This may well be my last reply, as it's not my intention to go back and forth with you incessantly.
We've already had this conversation, after a fashion (you made a bizarre claim and I refuted it, followed by prolonged silence) in the thread about objective truth.
I have not yet got round to replying back to in you in that other thread (which I aim to do so). Don't think that 'prolonged silence' means anything.
Or, you might struggle to define it, but trust me you'll know it when you experience it.
I personally don't find cutting myself with a razor as suffering (yet you seem to say that it is). Who are you to tell me that I'm wrong?
Does it hurt? There's your answer. The rest is degree.
If I momentarily stub my toe upon a small stone once, just the once; can I legitimately say that I have suffered? "
Oh woe is me! I have stubbed myself upon a small stone! Who can sympathise with me, the suffering I have gone through!" Doesn't that sound rather absurd? Rather, suffering can be said to be pain experienced through a prolonged or extensive period of time; not an instanteous event. Can it be said that the dog who was put down within seconds without feeling pain, suffered? Or is it rather the dog who was left to die in an agonising state (without intervention) over a period of time, the one who suffered? And I do not think that suffering is simply defined only by time, but also by intensity. I do think that for something to be truly classified as suffering it must be intense pain/discomfort/anguish/remorse felt, over a period of time. I do not see how having momentary nerves before giving a speech could be classified as suffering; but contionous anxiety and panic attacks - yes I can see how that can be suffering.
It's more that I own a dictionary and, also, that I know what a petard is, which is something I rarely find extremists tend to understand...though many are left dangling in that particular ignorance.
Even your dictionary doesn't provide a true, objective definition of suffering. Afterall, aren't supposdely objective dictionaries based on the
subjective opinions of humans?
Are you saying that's why God made raves? But understanding degree doesn't negate the underlying point. It only moves it about in illustration.
And what is the underlying point?
So, is your minor pain an act of God? Or is it just the murder of strangers?
It could be. It depends what caused it. If it was my own foolishness then no, I wouldn't say it was an act of God. As I'm sure you well know, stupidy can lead to suffering.
Any person who is born of flesh will perish in the flesh. Those people might have died at market or in their beds or in prayer,
The way that a person died is telling; and indicative of that person's spiritual state. The people in the Dylan Roof shooting, died a tragic, violent, untimely death. This shows that they were unrepentant. God would not cause a person to die such a death, unless they were stubbornly stewing in their sins. Do you not think they had an abundant life to live if they chose righteousness instead? Sin prematurely cut all of that short - and thus they never attained the life that God intended for them, which is a life full of abundance (John 10:10). They never reached the Promised Land, so to speak.
but every one of them would die eventually, as I will and you will.
But the timing and nature of our death says
much about the life that we chose to lead.
And you could argue the root of all death is sin,
Romans 6:23: '
For the wages of sin is death...'
Romans 5:12: '
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned...'
but within that sentence what you're doing is mistaken and callous.
How so?
Now you're just talking through your hat and sounding like an offensive, holier than thou doofus
Doofus? I wonder what your basis is for using such a word, except your own subjective opinion - which is not valid in an objective sense.
No, rain falls on the just and unjust.
Yes, He sends rain on the righteous and the wicked (Are you trying to say that He only does good things?)... but he also witholds rain:
'Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit. For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain and the new wine and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth, on men and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.' (Hagga 1:10-11)
and sends famines:
'
Now Elijah the Tishbite, from the Gilead settlers, said to Ahab, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, I stand before Him, and there will be no dew or rain during these years except by my command!' (1 Kings 17:1)
The evil we do we do and a mother who drowns her children isn't giving them what they have coming, your sad theological manipulations notwithstanding.
The mother who purposely and wilfully drowned her children has committed murder, and she will reap what she has sown. And the children who died at her hands could have very well reaped what they sowed - the death being the reaping, and the sowing being their own sins (yes, children do sin). Do you know that, in the Old Testament, even children died for their sins?
I might also say that such an a occurrence as a mother murdering her children, is the result of possessing a sinful nature. Having a sinful nature is the definitive cause of sin. Not saying that one
has to sin. By the way, are you aware that you yourself are a murderer ?
And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar (isn't wrath at all), you poor fellow.
You simply cannot recognise the wrath of God for what is - the wrath of God.
lain:
