Hostage to fear

[Randy Carson]

ST-

I'm going to post a few thoughts on the Problem of Evil/Pain/Suffering, and we'll see where this goes.

Thought #1:

Would you agree that there is a big difference in intelligence between us and a bear?

Imagine a bear in a trap and a hunter who, out of sympathy, wants to free him. He tries to win the bear’s confidence, but he can’t do it, so he has to shoot the bear full of tranquilizers. The bear, however, thinks this is an attack and that the hunter is trying to kill him. He doesn’t realize this is being done out of compassion.

Then in order to get the bear out of the trap, the hunter has to push him farther into the trap in order to release the tension on the spring. If the bear were semiconscious at this point, he would be even more convinced that the hunter was his enemy who was out to cause him more suffering and pain. But the bear would be wrong. He reaches this incorrect conclusion because he is a bear and not a human being.

Now, can we be certain that this is not an analogy between us and God? Sometimes God sees our condition and has do the same to us in order to free us, but we can’t comprehend why He does this anymore than the bear can comprehend the motivations of the hunter. Just as the bear could have trusted the hunter, so we can trust God.

The Fine Tuning of Evidence

Scripture describes God as a hidden God. This means you have to make an effort of faith to find him, and there are clues you can follow. If that weren’t so, if there was something more or less than clues, we would not be free to make a choice about Him. If we had absolute proof instead of clues, then we could no more deny God than we could deny the sun. If we had no evidence at all, we could never get to faith. God gives us just enough evidence so that those who want Him can have while those that don’t want Him are not forced to do so. Those who want to follow the clues will.

Who set the trap in the first place?

Unknown and irrelevant to the analogy. The hunter was out looking for pheasants and stumbled upon the bear. If he was hunting bear, he would have killed the bear instead of freeing it.

If the hunter is going to represent god then the hunter must have been the one to set the trap.

The trap represents how we are snared by sin which comes from choosing our own will instead of obeying God. Stepping into the trap is, for man, purely voluntary.

The hunter must also have perfect knowledge of everything that will happen in the future. The bear has every reason, in that scenario, to hate the hunter.

Only if the bear mistakenly believes that it is caught in a trap set by the hunter. It was not. You hate God because you think Adam was set up and that you are an innocent victim. You are not innocent. You choose to disobey God daily.

If the hunter didn't want to capture bears then why did he set up a trap that he knew a bear would find? The hunter in this scenario is a psychopath

Even if the hunter knew that the possibility of the bear stepping into the trap existed, the hunter had to allow the bear the freedom to roam wherever it wanted. Otherwise, the bear was just in a cage.

In the analogy, the trap is something that the hunter could simply remove. In the non-analogous situation in which we find ourselves, removing the possibility of bad choices is not possible.

The Old Testament god interacted with his people before Jesus came. Jesus performed miracles. It is interesting that in the modern world, this hidden god acts exactly as he would if  he didn't exist

God provides juuuuussssst enough evidence for His presence that those who really seek him may find him while those that do not want to find Him will not be coerced.