Many look to a higher power amid a tragedy โ and that might be a good thing
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comTo hell and back: How 69 days underground affects spirituality
Seeded on Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:15 PM EDT (msnbc.com)
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I'm so tired of god's getting credit for rescues of people who are lucky....what about the kids and people who are not lucky???? The many kids kidnapped and raped and killed and buried someplace remote the case in ct of the wife and two daughters raped and killled ..where was god???? Last year in the Boston area a 23 year old male decapitated his 5 year old sister ..where was god????
Jim, Why blame God for what that 23 year old male did. People make choices, we are not puppets and God does not command the strings. He allows us free will, we make choices according to what we want to do.
As bad as it is all of the ugly things that happen to Children, Older people, people in general. God does not do these things, people do them and it happens because there is sin in the world.
I hate the horrible things that happen, but we cannot blame God we have to look at the fact that we (Americans) allowed people to take God out of our schools. Home teaches about obeying God, schools reinforced the teaching that Mom and Dad should have enstilled in the children. God is always here and He hates the fact that humans are able to be so brutal toward one another.
I agree with you Debora. We all have a will. Its whether we choose ours or we choose Gods. Choosing ours, creates sin such as temptations, wrong decision making and etc. God is our Savior, we are our Destroyers.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
...Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
-Epicurus (Greek philosopher, BC 341-270)
I don't think it's a question of how or why this happened and how it relates to God. I think it's a very individual experience. If you allow yourself to imagine yourself in the miner's emotional state, you could also imagine the sense of humilty and gratitude they are experiencing upon being rescued. That's where their relationship to God is, that's how God is involved in all of this.
Man has killed in the name of God or given God credit for natural disaters. But men have killed in the name of love as well and nobody seems to be discreditng love as nonexistant. Some people refuse to love but that has more to do with a lack of trust than the existance or nature of love.
If you don't believe in God, that's fine but for the sake of humanity, give them the space and respect to gracefully disagree.
If you don't blame God for the evil that people do, why credit him for the good they do? Thank the rescuers!
The Angry Guy, Satan is the cause of all evil, that is why we don't blame God. Yes he allowes things to happen; why I don't know and sometimes it makes me very angry at some of the things that happens, but I can't blame God. We are not puppets on strings, we have a will of our own to do what ever we please. There may have been a problem that the bosses knew about in the mine that has not come to surface yet.
Thank you Darrell
http://www.clarion-call.org/articles/art15.htm
As THE brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking et al. have proven: "No God had anything to do with any of it."
Time for MAN to take all responsibility for everything he does.
Thank you Capitan Jack, well said.
Are you sure Captain JacK?
It's a function of insanity. If God "saved" the miners, then the same God put them there, has killed thousands of other people in that same time period, murdered the 3,000 or so on 9/11, etc. Any fool who thinks God will save him needs to realize that same God is the one who screwed him to start with. The Christian God is a meglamanic, homocidal mascochist and not worthy of pissing on from any actual Christian view! In short, "God" is nothing more than wishful thinking by cowards unable to face the reality of DEATH down the road.
Sheesh, I'm sure glad you weren't down in that mine, for your sake and the sake of the miners.
I disagree. God doesn't control every single last movement of rock on the planet. God put in place the laws of physics and sometimes bad things happen. God can save people from unintended actions. Or maybe the Devil helped cause the cavein. Who knows. You cannot have good without evil and vice-versa. God is good. The devil is bad. That is the general idea. I agree with ElkMeadow. I'm glad you weren't in that mine. You probably would have been a real downer on the entire group.
God had nothing to do with MAN creating his cult religions for the purpose of protecting and worshiping his erect penis - which has no conscience.
Add that ingredient to drugs - which have no conscience either - and you have the TOTAL recipe for the INHUMANITY and SUFFERING of MANKIND everywhere.
MAN has to clean up his OWN ACT or MOTHER EARTH GOD will take care of it for him, as we watch daily more and more.
