Was this God's plan for Carlie?

[Apache]

God permits evil, he does not will it.

[Eagler]

banana

don't confuse Jesus/Christianity and eternal life - the Jesus way/story is but one way to find enlightenment. Take what's good from the Bible (usually found in the new Testament) and read up on the others - you'll see the common ground and the extremes

Raised catholic but have expanded my beliefs to include an eternal law of karma tagged up with reincarnation to cycle us through until we get it right..

proof is there but you have to look for it, it won't fall from the sky and hit u in the head

start by finding time in ur life to look within, settle your own thoughts/desires long enough to glimpse the spark of peace within you

as Bohdi points out, suffering is the tool of choice used to smack us into looking deeper than the tele/radio/computer for a meaningful purpose/understanding of life

we're all on a journey, many just don't realize it

[Wanker]

What does the Bible say about whether or not God has a specific plan for each of us?

[Gunthr]

I certainly can't answer that, not much of a bible reader.

Anyway, I don't believe that God necessarily plans out your day for you. I think God is more of a generalist.

[Gloves]

banana,

Wow.  This is a really good question.  I'm not sure I'll be able to give you a good answer as written communication is not my best area.

Imagine an architect (sp?)  designing a building.  As the building is being built, one of the workers is shoved off by another.  It was not the architect's plan for this to happen and this event does not keep the building from being completed.  Like many, the architect mourns the loss, but the OVERALL plan for the building continues.

God is like the architect.  He did not want Carlie to be killed  or abused in any way.  But unfortunately, evil does exist in this world and Carlie was the victim of it.

One of the issues here is that we have choices.  God's wants people to follow Him because they choose to, not because he mandates it.
 
Carlie died because the murderer had a choice to do evil and did so, not because it was God's plan for this to happen to her.

I'm not sure if I have done a decent job of describing my beliefs here, but this is the best I can do.  As I said, written communication is not my strong point.

Glove

[miko2d]

Eagler: those that believe, believe this little girl is in a place of peace and understanding we stuck here do not/cannot grasp with our finite minds..

 A person is a sum of her mind structure and her memories. Let's assume that there is a way to have both structure and memories preserves when a person passed to the afterlife. Otherwise that would be a different person and the original one has trully ceased to exist.

 So now we have that 11-year old up there with fresh memory of possibly terrible torture and death on her mind, he closest people taken away from her and all he plans for the next 70 years scrapped.
 What do you think could be there that would make her happy?

 Are her memories wiped out and replaced with brand-new artificial ones? Is her mind structure drastically modified so that she has completely different preferences and inclinations, corresponding to her new environment? Maybe hew IQ lowered to 50 and vocabulary shortened to 300 words so that she does not bother her little head with bad thoughts?
 Or maybe she if given the combined mental power of Einstein, Newton, Aristotle, etc. as well as all their knowlege that she does not think what happened to her of any significance?

 In any case that "happy" person would not be the same person who lived here, able to imagine how she ever though or felt. it would be like a bad recording. Like a book reader who's read someone's autobiography - able to know something of person's thoughs but never capable to think or feel that way.

 miko

[Lance]

You have to look inside yourself and see him in al the good things and in all the bad things.

The common denominator in all good/bad things, the acts of good and evil, that I see are humans.

[Wanker]

Originally posted by Gloves
banana,

Wow.  This is a really good question.  I'm not sure I'll be able to give you a good answer as written communication is not my best area.

Imagine an architect (sp?)  designing a building.  As the building is being built, one of the workers is shoved off by another.  It was not the architect's plan for this to happen and this event does not keep the building from being completed.  Like many, the architect mourns the loss, but the OVERALL plan for the building continues.

God is like the architect.  He did not want Carlie to be killed  or abused in any way.  But unfortunately, evil does exist in this world and Carlie was the victim of it.

One of the issues here is that we have choices.  God's wants people to follow Him because they choose to, not because he mandates it.
 
Carlie died because the murderer had a choice to do evil and did so, not because it was God's plan for this to happen to her.

I'm not sure if I have done a decent job of describing my beliefs here, but this is the best I can do.  As I said, written communication is not my strong point.

Glove

Thank you, Gloves. That is about the most sensible explanation I've heard yet. On the hand, if what you say is true, God is really not all-powerful then, is he? He's more like a very nice uncle who wants us all to get along with each other and spread the goodwill around to others.

I actually agree with that philosophy on how to live day to day with my fellowe humans, and I fully wish everyone else would live that way, too.

Unfortunately, the pragmatist in me realizes that there are good guys, and bad guys in this world....and the bad guys are not going to play nice no matter how good the rest of us are.

[Tilt]

a Deity (and therefore its "plan")can be anything you want it to be........

[Blammo]

Originally posted by banana
What kind of merciful God would have this as his plan for a little girl?

