding and sore. Need a cavity filled or a root canal and there is one person doing their best to make sure that you don't feel pain during the procedure but man you feel it afterward.

And why is there so much stress and depression in dentistry when they actually prevent most, if not all patients from experiencing tremendous pain at some future point?

Working conditions play a huge role. Even if you know that you are preventing major pain in the future you can't feel good about creating pain and discomfort in the present.

No good deed goes unpunished right?

Scrivello isn't even a real dentist, why do we think he has insight into the minds of those practicing dentistry.



Justice is a consequence it is not in contrast to consequence. Typically justice is compared to mercy and contrasted with injustice.



God most certainly is. Is love never just? Does love give license to all manner of behaviour?

A number of years ago I spent two weeks in ICU with doctors and nurses (for the most part) attending to a rapidly spreading infection. The fact that the doctor in charge of my case was a useless dullard who was eventually made coroner because there was not much more harm he could cause is beside the point. My family doctor was in my room to see me every day. And every day he expressed as much poison from the wound in my foot as was possible. I white-knuckled the bed rails and did everything I could not to convulse and try to pull that foot away. It was agony.

Every single day we went through that for 14 days.

I never saw the doctor assigned to my case once. Not once.

Every single day my family doctor would show up, check nodes and glands to see how far the infection was spreading. Every day he would express as much poison as he could in a pathetic attempt to slow the spread of infection and when the infection climbed toward my hip he told me, quite candidly, that if things did not slow or stop soon it was going to be my leg or my life.

Hospital politics come into play and I am discharged so that I can be readmitted three days later for surgery.

The instructions given to me for those three days? Stay off the foot and get as much poison out of it as I can on my own. So, for three days I did what I had watched him do. I expressed poison from my wound and it hurt every bit as much while I was doing it as it did while he was doing it. Of course when you wind up white-knuckling your own foot you manage to get more of that puss out. Where he relented because of my pain my pain pushed me further. And I didn't do it just the once. I was up to three times a day because remember, it was my leg or my life if things didn't change.

One ridiculously quick exploratory surgery later we had the wooden sliver responsible for the infection out and antibiotics could get on with doing their thing.

So. Which doctor was the good doctor? The one who was present every day causing me pain, telling me might leg might have to come off or I might die or the stunned ass who I only saw when I had the stitches in my foot removed? And to be perfectly candid, he didn't do anything to remove the stiches that I could not have done myself.

Which doctor did good?

Now, I got to know my family doctor fairly well after that. I know that he enjoyed none of that ordeal. I suspect that in some ways he suffered as much as I did. He sent me to the hospital and it was the hospital that assigned the goof-up to my care. For 14 days he sat and watched a patient of his get worse while a colleague did nothing more than look at an x-ray. Never examined the wound, never laid hands on the foot to see if and what was awry. Never asked for a history of the event in which the injury occurred.

But yeah. 14 days knowing that every time he came into my room I was going to experience pain till I started to see white.

And I have never respected a physician more than him because of it.

And today, if I saw that idiot who nearly cost me my leg and was able to recognize him I have one good leg to stand on while I plant a scarred foot up his backside.

If I wanted to.

But lets get back to this "magical God" the God who can make all things right and never needs to punish anyone. The one who could end suffering and doesn't and is such a tremendous disappointment. Or worse, is such a monster for refusing to do what we would do if we had the power.

Baloney.

We can barely manage to treat one another with respect as it is. How quickly things would go off the rails if we had divine smiting authority the next time some jerk cut us off in traffic.

But yeah God's a monster. Sure.



Some years ago my family doctor got old, retired and passed away. His daughter went into medicine. I hope she is even half as good a doctor as he was. I have had the pleasure of having several family physicians since Dr. Henry hung up his shingle. I expect all of them did as much as he did to earn the privilege to practice medicine.

