Where was God in Aurora massacre?

[웃 910]

Where was God in Aurora massacre?

By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor

(CNN) – Where was God in Aurora?

It's a fresh take on an age-old question: Why does God allow suffering, natural disasters or – if you believe in it – evil?

We put the question to Twitter on Tuesday and got some starkly different responses.

"In short, God was in complete control, exercising His will," wrote @PastorRileyF, who leads a church in Bethune, Colorado.

That riled @TheTrivia Jockey, who tweeted, "If that was God's will, God is definitely not deserving of my worship."

@trentpayne also took issue with the Colorado pastor: "I'm going to respectfully disagree with you Pastor. God gives free will to man, but it wasn't his will that they die."

The back-and-forth provoked other believers to chime in on the theological issue of God's sovereignty vs. human free will, with many Christians seeking to explain how a sovereign God could preside over seemingly senseless bloodshed.

"It is not God's will or want that people died in Aurora," wrote @GospelBluesman20m. "God allowed man's inhumanity to man, rather than intervene."

The conversation and debate continued in the comments section of this post, with some insinuating that the massacre might be a kind of divine punishment, or at lease divine neglect:

Lenny

"We as a country have been telling God to go away. We told him to get off our currency, get out of our schools, get out of our Pledge of Allegiance, take your Ten Commandments out of our courthouses, get those Bibles out of hotels and no graduation ceremonies in our churches. How can we expect God to give us his blessing and his protection if we demand that he leave us alone?"

Jesse R

"Liberals have made it impossible for God to be anywhere during the upbringing of a child. Can't have any religious connotations in schools, libraries, government offices, etc., etc. Young men (and women) are growing up with no real sense of right and wrong. ... We no longer have the right of religion, but rather the right from religion. Parents no longer have the ability to discipline their children. We are always looking for the excuses ... violent video games and movies, bad teachers and schools ... when we should be looking in the mirror. We as a society are the reasons these massacres happen. We have allowed our children to become social misfits that lead to the kind of carnage we have seen on several occasions since religion and God disappeared from what the Founding Fathers once said was a necessity of a successful democracy ... faith."

Lots of readers used religious takes on the shooting to challenge the whole idea of God:

Who invited me?

"How do you know the people that were killed didn't go to hell?, and how exactly does any of this show there is a reason? Reason is obviously something that you have replaced with belief, and you threw out logic with it."

Kyle

"God doesn't exist, so he wasn't anywhere. Get over it. A man was evil, and he was evil because he was crazy."

Plenty of others said the shooting was the devil's work:

Harleyxx

"Evil things like this happen because Satan is the god of this world ... for the time being. God will undo all the damage caused by Satan's rebellion and man's disobedience when the time is right. In the meantime we all experience trials and tribulation due to living in an ungodly world. That is why Jesus taught his followers the Lord's Prayer ... 'to pray for God's kingdom to come.' "

What's your take? Where was God in the Aurora massacre? Or do you feel that such tragedies are evidence for a godless universe?

Let us know in comments, and we'll highlight the best ones.

http://religion.blog...acre/?hpt=hp_c1

Edited July 25, 2012 by ☠

[Penny Lane 8,159]

He was busy not existing.

[Penny Lane 8,159]

Getting popcorn.

Or a re-fill of soda.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Hey!

Cmon now!

The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways!

[Ban Hammer 12,842]

one post removed for

Publish, post, upload, distribute, disseminate or offer to disseminate any inappropriate, offensive, defamatory, infringing, obscene or unlawful/illegal material, information or content.

- you know better.

[rocks 494]

I'm sure if you asked a christian this, they would tell you God is testing you.

[^_^ 5,021]

one post removed for

Publish, post, upload, distribute, disseminate or offer to disseminate any inappropriate, offensive, defamatory, infringing, obscene or unlawful/illegal material, information or content.

- you know better.

Love is not obscene!

[decocker 7,198]

gah, cnn - why are you stirring the crazy pot!?

I'm sure if you asked a christian this, they would tell you God is testing you.

god does not approve of r rated cinema.

also, batman is a false idol.

and jews run hollywood.

wait, does that one work for or against?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

"God has a hard on for Marines, because we kill everything we see. He plays His games, we play ours. To show our appreciation for so much power, we keep heaven packed with fresh souls."

[SuperDuper! 230]

He was busy not existing.

How ironic?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I wonder if the guy would be similarly thankful if the incident had taken place at his church rather than a crowded cinema.

I guess he'd find a way to spin it so that God was punishing them for not getting their message across strongly enough.

Edited July 26, 2012 by Martin Wellbourne

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Whoops wrong thread, please delete above post.

[Danno 1,228]

Whenever we have one of these situations the same question is always raised by those who (I guess) never learned basic Bible principles as children.

Lets go back to the Sunday school lesson most 10 yr olds should have down.

The Bible teaches man was in a perfect sinless place (The garden)

And now he is not.

The more serious question for me is -Why does God "sometimes" intervene?

Clearly expecting God to save every victim from harm.... heal every sick person..... protect every child from danger we would be asking God to intercede and make this a literal heaven.... which if you think about it, would be impossible as long as people have a free-will.

Yep free-will is the thing that screws everything up.

[웃 910]

The more serious question for me is -Why does God "sometimes" intervene?

Clearly expecting God to save every victim from harm.... heal every sick person..... protect every child from danger we would be asking God to intercede and make this a literal heaven.... which if you think about it, would be impossible as long as people have a free-will.

Yep free-will is the thing that screws everything up.

Something as thoughtful as less volatile climate / natural disasters would save millions of lives a year.

Designing places with poor vegetation with the ability to flourish with fruits and vegetables instead of being wastelands/kill zones would provide endless amounts of food to starving people. Why didn't your Male Super Hero invent a fruit/vegetable that thrives in horrible places like Somalia where food does not grow? Wouldn't that have been thoughtful and kind?

There wouldn't be kids that look like this over there:

You know why Male God didn't do this? Because He doesn't exist. In prehistoric ages when we thought the earth was flat, the toilet was the dirt outside, and the earth was the center of the universe man created myths to help explain and fill the void in their lack of understanding. Why would Male God talk back then but now He doesn't? Simple, because He didn't talk back then. Nobody except a delusional person with severe mental illness has "heard a voice". Modern science which has benefited all of humanity (as if modern science was a God) is now able to calculate exactly how old the earth is (4.55 billion years) as well as the universe (14.6 billion years). We know precisely how man evolved from nothing and there is no need for myths to explain it.

You can take the talking bushes, talking donkeys, talking snakes, and people making hotel rooms out of whales and file it in the FICTION SECTION!

BTW, your argument of free will fails miserably.

Edited July 26, 2012 by ☠

[james&olya 1,121]

I love the comments such as the one bemoaning the 'fact' that god has been excluded from 'everywhere'. Do these people ever stop to think where it is they should be finding god? If they want god how about looking at the church of their choice? How about looking for him in the privacy of their own homes? Nobody has banned the bible or any other christian books. There is no 'war on christianity' going on here. If people want god they can 'find' him very easily. No, what they really want is for all of us to live in a homogenous narrow-minded society where we are all instructed from early on in what we are to believe. They do not believe in freedom of and from religion. They are really quite un-american actually!!