If God changed his mind

[Catholic_Lady]

Can I make a suggestion?

I'm not saying that I agree with praying for someone to get cancer in any scenario. I think doing so is wrong, even if it ends up being for the greater good.

Now I'm going to repeat those lines because I'm sure someone will accuse me of it anyway:

I'm not saying that I agree with praying for someone to get cancer in any scenario. I think doing so is wrong, even if it ends up being for the greater good.

With that being said, if you are truly trying to understand where Drich is coming from, you have to look at it through his lenses. What's worse... battling cancer for a limited amount of time, or eternity in torment? He believes that people who do not believe in God go to Hell (a sentiment I also don't share, mind you).  

Drich also said it took him getting cancer to find God.

So, since he believes the worst possible thing that can happen to someone is to be in eternal torment, and since he believes that not believing in God will get you there, and since he personally didn't find God until he got cancer, can you at least understand where he is coming from when he says that he would rather someone go through absolutely anything, regardless of how bad it is, if it would mean avoiding the worst thing of all?

I get what you're saying, I just don't think that the internal consistency of vile views makes the actual views any better. From Drich's perspective, yeah, I guess he is trying to do something good, but as always the way a person goes about fulfilling their intentions says a lot about them, and in this case there's absolutely no need for him to wish bad things on anybody. There's no need for bad things to be on the table period.

Drich believes in a god that has it in his power to convince me that he exists without giving me cancer, or beating me up, or anything like that. I'm on record, as are many people here, as saying that a god who unambiguously exists wouldn't need to do all this proxy convincing, he would just be unambiguous, and that'd be that. But Drich's god won't just show up, and one of the few ways that Drich can conceive of to get us to believe as he does is coercion through force, to have us abused until we submit out of desperation. Whatever his intentions, that's a peek into his psyche, and what it shows is a bunch of nasty little revenge fantasies about how much we have to hurt before we believe him, simmering in there.

To be clear, I've had people pray for me before. I'm sure you pray for people yourself, CL. The cancer stuff, the AIDs stuff, doesn't ever come up, with other people. The only person I've ever known who specifically made a point of telling us that his prayers also encompass a lot of bad stuff that could happen to us to force us to submit, is Drich, a man who routinely acts as smugly and condescendingly and so unlike his Christ as anyone I've ever seen.

It's nice that you think the best for Drich, and it's good having a decent christian around who does think positively, but I just can't get there myself. I've seen how he conducts himself for too long, and in the end, that doesn't even matter, because in the pursuit of a good aim he's gone to a dark, dark place. Road to hell, good intentions, and all that.

Thank you for the thorough response.

I can't comment on all the things you said about Drich, as I am not very familiar with him and his posts. This is my first interaction with him, actually. (Hi Drich!)
But before concluding that a person is not a good person, I try to look at things from their perspective... and while I disagree with Drich about praying for cancer in any scenario, I can see that his intentions do not come from a place of hatred. I was trying to convey that to you guys.

As for your comments about God, personally I believe God knows that each person is different and has different needs and different ways of being reached. Perhaps some people can only find God when they go through a really really dark time in their life where they seek something more. The way I see it, this doesn't make God horrible for reaching people that way if that's the way it would work for them personally. Not saying God literally makes people get cancer or whatever, but He doesn't stop it from happening, especially if that's what it takes to reach someone. I think if God were to materialize in front of all of us and cease with the ambiguity to where we could see him and talk to him everyday, a lot of people would hate Him. They would blame Him for anything in their life that was not perfect, and start asking for all kinds of things. I can see how that would get out of hand and would actually hurt many people's relationship with God. I can only suspect that that's why He doesn't do it.  

I know you don't believe in God anyway, so it's whatever. But since you brought this up, I figured I'd share my own explanations. :-)