Questions on the film, and a question about GOD...

So what if you're never caught?? you get away with all these horrible acts scot free?? that makes NO sense. a lot of criminals get away with a lot of different things. if they are not brought to justice in this life, they will certainly be brought to it in the next. believe what you want, this is a FACT. no argument here, just plain common sense. a shame so many cant see it ...

No one should attribute human emotions to God because it is the other way around. We are made in His image, He is not based on ours. So, our good qualities like mercy, kindness, love, joy, contentment, etc. are from Him.

Since He created us and took such care with designing us and beyond, of course He loves us. No one needs the Bible to tell them that outside of additional reinforcement. You don't create something beautiful that you hate when you are love. It's impossible.

Yes, God's perfect and He does no wrong, but I do think He has changed His ways of dealing with us over the course of His creation. He once destroyed almost all life on this earth because of rampant sin, and He has destroyed cities filled with it as well. Does He do that today? He promised He would never again destroy the earth with a flood, of course, but I haven't seen Him sending fire from heaven to burn cities either. It's like He was trying to stop sin directly, if you'll read the Old Testament, every time it began to spread. He didn't want people to be enslaved by sin and to disobey Him and harm each other. So, like an overprotective parent (but, in His case, He IS the ulimate authority and He knows what's coming down the road and He won't make mistakes and lead His children astray), He tried to stop sin in its tracks frequently by making Himself seen to his people, speaking to them directly, warning them verbally what would happen to them if they continued, etc. Over time, I believe He decided to step back because humans were going to do what they wanted to do with the free will that He gave them, and if He stepped in every time and tried to directly eradicate sin, humans would never survive. One could wonder why He did any of that knowing what humans would ultimately choose, but I myself have done things that I knew wouldn't work with others because I still wanted to do everything I could to change something. I had a verbally abusive boyfriend at one point and I stayed with him for a while and tried to help him, knowing that only he could change. I didn't want to just walk away and not say that I had done my best to try to change an imperfect relationship. I will always know that while I loved him greatly and I saw what he could be if he would only change his ways, I did everything I could to help him as much as possible. I gave him the best chance I could, like God did/does with us, so I get that. It was my choice to stay, knowing the probable outcome, and I don't regret that I did. I wish I had never gone out with him, but once I did, I wasn't going to just throw my hands up and walk away when I loved him.

Once He sent His son to die for us as a permanent sacrifice (as opposed to continual animal sacrifices), it was up to us to reject sin and to accept His love. He still stepped in and revealed Himself directly to people in ways that could be seen physically, but it seems as though as time has gone by, that doesn't happen much if at all anymore. He is still ever-present and always available and nothing happens outside of His will (i.e. permission), but He leaves it up to people to decide what they're going to do. I know He intervenes because you hear of impossible odds being against someone and things happening just a certain way to save them almost every day on the news somewhere. But, yes, you also hear about tragedies that could have been so easily averted as well. I don't know the mind of God so I don't know why He seems to intervene in some cases and He doesn't seem to in others, but I do know that He knows what's going on. We don't see the unseen and we don't know the unknown, so we can't accurately "judge" God or even make a logical, yet imperfect, assessment of what we would have done in that situation. When tragedy happens, who's to say that worse things haven't been averted by the hand of God? If He averted tragedy at all times, worse things could happen in God's eyes. The loss of free will, the loss of the realization of our need to rely on Him, and I'm sure many others.

Anyways, we have free will, which is a ticking time bomb, and it's up to us what we want to do with it. Parents shouldn't live their children's lives for them, and God doesn't live them for us. He lets us make our mistakes and He offers chances for us to realize His presence and His love if we open our hearts. If we reject Him, then that is our choice. If others reject him and do terrible things, by the nature of free will, innocents will suffer.