Dear friend,
I hope that one day you will see the reality of God and salvation through faith in his son, Jesus Christ. God set this world into motion and has his hand on every event. We can't explain it all and thats how God wants it. He has all the answers. And he wants you to love him unconditionally and trust in him. God bless.
And to YOU dear friend:
For starters, any "God" (to the highly educated) would have to be "androgynous" and not a "HE."
Now we add in salvation from another man, his son.
That is man's fairytale in worship and honor of himself ; oh what an ego!
The truth be known Robtice, it's my faith in God and in his son Jesus which allows me to be able to face the reality of DEATH each and every day, as did the miners. For 69 days these men contemplated their death and they did it by having a faith in God. This story was about 33 very brave and honorable men and the faith that allowed them to preserver, its not about you and your witless comments. If you think people who have a belief in God are cowards then I challenge you to go down to Chile and tell the miners to their faces they too are cowards. Hopefully they will take you out to the mine and shove you down into the hell hole they endured for 69 days.
George Wow that would really be an eye opener. I thank God He was with those men.
You know each day we face what could be considered a place of entrapment, if we allow our faith in God to waiver we will never get out of what God has for us. Sometimes we have to be placed in difficult situations so we are able to learn what God has for us. To strenghten us for something that is coming in the future. Depending on God gets us through each day and I can not understand how anyone gets through a day withou the hope of Jesus Christ.
I agree with you Deb. We humans have choices. We can do our will or choose Gods. By choosing ours, we face temptations, selfishness, wrong decision making etc. By choosing Gods, we have inner peace. God is our SAVIOR, We are our own DESTROYERS. Believing and keeping the faith is the key to eternity.
No, people, God did not get you out of there, people did! Their intelligence is what allowed them to get you out of there.
Anyone who believe in fairy tales is dellusional. Situtation happens because of what people do or do not do and that is the reality.
If you believe in God then you don't believe in physics, because physics explains how the world works -- how forces work -- how things move -- how things work & how they fail. There is absolutely zero evidence of god at play. There is no "god force" in physics. I know that this won't change your mind and cause you to question God; you're too deep into imaginary thinking to accept pure logic for a change.
Mines fail all the time because people fail to take adequate safety precautions or because of movements in the Earth. Don't you know this? Movements in the Earth's crust are caused by plate tectonics.
In terms of religious belief, third world countries like those in South America and Asia are @!$%#holes where there is almost zero penetration of coherency.
I believe in God and I rely on physics to explain how the world works. I believe God created an orderly universe which operates with physical laws. It allows us to understand the world and use our brains to not only know how to safely dig a mine 2000 ft underground but also how to rescue people when a mine fails. It means we are not puppets to a higher power, we have free-will, and we can rely these physical laws. Faith in God is just that, faith. There isn't rock-solid proof.
I can only imagine the horrible thoughts that these men had to deal with in that cramped space for so long. I think (again no rock-solid proof) it was their faith in God which kept them hopeful and sane. How much God directly contributed to the rescue effort is unknown. I am sure much of it was due to the rescuers free-will, brain power, and physics with a few miraculous, unexplained events thrown in.
The laws of physics and order testify that there must be a God who had a hand in creation. If everything from the smallest particle in existance to the most complex makeup of the human body was random then we could not exist statistically. Life from random kaos is statistically next to impossible. Read a Bible and look at Genesis. In the beginning there was God and he existed when there was nothing, he created for for six days and it was good (perfect). Man fouled perfection by not following God's will.
Science is a testimony to the existance of God and the order of his creation.
spectremustang - whoa, you know absolutely zip about science or evolution or randomness. Go back to third grade buddy, and I don't mean to a religious madrassa like the one your parents apparently put you in. You can skip the first two because you know how to spell , *almost*.
One of the greatest gifts given to mankind is the freedom to choose. It is not God who rapes or kills or destroys. it is people using the freedom in a negative manner.
