If God exists then why didn't we always have modern day luxuries?

[EricH]

I don't know if we can know for certain why God created people at the stage of development that He did. Anything we say would by neccessity be an extrapolation, since the Bible itself does not specifically tell us why at creation certain advancements did not exist

[Ovedya]

Ok...hear me out here. This is really just something that popped into my mind and I really wanna discuss it...

OK so we have such luxury now (well certain people don't but I digress)...we have refrigeration, plumbing, internet, airplanes, vaccinations, the list goes on and on.

So I was thinking, if there is a God and he is our loving father, wouldn't he have given this stuff to us already to begin with? It seems cruel not to let us have it. I can't imagine how some people live without these things and many of these things we invented and there are still many things to come that we will invent that will help our quality of living...

So anyway...I am really wondering why it took so long for us to have these things? Why did Our Heavenly Father let us go without for so long?

I have trouble picturing Job in his "prosperous years" telling his wife, "Man, we're so miserable without refridgeration and plumbing."

It's a matter of perspective, DoK. We can't imagine life without these things. Ancient people's couldn't have possibly fathomed a life with them. Just because they seem like conveneinces to us doesn't mean that they are.

[DaughterofKing]

I mean with these modern day advancements quality of life has improved in neccessary ways.....medications, surgeries, strerilization, clean water due to filtering and plumbing, cleaner bodies due to this, vaccinations that have ridded diseases all together, shots that prevent and stop diseases, refrigeration that prevents food from spoiling that leads to disease and prolongs food life, heaters that prevent people from dying due to cold weather, pasteurization that kills bacteria, transportation that allows for people to get to neccessary help quicker, telephones that allow for quicker communication between people that can save lives, etc. , etc.

A lot of these things are not simply spoiled people luxuries, but advancements that have greatly improved and saved human lives in many ways and seem to be neccessities. It seems odd that we began life without this level of advancement.

[traveller]

Well - way back there, man lived to be hundreds of years old. Some close to 1000. So who is really better advanced?

[Tribulation]

A lot of these things are not simply spoiled people luxuries, but advancements that have greatly improved and saved human lives in many ways and seem to be neccessities. It seems odd that we began life without this level of advancement.

As traveller quite rightly points out - you only have to look at Genesis to realise that men and women lived for many hundreds of years.

The way I view it - us humans have been on a downward spiral! We have come to an age where we are entirely dependant on man's inventions and technology. Let's face it - if we were to be taken from our homes and placed in the middle of Africa - many of us would die within a few weeks. I don't view that as an advancement in human life but more of an advancement in technology.

[Jefferiah]

I dont think technology is bad. Daughter of King pointed out that there were some really good discoveries that have helped to prolong life. In some cases the knowledge behind technology is used for bad reasons, and in some cases for good ones. But people lived for the better part of history without them as well, so I dont think it is fair to say why didnt God allow us to have these things before. I think its all quite relative, and no matter what state of advancement you have there will always be something more to discover. Therefore you could always say "why dont we have this?". As the quality of technology rises so does our standard of what a good life is. And ultimately the conquest of disease or bad weather amounts to the conquest of death. And we cannot invent a medicine to conquer death, so therefore we will never reach a point of satisfaction. People lived for centuries without transportation. And eventually the car was invented, and then gradually it became affordable for the common person. And now many families have multiple cars. There is no satisfaction. Instead of the two car family we have now, why not 5 cars? Also I am not going to start judging those who use transportation cuz we all do it, but we must admit that this luxury has come at the expense of other things. The network of highways and concrete that crisscrosses or globalized world has destroyed a great deal of natural habitat for animals and plant life. So our luxury equals their death. I am not a greenpeace person, but this is undeniable. And the destruction of natural habitat and natural things has a deep effect upon our lives as well. Many things we have now that may prolong our individual lives and make them easier may eventually backfire on the future generations of our species. The predictions about the greenhouse effect and what could happen to the ozone, all these things may have an effect on the next generation. But at least we lived it up. In the western world we enjoy a high quality of life, and I dont hesitate to take advantage of that. If I am sick I go to the hospital, etc etc. I love using the computer. But we have a lot of these things at the expense of other things as well. One of my teachers in high school put it this way "20 percent of the world uses 80 percent of the worlds resources". Also a world with better services and quicker services requires quicker servants. Quicker servants equal pressured servants and pressure equals stress. Todays world is so conscious of itself, healthwise and otherwise, that we are stressed. Bad things will happen, but nowadays instead of accepting this, we need someone to blame or someone to sue. With all the health advancements we have and people living longer you would think ridiculous lawsuits would be nil. But we are pickier. There have been cases where people in a very critical condition in car accidents were saved from death by good samaritans administering first aid, only to turn around and sue them because they claimed some part of their body was damaged in the process of administering that first aid. God is not mean, we are just never satisfied.