I do think that the heart of God is very saddened and troubled by all of humanity's evil. Because of His great love for us, I know it must hurt him terribly when we go astray and we hurt others and we hurt ourselves. Just think of a loving parent watching their child go through drug addiction. They can do nothing to make their child stop short of locking them away and thus, taking away their free will. All they can do is do the right thing by not enabling their child, being there for them always, and loving them dearly. To take away the drug addiction and give their child no choice to do drugs seems like the right thing to do, but then where does that stop? The child would eventually become a robot because they would only be free to do the things that the parents deemed right. Parents aren't perfect even though God is, and even He won't do that to us even though it would seemingly save us a lot of grief.

You have to at least consider the possibility (even though I believe it to be true) that free will is so important to God that everything that we do, every terrible act that people commit, is worth the cost of free will. Free will is so important to God that He allowed Satan to approach Adam and Eve in the garden knowing what could/would be the possible outcome. He allows us to get into all kinds of trouble when He could stop things from happening because He wants us to learn to love Him on our own. Free will was worth the cost of His son dying on the cross for us. The point of free will is that God wants us to love Him and obey Him because we choose to. Who would want someone to love them because they had no choice? That is not real love.

When you understand that God is love and everything He does is with love, and you pair that with free will, everything can be understood to the degree that we are able to without knowing everything in the universe.

The only thing that I struggle with continually is exactly HOW (not why) God is able to stand back and let things happen. I know that many good things can come out of bad things, and I've seen that happen amazingly in my own life. Every time a tragedy has occurred, God turns it around either then or later and something beautiful is able to come of it. I may not see it or care about it right then, but with time, I appreciate that while I wouldn't have OK'd the tragedy, there was something beautiful on the other side. Sometimes it was simply a deepening of my relationship with God and a greater realization that He does love me and He IS there for me no matter what. Sometimes, it's something that I do later because of what I went through before to make sure someone else doesn't have to go through what I did, or I'm able to help them through it because I understand it. What about those parents whose children are murdered and they're suddendly standing before Congress trying to help pass laws? They're starting organizations to help find missing children, or drunk drivers who've killed people go around talking to schools about the dangers of drunk driving. Would any one of those people go back and stop their child from being murdered or stop themselves from drinking and driving that night before they killed someone? Yes, all of them, because their immediate sadness, which becomes a lifelong sorrow, was not worth the cost of the good things that would come out of it for themselves and others. Why? Because they value the life of their child or the life of the innocent victim more than what happens afterwards. This is seemingly a perfect assessment. God knows, however, that our life here on earth is but a drop in time. There is an eternity to worry about, and God's concerns are of an infinitely greater span than our own. He is concerned with saving souls much more so than saving earthly lives. If souls can be saved by the loss of an earthly life, do you not think that God would undoubtedly place a higher value on that? If other missing children can be found instead of murdered because of the terrible loss of one, do you not think that God would allow that one to come home to Him to save the suffering of countless others? We all want God to save US and the ones WE love, but God loves everyone equally. It's not that we are expendable to Him because we have the choice on earth to enter into heaven once we die. In fact, we are infinitely precious to Him which is why He wants the best for all of us when we don't want it at all if it means that we feel pain. We always want the bad things, if they must happen, to happen to someone else, but none are exempt.

So, I guess my answer to exactly HOW God is able to stand back is more a problem with me being weak and placing my emotions above the greater good, and God being strong and being willing to suffer for the greater good, as He did with Jesus. I am attributing my own weakness to Him. I am not strong enough at this time to say to God, "Bring it on. Bring on whatever sadness and suffering you have to in my life so that I will become who you want me to be. I am willing to suffer any loss to bring glory to You and to love You more. I am willing to go through whatever sorrow you wish if it will help others." Amazingly, God wants us to have that attitude, but it directly opposes our own selfishness. We don't want to have to suffer when we feel like things could go about in a different way. So, while I sympathize with God's suffering because He feels things to a much greater degree than we do since are just made in His image and we are not the original, God doesn't need my sympathy because He is working good out of evil at every turn. He isn't suffering with no purpose because He has His eyes fixed firmly on the end.