We also have been given an intelligence. I love when it is used to search out great things about life. How did we get this intelligence, from a big bang? From one cell? from a being who created it?
2 Corinthians 4:4
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Please consider picking up a copy of the Holy Bible and read it personally. Take a simple chance and say to God, "oh God, if there really IS a God, reveal yourself to me as I read. If that suggestion sounds cheesy, do it anyway. Just once. Set aside religions and denominations. Don't consult another book, and don't ask anyone's opinion. Just you and a bible for a little while. Please think about doing that. I really do appreciate your time.
A worthy suggestion. I truly hope people will do that. Good word, friend.
So what say you, then, to us nonbelievers who HAVE done that, and found nothing? Or to us nonbelievers who were raised Christians and at one point truly believed but came to lose faith later? I know plenty of atheists who credit reading the Bible for helping push them AWAY from belief.
So many people say that if there was a God there would be no suffering; we would have Heaven here on earth. But God did not promise us Heaven on earth. On earth we are subject to the laws of nature and physics. Through faith in God, and prayer, miracles can and do happen. That is when the laws of nature and physics suddenly do not apply; a brief moment of Heaven on earth. Only in Heaven will every tear be wiped away. In Heaven there will be no more suffering.
So many people want to go on about science and physics and how smart humans are and how much we have advanced and blah, blah, blah. But God says unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. A little child that has Faith, Hope, and Love.
So many people think that Christians are believing in a bunch of fairy tales (like a little child). Ok, that's fine. Think what you want, it's a free country.
I Am no respecter of persons! I bless who I bless and curse who I curse. I kill and I make alive. I Am!
I refer all of you who are scoffing at the idea that God's Mighty Hand was in all of this, to Psalms 14 and 52: "The FOOL hath saith in his heart 'There is no God'! Let me say to you, if there is no God, there is no you! And since you will not deny that you exist, then the rest of my argument is pretty OBVIOUS!!!
One trauma that can turn you to God(spirituality) is drug addiction
Faith can mean all the difference in the world. If you doubt this, then I would refer you to Man's Search for Meaning, a 1946 book written by concentration camp inmate Dr. Victor Frankl in which the author searches for meaning in suffering. I would also refer you to the composer Olivier Messiaen a major 20th century composer whose compositions drew on what he called "the marvelous aspects of the faith". He composed his Quartet for the End of Time while in a Nazi prisoner of war camp. These men drew strength from their faith where other's would have succumbed to despair. Likewise the Chilean miners drew strength from their faith when they could have done otherwise. They could have become bitter and disillusioned. They could have given up or returned from the ordeal with a poisoned outlook on life. Instead they seem to have a healthy outlook on their ordeal. I don't understand why so many commenters have a problem with this.
I prayer that all of you find Jesus and peace!! I prayer that your lives are blessed and that the love of the God I know to be real and wonderful touches your hearts.
God is. He is good. He is love. Why do we get results that seem good to us sometimes and results that seem bad to us at other times? Only He knows. He's sovereign--meaning everything is His and He can do what He wants with it all. But, He invites us to trust Him to be with us in difficulty, even if He doesn't get us out of it when or how we expect. That's why we need faith. God always wins in the end--and when we trust Him, so do we.
In the end "...every knee shall bow, every tongue confess..." The miners are lucky because they chose to bow and confess now while they had the choice to do so. They will be rewarded for their faith. Praise God!!!
LOL. People still believe in God? Sad times that we still have so many fools in this world.
Can I hear an Amen . . .? Scary actually.
Glad we have exemplary people like you to guide us through the dark, oh all knowing one who has attained such wisdom and discernment. That your wisdom and insights are manifested by ridiculing others, speaks volumes. Look down upon us the next time you fly over on that cloud of yours, and give us a wave.
We'll gesture back. If you catch my drift.
