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Permalink Reply by The Kernel on January 29, 2010 at 11:22pm

The God you refer to is a construct of human imagination. In my world she punishes not. She is the bestower of blessings. She is the consciousness we each wish to achieve. This is the energy, I hope will remian alive.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff H on January 30, 2010 at 12:01am

doone, for your information...

God has the right to obliterate this world should he choose. He made it. He is sovereign. Get over it.

You can rail against it, and it doesn't change a thing. You can chose to disbelieve in protest, but you will just reap the fruit of disbelief.

Jesus taught more on judgement and hell then any other Rabbi or teacher in the Bible. Then He went through a tortureous death so that none who believe in His name would have to suffer it.

Those who want to say Katrina or Haiti were the direct act of God presume much. Along the same lines. No one gave more to Katrina and Haiti relief then people of faith. Be careful where you point the finger of accusation and blame.

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Permalink Reply by doone on January 30, 2010 at 6:18am

Sorry about the black background: Here is a better view of the text.

Haiti and the hypocrisy of Christian theology

We know what caused the catastrophe in Haiti. It was the bumping and grinding of the Caribbean Plate rubbing up against the North American Plate: a force of nature, sin-free and indifferent to sin, un-premeditated, unmotivated, supremely unconcerned with human affairs or human misery.

The religious mind, however, restlessly seeks human meaning in the blind happenings of nature. As with the Indonesian tsunami, which was blamed on loose sexual morals in tourist bars; as with Hurricane Katrina, which was attributed to divine revenge on the entire city of New Orleans for harboring a lesbian comedian, and as with other disasters going back to the famous Lisbon earthquake and beyond, so Haiti's tragedy must be payback for human sin. The Rev. Pat Robertson sees the hand of God in the earthquake, wreaking terrible retribution for a pact that the long-dead ancestors of today's Haitians made with the devil, to help rid them of their French masters.

Needless to say, milder-mannered faith-heads are falling over themselves to disown Pat Robertson, just as they disowned those other pastors, evangelists, missionaries and mullahs at the time of the earlier disasters.
What hypocrisy.

Loathsome as Robertson's views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonized theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable 'mystery', or who 'see God' in the help, money and goodwill that is now flooding into Haiti , or (most nauseating of all) who claim to see God 'suffering on the cross' in the ruins of Port-au-Prince, those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the centrepiece of their own theology. It is the obnoxious Pat Robertson who is the true Christian here.

Where was God in Noah's flood? He was systematically drowning the entire world, animal as well as human, as punishment for 'sin'. Where was God when Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed with fire and brimstone? He was deliberately barbecuing the citizenry, lock stock and barrel, as punishment for 'sin'. Dear modern, enlightened, theologically sophisticated Christian, your entire religion is founded on an obsession with 'sin', with punishment and with atonement. Where do you find the effrontery to condemn Pat Robertson, you who have signed up to the obnoxious doctrine that the central purpose of Jesus' incarnation was to have himself tortured as a scapegoat for the 'sins' of all mankind, past, present and future, beginning with the 'sin' of Adam, who (as any modern theologian well knows) never even existed? To quote the President of one theological seminary, writing in these very pages:
"The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe."
You nice, middle-of-the-road theologians and clergymen, be-frocked and bleating in your pulpits, you disclaim Pat Robertson's suggestion that the Haitians are paying for a pact with the devil. But you worship a god-man who - as you tell your congregations even if you don't believe it yourself - 'cast out devils'. You even believe (or you don't disabuse your flock when they believe) that Jesus cured a madman by causing the 'devils' in him to fly into a herd of pigs and stampede them over a cliff. Charming story, well calculated to uplift and inspire the Sunday School and the Infant Bible Class. Pat Robertson may spout evil nonsense, but he is a mere amateur at that game. Just read your own Bible. Pat Robertson is true to it. But you?

Educated apologist, how dare you weep Christian tears, when your entire theology is one long celebration of suffering: suffering as payback for 'sin' - or suffering as 'atonement' for it? You may weep for Haiti where Pat Robertson does not, but at least, in his hick, sub-Palinesque ignorance, he holds up an honest mirror to the ugliness of Christian theology. You are nothing but a whited sepulchre.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff H on January 30, 2010 at 11:49am

To choose out right rebellion is deserving of obliteration, but God would rather correct us then do that. You only consider it ugly because you don't want to recognize a sovereign. That's your right.

What price a human to a flock of swine? What if it were you that were cured? You go on your rant. I don't agree with Pat on this one, but mainly because he is claiming to know the mind of God, where we clearly don't. Where we know the mind of God is in Scripture. We can surmmise, we can consider, but we can't know until we see Him face to face.

"The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe."

This statement is true. Paul taught that sin and death- the curse- entered the whole world through Adam, and that the whole world and those who believe will be redeemed through Christ. Like it or don't, its the truth. Call it what you will, one day "Every knee will bow, and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

Meanwhile Christians still by far have provided a large part of charitable aid to Haiti, so get off your high horse.

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Permalink Reply by doone on January 30, 2010 at 11:55am

Having an imaginary play friend, Jeff, does not give you the right to say that your imaginary friend has the right to kill everyone on earth. Your imaginary friend is no friend to mankind and womankind.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff H on January 30, 2010 at 12:09pm

I know my friend well doone, and God isn't imaginary. You don't believe, so don't worry right. Why are you so threatened by my "imagination" anyway.

We impose capital punishment in the US whether you support it or not. It a country can take a life based on law, when why wouldn't a sovereign God have the same right?

doone said:

Having an imaginary play friend, Jeff, does not give you the right to say that your imaginary friend has the right to kill everyone on earth. Your imaginary friend is no friend to mankind and womankind.

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Permalink Reply by doug on January 30, 2010 at 4:15pm

Sin plays folly with people....and when it exacts judgment, people complain, of course. Such are the results of living in a fallen world. However if evolution were true, this might just be nature's way of culling the fittest. Is it a matter of choice or a matter of discernment?

Jeff H said:

I know my friend well doone, and God isn't imaginary. You don't believe, so don't worry right. Why are you so threatened by my "imagination" anyway.

We impose capital punishment in the US whether you support it or not. It a country can take a life based on law, when why wouldn't a sovereign God have the same right?

doone said:

Having an imaginary play friend, Jeff, does not give you the right to say that your imaginary friend has the right to kill everyone on earth. Your imaginary friend is no friend to mankind and womankind.

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Permalink Reply by Roman Kozlowski on January 30, 2010 at 4:44pm

Я не розумію. Ви не могли б розмовляти повільніше. Ви розмовляєте українською? Стій!

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Permalink Reply by doug on January 30, 2010 at 4:58pm

You think?

Roman Kozlowski said:

Я не розумію. Ви не могли б розмовляти повільніше. Ви розмовляєте українською? Стій!

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Permalink Reply by doone on January 30, 2010 at 5:05pm

Я впевнений, що він ніколи не зрозуміє, закрито його мозок.

Roman Kozlowski said:

Я не розумію. Ви не могли б розмовляти повільніше. Ви розмовляєте українською? Стій!

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Permalink Reply by Jeff H on January 30, 2010 at 5:26pm

Однієї мови ніколи не достатає

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Permalink Reply by doug on January 31, 2010 at 9:20am

I don't know how to reply in this script or any other on the computer...so I am at a loss for appropriate words.

Jeff H said:

Однієї мови ніколи не достатає

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