Post Category → Hugh Silvester

Question – Thought & Present for September 18th, 2015!!!

Question – Thought & Present for September 18th, 2015!!!
Good Friday Afternoon!
 
1. Question – Is the mess God’s fault?
 
2. Thought – Opponents of Christianity invoke the doctrine of the Creator as a main plank in their argument that He is thus responsible for all that exists. What they often fail to notice is that the idea of Creator contains the idea of a purposeful Maker and that it might be worth trying to find out what that purpose is before telling Him what a mess He has made of it. (Arguing with God by Hugh Silvester)
 
3. Present from my Irish Mom to you:
 
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
 

 

​Don’t text and drive! Read, and enjoy the Son!​

 

rem – know the why or lose the way! 
Question & Thought & ANDs.

Question & Thought for September 14th, 2015!

Question & Thought for September 14th, 2015!
Good Monday Morning!
1. Question – If America has separated from God, do you believe His ‘will’ may be to do us harm for our own good?
2. Thought – Nowhere in the Bible do we find such evil designated ‘good’. Evil is opposed to God and to His followers. In Isaiah 5 we find a series of woes pronounced on evil-doers and one of them is:
‘Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!’
It helps no-one to say of an evil ‘It is God’s will’ if by that we mean ‘what you call evil, God calls good’. We may not be able to understand God completely but this is different from saying that we cannot understand Him at all. And if evil is ‘good’ simply because it exists, then indeed God is incomprehensible. He is not worth defending; such a theodicy, a defense of God’s ways, is senseless because it cannot be tested by any criterion. (Arguing with God by Hugh Silvester)
“Is man free?” (Hugh Silvester)

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rem – know the why or lose the way! 
Question & Thought & ANDs.

Question & Thought for September 13th, 2015!!!

Question & Thought for September 13th, 2015!!!
Good Sunday Morning!
1. Question – Have you ever defended the evil in the world by believing, “It is God’s will?”
2. Thought – Some religions, notably Islam, appear to try to defend God in situations like this by folding of the hands accompanied by ‘It’s God’s will.’ You see a man in the road with a broken leg: it is God’s will. You cannot do anything about it. If you are ill, it is no uses to get medical help. If it is God’s will for you to recover, you will, for He can heal without the aid of (Western) medicine. On the other hand, if it is time for you to die, you can do nothing to avert death. It is God’s will (kismet).
The effect of this doctrine is twofold. First, it has an eroding effect on man’s compassion. Life is hard, we know that. But it is daily eased by a hundred kindnesses that come from men and women who oppose evil and fight it, whether it is a physical evil such as hunger, or a spiritual evil such as injustice. If ‘God’s will’ is conceived in this depressing and omnibus fashion, it weighs down on every merciful man. What can he do? How dare he do it? He might even find himself like Paul, ‘fighting against God.’ But the second and far more serious effect is the image we are given of God: inscrutable, doling out good and bad fortune with little or no reference to the characters of the recipients, having motive and purpose completely unknown and unknowable. How can you love such a God? The answer; you must not love Him, you must worship Him, honor Him, obey Him, fear Him, and hope that He won’t notice you.
It is not only Muslims who think like this about God. It is possible for a Christian to take words from say Isaiah 55:8,9, and expound them in the same spirit. ‘…my thoughts are not your thoughts,…my ways are higher than your ways…’. Many have suffered at different times from so-called ‘Calvinists’ who go far beyond Calvin in describing to us a God almost indistinguishable from Allah, the ‘all-merciful.’ Jesus talked about His Father’s will as a way of discovering the truth of His own teaching; as something He accepted for His own personal destiny; but not as a carte blanche for every evil that might exist. It is no doubt proper and Christian to say in the right context ‘It is God’s will’ and to fold the hands: but to say it so piously when you hear that six million Jews have been murdered is blasphemy. (Arguing with God by Hugh Silvester)
“If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there?” (C.S. Lewis) 

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rem – know the why or lose the way! 
Question & Thought & ANDs.