RRC Archives

At least I think they settled around there. I would have to spend sometime looking through Joshua in the OT to figure out. However, Jebus in place of Jerusalem can be found in Judges.

mike_a_lafontaine wrote:I've never understood the prayer thing. If you believe everything is in God's hands and God is all-knowing, why bother praying? If he has a plan, and you trust God fully, aren't you really asking him to change his plan? Don't you think he knows you want the little kid to not die of cancer? And if the kid is healed, you say it's the power of prayer, but if the kid dies, it was "in God's plan". Or maybe not enough people prayed? So God is a prick? I just don't get it.

Thats a good question. If you believe in an all knowing, all powerful God why do we need to pray? And why does God ask people to in the Bible? I used to think the same thing. Then I read a book that opened my eyes that prayer is for me and not God. To open my eyes, to trust him (even when it's tough), and to look to him for strength on this earth.* Does God sometimes change circumstances when people really seek him...I think sometimes and I think the Bible shows that too. Sometimes he changes the direction of things radically sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes we know why sometimes we don't. Thats tough to deal with but if you believe their is a God out there it makes sense.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the guys who Nebuchadnezzar was going to throw them in the furnace, said that they knew God could save them, but even if he didn't they wouldn't be unfaithful to him. Some view that as stupid, some view it as the truest definition of "faith".

*Might sound stupid but by the same token you'd have to call Buddhist meditation* or any prayer to any higher being stupid too.

As far as suffering/bad stuff goes. Thats one of the toughest questions to get your head around and I don't think we ever will until we see him face to face. (wow...sound more like a stuffy christian) The best definition I've ever heard is that God really wanted to give us a choice to love him. And for that to happen he had to allow us to experience him AND the opposite of him. And he has to give the opposite of him a fair fight...unfortunately evil doesn't play nice. It makes a lot of our experience here pretty miserable, and it's pretty indiscriminate in how and when it hits.

A good analogy is to imagine the person you want to marry, and you're ready to take the plunge. The night of your proposal a guy comes up to you and offers you a pill that you could give them and assure an answer of yes, their faithfulness, and love for the rest of their life. Would you slip them the pill? Probably not. Because you'd want to know if they really love you, and really want to be with you of their own accord. They have to have the option to not love you for them to truly love you.

If God made this world devoid of bad stuff, or if he made it that way for people who believed in him, who wouldn't "love" him. But it wouldn't be "true" love. We'd be robots and he doesn't want us to be robots...neither do we. Right now we're in between...and get (have) to experience good and evil and the effects of them.

Christians hate suffering too. Especially when it seems so unfair. God grieves with us then and wants to comfort us, help us, and eventually wipe every tear from our eyes and take us away from the pain. We just have to want that.

PS The Bible also says that true Christians are going to have a rough time in this life and that their suffering will actually increase if they truly follow him. If you read about people following God in the Bible they're constantly getting their butts kicked, mistreated, abused, and killed. You think if you were gonna make up a religion you'd leave that part out.

PS A single post in a thread won't fully answer this question. It's just something that's helped me understand this question we all have.

PS This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated. -Mitch Hedberg

Also Bible Quotes don't mean much to a group of atheist/agnostic climbers, but how do you feel about this quote from a book that we're all familiar with?

"Religious philosophers often point to signs of "intelligent design" in the natural world as proof of God's existence---arguments that I generally scoff at. But the nature of climbing in the Red sometimes makes me wonder. When one is desperately making a blind reach, it is not uncommon to find a natural pocket that is exactly where it needs to be and perfectly fits the human hand, complete with a mini-pocket for the thumb. The overall quality of the rock, the diversity of the holds, the continual steepness that makes for clean falls and athletic moves --- all of these contribute to the sense that if one could actually construct an outdoor cliff with real rock, this is what it would be like." -Bill Ramsey, RRG Rock Climbs 3rd Ed. pg 12

That pic is just a joke, everyone knows it was Saint George who slayed the dragon: http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk ... orge2.html

shuffleboardfan wrote: Thats tough to deal with but if you believe their is a God out there it makes sense.

once again, god turning things that don't make sense into things that do. now only god can do that. wtf? really?

shuffle, appreciate your thoughts...

let me follow up on your freely loving god thought process. I happen to see it just the opposite. and after strating to read the book "godless" it makes more sense to me.

god is not allowing you to freely love him. if you do not, he is offering a painful afterlife for you. "love me or burn in hell for eternity".

that,my friend, is not free will at all, but coercion out of fear. again, lest ye think I am just trying to be contrarian, the more I have really wrestled with god, the less sense it all makes. when I started asking the deep question, the emporer had no clothes. I hated this "truth" as much as the next guy, because like Lurkist said, I am also hardwired like all humans to want a reason and explanation for death, pain, sadness....the christian answer continually comes up empty in my mind. but truly, best of luck if you honestly can believe this stuff. too many if/thans and loose ends for many.

the lurkist wrote:Some adulterated tome that is pounded into your head when you are susceptible to fairy tales isn't what gives me pause. Nor is it the lifeboat mentality of life ever after for those that subordinate themselves to a narcissistic deity.

BUMP! BUMP!

the lurkist wrote:What makes me think there may be a benevolent God is the perfect stone we climb on. So many bitching lines, movement so good, the marriage of movement over stone and stone itself to make a momentary revelation. Bill said it best in the beginning of Ray's guide.

The stone breaks. Some of it is good. A lot of it is bad. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Even though perfect stone sounds like an objective statement, it is not. Working a wild route into something we climb takes . . . well work. A route is more--as much the creation and imagination of the developer as something establish by Ma Nature. Of course Hugh's and Bill's tongues were protruding far into their cheeks while stating the above.

the bible ≠ god

the two are not in any way related. god can't write things down. end of story.

Nuff said.