Why does God punish innocent people?

[tryme]

So, here's the thing. If the Bible is the perfect word of God, and leaves no room for guessing, why does God not save babies? Or people who have never even heard of the name Jesus? Or even been out of the jungle for that matter? And what about the mentally ill, who cannot learn your religion? Or how about babies that die before they can even speak? Jesus clearly says that unbelievers, regardless of why they don't believe, will be enjoying their afterlife in hell.

Romans 10:9-10
ok, well what if you are born mute? Or were never instructed in what to believ by no fault of your own besides the country you were born in?

Revelation 21:8
Cowardly? Really? If you're like, an abused child and so are a bit timid, you're going to hell?

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 18 by ttruscott]

"who sinned" proves they thought he was guilty before he was born/conceived and so they did not think he was innocent.

I don't know about they thought he was guilty before he was born...where do you get that from? Remember, PCE theology is pretty much a one man show as far as I know.

Anyway, what did Jesus say?
" “Neither this man sinned nor his parents,"
So there we have it. Straight from the horse's mouth. If I'm to believe whatever Jesus says, then the blind man didn't sin, and neither did his parents.
So this blows your PCE theology out of the water.

[marco]

The strange inference is that the disciples thought the man himself may have sinned before he was born to be born blind as a punishment...a thought completely unnatural to Jewish theology and only spoken after following Jesus for some 3 years. This story is a great support for our pre-earth existence when we chose to be sinners by our free will and then are sown into the human world Matt 13:36-39.

If we are clever enough, Ted, we can find illustrations in the Bible to back our viewpoint. Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice put it slightly differently: "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose." The Bible accommodates all sorts of ideas. It is from the suggestion of Christ that Catholics get the concept of transubstantiation: Hoc est enim corpus meum. (For this is my body).

The question of why does God punish the innocent is allied to why does he let the innocent suffer at the hands of the unjust. Every person who scans the Bible will find a verse that answers this question in a personal way, which is maybe a remarkable quality of the Holy Book. I wonder if the Koran is so obliging.

[ttruscott]

[Replying to post 18 by ttruscott]

"who sinned" proves they thought he was guilty before he was born/conceived and so they did not think he was innocent.

I don't know about they thought he was guilty before he was born...where do you get that from?

Oh goodness, if he was BORN blind as a punishment for sin, must he not have sinned before he was BORN??? Sin = guilt.

Anyway, what did Jesus say?
" “Neither this man sinned nor his parents,"
So there we have it. Straight from the horse's mouth. If I'm to believe whatever Jesus says, then the blind man didn't sin, and neither did his parents.
So this blows your PCE theology out of the water.

We know the parents were sinners as every church in Christendom will attest to so it is impossible to Christian theology that this verse can be saying they never sinned...and if it doesn't say that they never sinned then it may not say he did not sin except AS A CAUSE OF HIS BLINDNESS!!!!

This blindness was not caused by any sin either this man did or his parents but to show the power of GOD... My theology is floating high in the water just fine thank you...

[Justin108]

God plans to put an end to all human suffering!

What's taking him so long?

But this raises the question "Why does God ALLOW the suffering of the innocent?" and "What is He going to do about it?".

God plans to put an end to all human suffering!

While this answers the "what is he going to do about it", the first question (why does God allow it) remains unanswered

God even promises the memories of former sufferings will be "wiped away" meaning that even if they remember the events, those memories will no longer cause them any emotional or psychological pain.

That's really not what "memories will be wiped away" means but ok

[Justin108]

So it's a life that happens (however briefly)...AFTER their life? An after-life, then? Can I call it that?

I do. I've decided we do have an aware afterlife, good for some, bad for others, Matt 25:46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.� and eternal in nature.

So God told us that if we do not follow him, we will be punished... and this is somehow not coercion? In your mind, God proving his claims is coercion, but threatening us with punishment is somehow... not.

[Justin108]

[Replying to post 7 by JehovahsWitness]

God never punishes the innocent.

God is righteous and never punishes the innocent.

clears throat
From the Gospel of John, Chapter 9, New World Translation
As he was passing along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him: “Rabbi,+ who sinned, this man or his parents, so that he was born blind?� 3 Jesus answered: “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be made manifest in his case.

"who sinned" proves they thought he was guilty before he was born/conceived and so they did not think he was innocent.

Yes and "Neither this man sinned nor his parents" proves that he was not born/conceived guilty... Notice how the question was asked by the disciples, who do not know everything, while the answer (neither this man sinned nor his parents) was given by Jesus... the guy who supposedly knows his stuff.

One should be careful supposing that since it contradicts the clear teachings of other verses and while a verse may elucidate another verse, is can never be accepted as contradicting it

Why do you reject the possibility that the Bible contradicts itself? This brings me back to another one of my topics

viewtopic.php?t=32013&start=50&postdays ... highlight=

You participated up to a certain point but then you just... stopped

The strange inference is that the disciples thought the man himself may have sinned before he was born to be born blind as a punishment...a thought completely unnatural to Jewish theology and only spoken after following Jesus for some 3 years. This story is a great support for our pre-earth existence

So you think Jesus taught PCE to his disciples off-screen so to speak and conveniently left these instances of teaching PCE out of the Bible? Not a single disciple thought it wise to include a mention of that time Jesus told everyone about us existing pre-earth in any of the Gospels?