God = good. The devil = evil. This world (to those who believe in a higher power) is a constant battle between good and evil. That is why when good things happen, people give the credit to God, and when bad things happen, the credit goes to the devil. People who do not understand the belief in God probably don't understand that people who believe in God tend to believe in the devil as well. God represents all that is good, he always created free will. The devil chose to leave God and represent all the evil in the world. And it's us, the people, that have the power to choose between the two in every situation. Sometimes certain situations and certain people's decisions do not allow for good to prevail over evil, but that does not mean God is letting bad things happen. That is simply how the system works. It's our responsibility to work together for the greater good to prevent as much evil from realizing itself in our world.
The last time I checked it was men who rescued those miners not god. In fact its mankind who has been doing everything here, we live in this world not god, we live the tragedies and the triumphs here not him. We get through this life as "imperfect" humans, we dont have any special magic powers like god apparently has, so hats off to us because we are what makes the world go round.. " Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful"-Seneca
I believe in God despite the shortcomings that we attribute to Him, even as I believe in my fellow humans despite the same. Irrational? Considering the "rational" behavior that has come from the "no God" segment in parts of history, who cares? Maybe we're made more in His image than we realize. In the film "Shenandoah", with Jimmy Stewart, Stewart says grace before a family meal: "Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn't be here and we wouldn't be eating it if we hadn't done it all ourselves. We worked dog-bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you Lord just the same for the food we're about to eat, amen." The Chileans "did it all themselves" too, and still thanked God just the same. Maybe the inner strength, compassion and resourcefulness that they displayed is both theirs and God's.
Ifeel like the 19 year old miners there was 1 more down there and it was Jesus. And why it happen and the first place it could be a lot of resons . Prayer work and thanks God
what about the ONE Jehovah's Witness ????? Samual ")
Why blame God? Why not blame the actual terrorists who cause the 9/11 tragedy? YOU make your own decision in life, not God. The terrorists of 9/11 decided to hit the twin towers, and as a result killed the 3,000 plus Americans. But in every tragedy comes a positive, and that's where God plays a role. What was the immediate result of 9/11? the country coming together, our country finally uniting and outwardly showing that we do care for one another. Why does it take a tragedy for a country to unite? why did we hear stories of strangers helping each other as the towers burned? How come on a ordinary day, we dont do such thing? We cannot blame God for people's decisions. We can only have faith that people will make good ones. And if they don't, then God is not to blame. We cannot blame God for people killing each other. We can only blame the person who committed the crime because THEY are the one's who decided to do such act. We live unfortunately in a world where people lack patience, lack sympathy, lack empathy, lack selfishness, and mainly lack faith. We turn to guns, we turn to violence, we turn to negativity to solve our problems. We don't want to stop a second and reflect. With reflection, you look at yourself from the outside in, as though ur looking at a mirror, and you ask yourself, why? why did I do this..why am I thinking like this? etc. Reflection is important and goes hand in hand with faith.
My question to you is, in time of need, what do you lean to for support? Do you have faith? If so, in what? How do you get through a rough time in your life? If you knew a loved one was going to die because of an illness, what do you turn to? U cannot blame God, God is only there to help you. Faith is what you can turn to.
Look at the miners story, the only thing that kept them from insanity is their faith. Without faith, what do you turn to? They had faith in God and that's what kept them alive. They helped each other out in time of need. They demonstrated selfishness, something that we are all guilty of lacking. Not only did the miners have faith, but their wives, their families, the whole country of Chile. Faith can move mountains
"Without faith in some man made God what do you turn to"...........
Reality - and trying to leave this world a better place with less suffering in it before you die - simply because it's the decent , humane and noble thing to do.
People did not create themselves!
Believe in a god or not, it's up to each individual to be responsible for their own actions, physical or mental. I think these guys are doing themselves a disservice but attributing their survival to anything but their own strength and comaraderie. You have to admire them. While I don't give much credence to some kind of magical being watching over things (other than the cat goddess Bast), if that helped them make it through it's none of my business.