Reddit reviews God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer

I am glad that you love to question things! Never stop asking questions. Your faith may decrease, but you will be a better person in the end.

>I was told by a pastor yesterday to view truth as a person not a proposition. If this is the case would truth then be prone to flaws?

I imagine that the pastor is trying to say that Jesus is "the truth." This line is similar to, "Christianity is a relationship, not a religion." It is an attempt to market Christianity in a more palatable form, but it is strictly speaking incoherent.

>Why does God alllow suffering?

Great question. I highly recommend the book God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer. To summarize different biblical authors have different answers to the question of why we suffer, and none are satisfactory.

>If feel we're being told to do something, so we do it but i.e prophesie for someone or pray in tongues for someone and we were wrong then we learn from it and learn to discern Gods voice better. To me this just seems like a way of saying we're wrong and because God is all powerful and all knowing then we should be able to know if it is God?

I would argue that what you are seeing is the attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance that occurs when reality does not match what would reasonably be expected to happen if the Bible was true. Think about this the next time a supposed prophecy fails, or someone prays for healing but is not healed.

>Why doesn't God just reveal himself to the world?

Another great question. If God loves the world enough to send his son to die for it, and he is all-powerful, why wouldn't he reveal himself? What do you think is the most reasonable explanation? I can give you my flippant atheist answer: because god does not exist. But I will leave it to you to ponder this question.

>What happened to people who weren't Jews before Jesus came to save us? I.e Jonah and the Ninevites - they were not Jews. So what would their fate be?

Christians differ greatly in their answers to this question. Some will say that since God has revealed himself in some way to everyone who has ever lived, then anyone who does not accept Jesus deserves and will receive everlasting torment in Hell. Others, like Abraham, might ask, "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" They will then speculate that God gives each person one last chance to hear the gospel after they die, or deny the reality of Hell altogether.

>Couldn't it be argued that all beliefs that come from nature are from God and therefore they would be saved?

I suppose that you could make the case for this, but the outcome is far from certain if we look at the Bible. We might wonder, what can we discern about the character of God if we look at nature? We might look only at beautiful things and conclude that God is good and loving; or, we might look at examples of suffering, cruelty, and brutality and conclude that God is bloodthirsty and wicked. While Jesus says that God feeds all animals, we can demonstrate that this statement is false by observing that animals (including humans) starve to death all of the time. We might also wonder why, if God reveals himself through nature, people in different parts of the world tend to come up with exactly the same concept of God, which is mutually exclusive with concepts of God found in other regions.

I don't think I have answered all of your questions, but I hope that I have piqued your curiosity. :)

> Your assumptions about not looking for discussion are silly at best and spiteful at worst.

I didn't say you weren't looking for discussion, I said it seems the type of discussion you're looking for is likely better served in a different forum. I hardly think that's thoughtless or disrespectful.

Regarding legislation that is religiously motivated I'll first site gay marriage which attempts to limit people's rights because (in most cases) of religiously motivated "morals."

Second, I'll point out that (typically) religiously motivated opposition to stem-cell research is almost certainly condemning people in this world to addition suffering and death.

A third example is the increase in STDs and unwanted pregnancy caused by the instance, often by religiously motivated people, that only abstinence only sex education be taught.

I'll certainly accept your argument that good intentions do not equate to good outcomes, but certainly they don't necessarily require that they lead to bad outcomes. Does everyone do bad or wrong things at various points throughout their lives? Of course they do. Does that automatically define them as bad people? I would argue of course not. They are factors to be weighed, but to think that we are all born evil and have no hope of being better without having someone continually watching over us is a bleak view of human nature. Hobbes might agree with you, but I think that humans have the capacity for goodness as well, and that we can do good simply for the sake of being good, not because there's someone watching us or because we expect a reward for being good. That was more the point of my argument that atheists (and all people by extension) do good things. We are all capable of being good, at least most of the time. We need not have fear of, or hope for, what comes next to do so.

> You're presumptuous to speak for the billions of people you don't know.

So your claim, then, is that the people who live short unpleasant lives are the luckiest of us all? They have the most capacity to approach god because, like Paul, they suffered the most? Or, am I faulting God for being ignorant and there really are not billions of people suffering every day because they lack the basic necessities of life? I am pretty confident that it's true that they do lack such things, and I don't think it's much of a stretch to point out that that leads to suffering. Beyond that I don't think I did anything to "speak for [them]" as you suppose I did. I pointed out that the majority of people in the world are living short lives of nearly continual suffering. That isn't really putting many words in their mouths.

Interestingly about your point about pain being necessary and then suggesting I read, I just finished a book by Bart Ehrman on the topic of Biblical explanations of why people suffer (your view is only one of several presented in the Bible by the way). He's the dean of theological studies at UNC at Chapel Hill if you're unfamiliar with who he is. It's a very interesting read, and I would like to recommend you pick up your own copy of God's Problem. I think that many people who know me would be surprised to hear that I lack basic reasoning skills. I, obviously, disagree with your assessment there. As for your slight against the American education system, I'll point out that my University education anyway was in Canada.

I wouldn't say that I know nothing of Jesus' anger, although one of the most famous examples (throwing the money changers out of the temple) is probably not actually original to the Bible. We could get into a lot of textual criticism but I'll confess I only have knowledge of that from a single source (another Bart Ehrman book called Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

If you think the Bible as you read it is the original way it was written you would do well to read that, just for the introduction into the search for the original text of the NT in particular.

For anyone wanting to read a seriously good book on this question, check out God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer by Bart D. Ehrman

Come up with an answer for theodicy that isn't answered in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Problem-Answer-Important-Question--Why/dp/B001FOR5CG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334008189&sr=8-1