None of them really hold a candle to him. The new doctor we have is different in that regard. He actually gets things done very quickly. It has been a year since my last physical. At my age I probably should be more diligent in getting them done. I am a grampa now so I should be more attentive to my health. Previous doctors were fine not seeing me unless I felt I needed help. This new guy, apparently he spoke to my wife about not having seen me recently.

I doubt that he is looking forward to causing me pain or discomfort.

There is this one part of the exam I don't much care for. I expect that is on the agenda. And honestly, I'll take that over what could happen next anyday. So I have a call to make.



You think a God who refuses to punish or kill deserves heaven more? So the moron doctor I had who never once caused me pain and appeared quite content just to take a leg off later (if it didn't interfere with whatever more important thing was taking up my case time) is more deserving of a good reward than the doctor who saved my leg (albeit quite painfully)?

That is twisted.



The God I worship is always good. The God I worship isn't always pleasant and isn't always fun. The God I worship doesn't always pat me on the head and tell me I am a better minister than everybody else. The God I worship doesn't look at my screw-ups and say not to worry about it ever, that it doesn't need to matter.

The God I worship is always present. Whether I feel that presence or not.

The God I worship is the God that redeems pain and suffering in ways I cannot begin to comprehend.

The God I worship is the God who is slow to anger and quick to show mercy while never shying away from having to show either. In God's goodness and in God's wisdom God knows what is most needed and God will deliver that when it is up to God to deliver it. We like to sit in judgment over God from the secure smugness of our own self-justification.

Even though most of our circumstance is petty and we don't do a good job of managing that we feel adequately positioned to take a look at huge moments in time and point out how God screwed them up.

Hubris.



My Presbyterian forebears used to remind one another that life was grim and life was earnest. I can do dour with the best of them. When I work at it. The grace of God I have experienced, particularly through agents of God's own choosing helps me to see that even in this grim and earnest existence there are moments of joy and laughter. Those moments become precious because they never become routine.

Paradise/Heaven is subjected to many different images. There is a marked difference between Christian and Jewish images. Christianity has given rise to wings and harps (which is nonsense--none of that is supported by scripture) whereas Jewish images suggest we each get our own vineyard and we each get to plant and grow and reap with joy knowing that we have no thorns or weeds to contend with, there will be no famine to worry about, everything will produce and all of our effort extends to the quality of what is produced not its quantity.

Given a choice between those two images (one scripturally supported in our Hebrew scriptures and the other a fiction which ignores scripture) I'd take the vineyard. If I am to spend eternity doing something I would rather it be in a garden making good things grow than plunking strings on a harp.

And, trusting God to be good, maybe my vineyard will be near Dr. Henry's and we can catch up.

And if, on my way to Dr. Henry's vineyard I have to pass the vineyard of some guy who turned out to be just as bad a coroner as he was a doctor then maybe we can both rejoice that in heaven he can make a garden grow and nothing about what was needs to be remembered.

If God was not so good. Grace would not be such a scandal.

Imagine the potential if you have eternal space to mess with ...

Some institutions would attempt to corrupt that ... there are some funny hidden expressions for what happens when Eros are set loose ... to make a void in the hindrance ... wars of roses ... or mere mental conflicts ... about things we know nothing about ...

Coven antes ... covered previously but mist? Cloudy? Ide'll come round ...

 

[revjohn]

Included in our Bibles is the book of Jonah.

I am always surprised that it provides little insight into the character of God.

It is more than a fantastic story about some dude getting swallowed by a fish. And it doesn't really go the way one would expect it to.

Jonah is a Jewish prophet. Nothing unusual about that. God sends Jonah off to prophesy. Nothing unusual about that. God sends Jonah to a gentile city. Okay, that is rare but not unheard of. Jonah resists. Read the prophets most of the ones we have books about include encounters early on where the prophet is called and then, in the presence of God and all that is holy, attempts to disqualify himself from the office of prophet. Very different from many of our latter-day prophets who are very happy to pick up the office for themselves. Anyway, Jonah is not interested in going to the gentiles because he suspects that deep down they will repent and God, instead of destroying them will forgive them. So, his refusal to go is so that the city of Ninevah will not change and God's anger will burn and judgment will fall.