I always have to remind myself that God sees everything. So, while I sit here and wonder why He allows child abuse and child prostitution and child molesters and murderers and rapists and animal abusers, etc. to walk around wreaking havoc in this world that He so lovingly created, I have to remember that He can turn any of these things into good by healing the person involved and transforming their past into a beautiful future where He can use what they went through to bring them to Him so they are able to spread His love and to speak out against those sins to help save others. If it seems that our hearts and lives must be sacrified to save ourselves and others, that is only part of the picture. We are being sacrified in a way because we are enduring that which hurts and seems unfair through no seeming fault of our own. But, first of all, we have all sinned so we have plenty of faults. God, Himself, is perfect, and He suffered and continues to suffer to this day. Secondly, God is not "sacrificing" us for no purpose and our suffering will be redeemed by Him and glorified in Him and we will be rewarded for it in heaven. Thirdly, and (to me) most importantly, He is suffering along with us and He asks nothing of us that He did not go through Himself when His son, who is a part of Him, was sacrified for us. He is asking nothing of us that He has not already done Himself. Lastly, yet oddly first, He loves us. It's not some sick game where He plays with us like puppets to get certain reactions out of us for His own sick amusement. I have to remember that God thinks the pain that HE HIMSELF is going through is worth the eventual outcome. If God thinks that about Himself, knowing that He could stop all of this if He chose, then it must be worth it. Why would our Creator suffer for nothing? He wouldn't. He would only suffer for the greater good, as He did when His son died on the cross for us. While we see the temporal, what is right in front of our faces, He sees all of humanity and how it is intricately entwined and how one action spurs another. He sees all of this right through to the end of time.

I don't personally believe that there are millions of worlds out there, but if there are, I'm sure God loves them as much as He loves us. He would have created them, so it makes no difference to me either way. Once again, I can't know everything, but I know enough and I have a personal relationship with God and it's not just based on church and the Bible. God has been there for me when I've desperately needed Him and He's done things for me directly that have undeniably been from Him. Being loved very much by my parents and having been surrounded by love my whole life, I recognize love when I see it. I do believe it's so much harder for those who haven't been raised with a lot of love to understand love right off the bat.

And, for people who don't believe in God, that is the choice God gave you to make. If you've never tried to reach out to God in sincerity and for a sustained period of time (not a game where you tell God that if He's real then He has to do a specific action at a specific time to reveal Himself to you), then you may want to think about it. If you look around at all of the natural creation, including yourself, and you don't see a Designer instead of an accident, then you might want to consider the other side. If you haven't thought about why there are emotions, and why we are always searching for a higher truth, and why an inborn sense of right and wrong exists, then you might want to wonder about it a little bit more. If you haven't thought about why even the most remote tribes worship something or someone when they've had no contact with "civilized" humanity (thus, no "religious infection"), then you might ask why it seems that we have an innate realization of something or someone greater than us. "Dumb" animals don't go around worshipping and creating shrines and attending church and talking about God. They just follow the natural-born survival instincts that God gave them and go about their business. They don't wonder about why they're here and if God exists and why they have to die. They are born, they follow their instincts, they find enjoyment in life, and they die. Why aren't we like them? Because we weren't created to be.

I could get into the whole evolution as the beginning idea, but it should be apparent to people that something physical does not come of out nothing. It never has. Everything created has an origin and we aren't accidentally here. I've never seen or heard of a single scientist creating something out of nothing, yet many scientists believe that is what happened and that is what led the the complexity of the natural world. I believe God created all of us, animals included, to adapt to our surroundings. Why wouldn't He have? It would seem awfully short-sighted if He didn't. I think it's amazing how amazing things are continually broken down by human understanding into sad caricatures of what they really are. But, everyone is free to believe what they want, and they are free to attribute their own ideas to that which they do not fully understand, myself included.