In a world without God...

[Drich]

Not to get too far into my personal life, but you picked a bad person to be pulling out comparisons between god and fathers, since I've deliberately excused myself from being a part of my father's life for pretty much the same reason I wouldn't worship the god reflected in the bible even if I did believe he existed; he's kind of an abusive twat.

I've discussed my Mother's only husband a few times before. He was not a good man, and when he drank he was much much worse. What threw gasoline onto that fire was he was a county corrections officer and he found out that his little badge was a get out of jail free card. I could go on for weeks about all of the BS we lived through, but it is not about who had it worse. I say all of this to say, I know that type of man.

God is the father you wanted your mother's husband to be.

Let me put it this way; would you love your father if he tortured one of his children just to prove that this kid would still love him?

I was and continue to be one of those kids. Not as a measure to proove that I still love God. but as the means in which my love knows no bounds.

What about if you knew he'd spent an inordinate amount of time drowning people and animals?

God doesn't drown people, water drowns people.

If you knew he'd calmed down a little now, but that he still has the ability to save children from dying painful deaths with little effort on his own part, but that he just wouldn't, because as you say, he's not a wishing genie?

To what end? If God saved people from dying, today is he meant to carry them on in this life indefinatly? You do know we all die sometimes right? So what does it matter when? That is unless you are not ready for eternity..

Would you accept any of your own excuses if you were talking about a person living on earth?

Looking back it is hard to believe that I have had so many bad things happen to me. but they did, my father was at the center of most of it for the majority of my life. about 10 years ago it all came to a head when my recently divorced sister and my 4 year old neice was subject to one of his rampages for a peice of carrot cake my niece ate. I was going through the worst part of my wife's addiction and I get a call with my sister crying and him screaming and breaking things in the back ground. I snapped and went over there to end him. When I got there he was laying down on a couch and I grabbed him by his ankle and drug him out side (Something he had done to me out of a sound sleep several different times when the yard was not cut or the leaves not raked properly) to smash his face in with a brick. Then I saw it in his eyes. He knew his time had come and he was scared to death to face the judgement awaiting him. I did not smash his head in that night, but did indeed make it clear he was too keep his hands to himself for the rest of his life or I would end it. After that night Me and mine had nothing to do with him for 8 years.

I offered him a way back and he refused to take it for 8 long years. but eventually he did, and i forgave him for a life time of torment. Truly as far as the east is from the west we do not have issue or any sense of outstanding debt unless he starts to fall back to things he use to do.

Is not the cessation of needless and undeserved suffering in this life not always a moral good, regardless of whether there's an afterlife?

Suffering and pain in the right context begets boundless wisdom. Not that it makes a man wise, but it cuts him in such away to hear and channel God's wisdom through him. Only those who look to perserve a life style dedicated to self and the things we feel we deserve, fear or hate the trials God has set before all of us.

Look at pain and suffering as a refinning process. This is the example that has been illustrated in the bible over and over again. Jesus will use something like a whole stalk of wheat and talk about all the various methods they used to strip away all of the undesireable protions of that wheat to get to the usable kernal. Pain and suffering/trials is the refinning process in which God has set before us to soften callous hearts.

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annerversary day for our employees.