That is Jonah hoping to prevent the mercy of God and forcing the wrath of God.

It takes some convincing from God to get Jonah to Ninevah where he preaches the message he was given to preach and to his absolute horror the people listen. they grieve and they repent. Leading God to forgive which makes Jonah pretty upset. In fact, he is so angry he confronts God. He outlines that this is just what he was afraid would happen and why he didn't want to leave home in the first place. He didn't want to go to Ninevah because he wanted God to destroy them. He didn't want to go to Ninevah as a prophet of God because he didn't want them to repent and be forgiven.

But God forced him and now it has happened. God has forgiven the enemy of Jonah's people.

Leading to the concluding words of the book spoken by God.

Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Sound like goodness or is it not good enough?

 

[GeoFee]

Where there is light there will be shadow.

 

[Luce NDs]

A' bush perishing in a night? Perish the thought ... yet there are those dark activities ...

Nothing left but ochre and embers ... if carried by someone they could re ignite ...

 

[chansen]

Which is true.

Apart from that Christianity has always held that God is the final arbiter of what is good.

Another reason it's nice to see people leaving Christianity.

Good being an umbrella term which includes right and just and not simply pleasant.

It is a nuanced understanding of good which goes beyond simplistic expectations.

I think the things described in the OT wouldn't have been so "bad" when it was written. Conquering an entire race of people and killing most of them didn't have the negative "genocide" attached to it back then. Way to go, whoever coined that term. You ruined it for God.

In fact, the world has never been destroyed by God. Especially if we take the narrative of scripture at its most literal. Never destroyed. Some remnant is always left and what comes next is built on the foundations of that remnant.

"See? He didn't kill everybody!"

Seriously?

The scriptures also describe God as both Husband and husbandman.

Husbandry is the practice of keeping things healthy and productive and of necessity, it participates in reductions that appear drastic, in order to mitigate against future disaster. Before moving away from Brantford a little over a year ago the city of Brantford was on a campaign to stop the spread of the Emerald Ash Borer. Part of that process was the felling of thousands of trees within the city bounds. Arborists spent the better part of the year identifying infested trees, setting a perimeter (because we know how far the little critters move once the larvae pupate) and felling target trees within that perimeter).

Thousands of trees, all of them members of the Ash family. Some infested, others not. All came down. Some city blocks were effectively denuded. Small trees, large trees, trees in front yards, trees in backyards, trees in public green spaces.

It was a sap bath. It was ugly. It was tragic (if you are partial to trees) and, it was necessary.

If it stops the spread of that invasive parasite it will have been the right and good thing to do.

People as Emerald Ash Borers?

Or, consider chemotherapy.

It is brutal and harsh. Nobody has ever commented on it being relaxing or refreshing. Unless they were being sarcastic. It is poisoning healthy cells and cancerous cells all at the same time in the hopes that the good cells reproduce and the cancerous cells don't.

When it works it is absolutely the good and right thing to have done and everybody who has survived cancer because of chemotherapy may still tell you that they never enjoyed it they are thankful for it because without it death would have taken them sooner.

No matter how terrifying a thing may be if it defeats or prevents something worse it must be a good.

How good? Always a matter of debate.

Now you're describing people as cancer.

In both of the above, the scary thing to me is the giving up on people and culling them as policy. For a being who supposedly placed humanity so high in importance, those analogies reduce us to the worst infections or diseases, subject to the same one-size-fits-all cure.

A God who can do anything, can't come up with a better solution that doesn't look so, well, final?

 

[unsafe]

Waterfall ---your quote ----God is love and where we would want to reside when we die but how can a God that punishes and kills even live in Heaven?

You seem in your statement here to contradict yourself ----first you say God is love then you accuse Him of punishment and being a killer ----can He be a God of Love and a killer and punisher all in the same breath ?----that is the real question ?

 

[chansen]

I think a better question is why worship a genocidal maniac?

No kleptomaniac gods available?