The worm theodicy

[Nadjeschda]

Hi this is a defense against the problem of evil. It is trying to explain the soul growth theodicy in a more vivid way.

God had free will but to create our own free will he chose to give up some of it. For a human free will to express (and hence for a human personality to develop) there must be a bit of chaos to create the necessary complexity to develop in.

 

We can not exist without challenges, because thinking IS solving challenges: you suffer a little bit while searching for an insight and than you are happy for finding that insight solving the challenge.

 

Now if you would remove every kind of heavy suffering - aka heavy challenge - from the world I can guarantee you that you will have to kill for example all movies ever made for adults.Because taking away for example death and illness means taking away connected concepts such as doctors, ghosts, murder detectives, vampires, halloween etc. What you cause by never letting heavy suffering have existed is a sudden collapse of the complexity (!) of the world and hence the complexity of what you can think. In the end this need to eleminate suffering creates what I call the „worm situation“. A world with creatures that do really not suffer very much looks like this: there is an immortal worm on a great plane looking for food. The only thing that could ever go wrong (this is what you wanted,right?) is that he feels slight boredom when he does not find food immediately and the only thing good happening would be if he finds food. Now you can create this worm so that he is strongly happy whenever finding food but his soul would be extremely simple. Would you like to be like that?

 

Suffering is a part of soul growth and hence a necessary evil. We already know statistically that rich people and especially their children are on average higher in narcissism so a life without real challenges make you flat and unable to feel deep love. 

 

If god would start to work miracles whenever something bad happens that would already take the emotion out of concepts like death. Death would be only a word than!!!

 

Furthermore we would have only a very limited free will if we knew gods existence through this miracles for sure because fear of god would limit what we would DARE to do very very much. In the end we could never explore who we are again creating a flatness of our soul.

 

[simplejeff]

1 hour ago, Nadjeschda said:

If god would start to work miracles whenever something bad happens that would already take the emotion out of concepts like death. Death would be only a word than!!!

Yahuweh the Creator (God, the Father Sovereign in Heaven)

took away all fear of death and crucifies all the emotions and desires of the flesh when a person

is immersed in Jesus' Name and is Born Again by the Will of the Father in Heaven. 

Death has no sting.   No power over the new creation, NOTHING to fear,  for a believer abiding in Jesus today. 

In fact,   it is no longer a word for believers!   Since Jesus' Life on earth,  SLEEP is used INSTEAD of death (see in the NEW TESTAMENT.

 

[simplejeff]

1 hour ago, Nadjeschda said:

If god would start to work miracles whenever something bad happens

DWELLING , LIVING DAILY ,  in union with Yahushua(Jesus) and with the Father TODAY is a miracle every day,

and many miracles every day are recognized !  (regardless whenever something bad happens, or good ! )

[simplejeff]

1 hour ago, Nadjeschda said:

Suffering is a part of soul growth and hence a necessary evil.

As written through Hebrews, and all Scripture,  suffering for followers of Jesus is expected,  and is used by Yahuweh to train us,  to wean us away from thinking the way men think , to get us to think like Yahuweh(God) thinks --- it IS HIS BLESSING US !   (not a necessary evil ) .....  REJOICE JESUS SAYS !   Whenever men persecute you and revile you and arrest and torture and kill you !   REJOICES because they DID THE SAME to JESUS and to the PROPHETS before us....   We have a great reward in heaven so REJOICE, YES REJOICE !

[simplejeff]

1 hour ago, Nadjeschda said:

God had free will but to create our own free will he chose to give up some of it.

Yahuweh DOES WHATEVER HE PLEASES.      This never changes, never changed, never will change.

Human speculation or logic or reasoning has no place in His Kingdom.

ALWAYS live and speak and do according to HIS WORD !

[Nadjeschda]

I have faith to the degree that I do not fear death for periods of time but I do not have it always at that strength. And I think that is normal because all thinking is a back and forth movement and if this movement ceases to exist in general terms, human thinking ceases to exist. Jesus already made clear that the lost sheep - those that did go hard in the wrong direction of the possible ways thought could go - are special to him. Besides that writing theodicy (defenses to the problem of evil) is an ancient art. It is not necessary that my solution is correct to break the problem of evil; it is just necessary to show that there are other solutions possible besides god is bad or god is not existent. I should maybe have made this distinction more clear from the start.

[Nadjeschda]

By the way, the idea builds on the „best world theodicy“ of Leibnitz. But I think the idea that if god gives up some of his free will to create us this is still in line with beeing all powerful because it is his free choice to do so does come from another older Christian thinker. Does anyone know who that was?

[[orthodox] Catholic]

On 7/4/2019 at 4:11 PM, Nadjeschda said:

But I think the idea that if god gives up some of his free will to create us 

I cannot accept that.  If God "gave up" some of His free will then He would change.  God is not changeable, He is the Unchangeable, Constant.

On 7/4/2019 at 4:11 PM, Nadjeschda said:

this is still in line with beeing all powerful

He wouldn't be all powerful if He gave something up.  So no, that is not correct either.

There is no Christian writer earlier (I take that to mean before the fragmentation of the single unified faith that existed until then) who says such a thing.  God does not ask us to accept anything that contradicts reason.  The very reason that he gave us in our intellect.

----

No, the Creator is not in His Creation.  Believing that He is, is pantheism, pre-Christian, pagan.  The New-Agers love the idea.

If I, as a sculptor, create a sculpture, there is nothing of me in the sculpture, I lose nothing.  If there was, I would be missing some fleshy bit, I would be changed, and not being God, I would die.  To say there is something of me in the sculpture moves into the abstract, non-material realm.  Even Shakespeare proved it in terms that the common folk could understand, in the Merchant of Venice, in that taking away a pound of flesh would deprive the man of his essence, and cause death.

Whereas humans can create something from something else, we cannot create something from nothing, only God can, and did, create something from nothing.  That is the second reason, that your proposition is false.  Whatever He did, when He created creation, He created it from nothing, He did not "give up" part of Himself, He remained absolutely Changeless.  No Christian writer can make such a proposition.  If one did, by that act, he would prove himself to be a heretic, a non-Chiristian.

On the relation to Theodicy.  Since God is all Goodness, He cannot create evil (or extend His Will into something evil).  He only allows evil.