(August 7, 2013 at 12:53 pm)Locke Wrote: Thats probably getting off topic, but what I was thinking of wasn't so much how things occur. I mean to address how we react to what does occur; considering suffering to be discipline (an opportunity to improve) is probably the best outlook.
That's a whole different thing than saying suffering is god's way of disciplining us.
Anybody who has lived on earth for about 15 years knows that when bad things happen the best thing you can do is to learn from it and suck it up and come back stronger.
But that doesn't mean god has anything to do with it. And that doesn't mean we should inflict bad things on people and pretend like we're helping them out. If a guy turned his life around after almost dying in a car accident, it doesn't make me a good person if I go out there and cause a car accident with the purpose of teaching someone a lesson. And if you are to believe that god did that to discipline this man, then that doesn't make him a good person either.