OK, context is everything, so lets put this in context.  I'll use myself as an example:

I have a son, David, who I love dearly as my own life.  Let's say, the day comes and David gets his drivers license.  So, I give him all the good safety tips and prepare him as best I can.  However, ultimately, David will be on the road by himself at some point.  Do I stop loving him while he is by himself on the road, no, but still, because I love him, have to let him excerise a certain amount of freedom.  He, nor the rest of us, are puppets.

One day, David is driving down the interstate and he sees a set of headlights streaming toward him.  Before he can react, some drunk in a car going 80 MPH smashes into my son headon and David is gone.

Now, did I not love him?  Was he out of my thoughts for one moment?  Of course not.

Just a reminder, this is hypothetical...my son is alive and well.

The fact is, bad things happen to good people.  From a Christian perspective, the world is a fallen place and man is depraved by nature.  Holding God accountable for the evil that men do would be the same as holding me accountable for the death of my son in the hypthetical scenario I gave above.  No, I didn't put the drunk on the road, but I did put my son out there.  A case could be made that I allowed the event to happen.

God gives us all free will and free action.  If He did not allow all people the freedom, He would not be a just or loving God...He would be a tyrant.  He did not intend for Carlee to be murdered.  She was murdered because humanity is depraved by its nature and while capable of great acts of good also capable of great acts of evil.

For God to not allow anything bad to ever happen to anyone, he would have to be a puppet master.   So, you have to ask:  is a puppet master merciful or just a string puller.

Probably didn't help any, but I had to say something.

By the way:  I was an agnostic for a great deal of my life.  I know where you're comming from, banana.

[Dinger]

If horrendous evil weren't a problem for Christianity, Christians wouldn't have been discussing it for the last 2000 years.  Look up "Theodicy" or "Horrendous Evil" and you'll find some interesting opinions.

One of the problems  that a Christian has to resolve is the relationship between human goodness, divine goodness, and the world around us.  What do you think good is?
If you accept:
God is the most perfect being
that leads to:

God is absolutely simple (divine simplicity)

Then, if you take:
God is good

You get from this that God and goodness are in themselves interchangeable. We can conceptually distinguish between God and His goodness, but that's not a distinction that really exists.

Now, throw in:
God is infinite (or any number of other statements we can make about God)
and you end up with:
God cannot be fully comprehended by the human intellect. For comprehension is to grasp the limits of something.

Which means,:
God's goodness is in itself incomprehensible

woops.  Now you're getting close to agnosticism, or at the very least the negative theology of the Greek Fathers. After all, some will argue, "what good is a God that cannot be known"? and Christians hold on faith the God _wants_ us to know Him to the degree that we are capable.  So, we get some strategies to deal with it:

A) The privative theory of evil alluded to by Apache. Everything, insofar as it is, is good. Evil is the absence of being. So humans do evil things because of their shortcomings. God creates all beings, therefore everything He creates is good; whatever He doesn't create is what we see as evil.

 From A) you get an interesting issue: is this the best possible world God could have created? If not, then God's perfection is compromised. If so, then God's omnipotence is.

B) The conflicting demands of predestination, merit, and free will. God gave to all humans free choice. We've also got these texts that prescribe certain moral and ethical behaviour, and the implication that salvation will be extended to believers. Yet God's omniscience means He knows how all will end up. And God's omnipotence means that He can do whatever He wants, and we cannot force Him to do anything.  So, can Golly-geen Peter and save that child murderer?

[Ghosth]

banana

Go Rent Bruce Almighty.

Pay close attention.

Its all about free will & man's choices banana, not gods choices.

[Gloves]

Originally posted by banana
On the hand, if what you say is true, God is really not all-powerful then, is he? He's more like a very nice uncle who wants us all to get along with each other and spread the goodwill around to others.

banana,

I see your point here.  However, it's my belief that just because God doesn't stop evil from happening doesn't mean He can't.  I think we've all heard of miracles from time to time.  

The tough part is where God does allow people to follow through on their choices when they are really bad.  This animal made the choice to do something terrible and Carlie was the victim.  However, if God had stopped that choice from happening, would it have really been a choice the murder could make?  By giving us the right to make choices - good or bad - God has to let us follow through on them.

I really can't explain why things like this are allowed to happen, but plan to ask God about it when we eventually come face to face.  For me, the good news is that Carlie is now with God in a better place where she can no longer be harmed by scumbags like this.

Glove

[AKIron]

If you're going to question Christians as to how God can allow such evil you have to look at it from the Christian perspective to understand the answer.

Life is eternal. Suffering and death are brief transitions after which God wipes away all tears. If you don't believe this then you cannot understand how a Christian can trust a god that allows such evil in the world.

[Hawklore]

Ok, from what I've been told...


God allows free will, and if you choose to do the wrong thing, then he can't stop you.

Hehe yes he will have his time with you when you die, but God can't stop all of Evil entering this world.

Think about it, a Utopia would crumbe and fall...

If God didn't let an ounce of evil into this world now and then...