[ttruscott]

So it's a life that happens (however briefly)...AFTER their life? An after-life, then? Can I call it that?

I do. I've decided we do have an aware afterlife, good for some, bad for others, Matt 25:46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.� and eternal in nature.

So God told us that if we do not follow him, we will be punished... and this is somehow not coercion? In your mind, God proving his claims is coercion, but threatening us with punishment is somehow... not.

Coercion: the act of coercing; use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance. Because coercion defines being forced to change your mind, if we were all coerced by the warning (not proof) of hell, hell would have remained empty! Only if warnings about hell were not fully, completely, perfectly, coercive could someone go against them and sin in the face of them. Hell proves the lack of force in our understanding of the options.

No desire on HIS part to force us to accept HIS deity and non-compliance with HIS warnings about hell by a lot of people prove all discussion about hell was noncoercive and in effect, warnings, not threats. BUT if HE proved hell, then we would indeed be forced to comply because no one would choose to do that which ended them in hell if it was proved...being forced to comply is to be coerced - to learn of the natural (inevitable?) consequences of our actions with no proof they are inevitable or even possible at all is to be warned.

If I warn you that the bridge is out ahead, I am not threatening you with death if you continue to go that way...just the likelihood of the natural consequences. When we were first told of the results of accepting or denying YHWH's claims to deity, we were not threatened with hell if we did not accept HIM, we were warned of the natural consequences that accrue to the rejection of HIS Deity outside of HIS ability to change it...iow, our free will choices were warned to have eternal consequences.

Since Satan then chose to rebel, it is obvious that he was not coerced, he was not forced to believe in HIS claims, and he kept his ability to rebel. Coercion like that is no coercion at all.

[ttruscott]

[Replying to post 7 by JehovahsWitness]

God never punishes the innocent.

God is righteous and never punishes the innocent.

clears throat
From the Gospel of John, Chapter 9, New World Translation
As he was passing along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him: “Rabbi,+ who sinned, this man or his parents, so that he was born blind?� 3 Jesus answered: “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be made manifest in his case.

"who sinned" proves they thought he was guilty before he was born/conceived and so they did not think he was innocent.

Yes and "Neither this man sinned nor his parents" proves that he was not born/conceived guilty... Notice how the question was asked by the disciples, who do not know everything, while the answer (neither this man sinned nor his parents) was given by Jesus... the guy who supposedly knows his stuff.

The phrase "Neither this man sinned nor his parents" was not a definition of their sinless state but defines the following phrase "but it was so that the works of God might be made manifest in his case."

"Neither this man sinned nor his parents" cannot be a definition of their sinlessness because Christianity accepts that all adults are sinners. IF this phrase cannot be read as his parents being sinless, then it need not be read that way for the man at his birth.

To reframe the statement to conform the meaning to the Christian pov: this man was born blind so that the works of God might be made manifest in his case and not as a punishment due to sin, neither his nor his parents.

Jesus knew His stuff and how to hint at the fact that a man could indeed be sinful before birth but your contention that Jesus was saying they were sinless misses the mark.

[ttruscott]

The strange inference is that the disciples thought the man himself may have sinned before he was born to be born blind as a punishment...a thought completely unnatural to Jewish theology and only spoken after following Jesus for some 3 years. This story is a great support for our pre-earth existence

So you think Jesus taught PCE to his disciples off-screen so to speak and conveniently left these instances of teaching PCE out of the Bible? Not a single disciple thought it wise to include a mention of that time Jesus told everyone about us existing pre-earth in any of the Gospels?

I think that hints for our pre-earth existence are found in the NT well over 50 times. It is my contention that the disciples were forbidden to write about pce so they only hinted at it as PCE was for the end times only. The exegesis of all these verses would be the book I have not compiled.

There are at minimum 10 NT verses that support Jesus saying that there would be a new teaching in the future for the church and I think our pre-earth existence and what we did there might be a part of that. And that is not counting the many OT references to a new revelation or more exactly a new interpretation of past revelation as to what it means...no one believes Christian theology is full of all truth yet: John 16:13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. but full truth is promised.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 23 by ttruscott]

We know the parents were sinners as every church in Christendom will attest to so it is impossible to Christian theology that this verse can be saying they never sinned...and if it doesn't say that they never sinned then it may not say he did not sin except AS A CAUSE OF HIS BLINDNESS!!!!

So what I'm getting from this is that for you ted...theology trumps the written word. Theology teaches that everyone is a sinner, so the text CANNOT say that Jesus said the blind man and his parents didn't sin...even though that is what the text actually says!

Wow.