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“If you go to any culture where Christianity is absent or a minority view, you will see the exact same kind of events happening.” If this is true, you’re right – there is no advantage to following Christ. But if, after an honest examination of the evidence, you do see a difference what then?

Faith begs the question, What do I see or more accurately whom do I see? Do I see things only from their outward appearances? Do I rely only on my perceptions and judgement for recognizing truth and beauty? What criteria do I use to apprehend those things that are beyond me or must I accept that there is nothing beyond me? I think you are right to desire evidence and preferences to choose among the alternatives. By faith I trust that God has wired us this way – a generous thing on his part.

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@TRR: Well said. I believe Rom 8:28 “All things work together for good” has often been wrested from its context of eternal security, as elaborated in v29-30, to describe God’s hand at work as the immediate cause of intrinsically evil acts or happenings. Doing so vilifies God’s character. God describes himself as grieved by sin and wickedness. In Jer 19:5 God breathes this comment on the murdering of infants: “…which I commanded not, nor spake [it], neither came [it] into my mind.”

It seems that many struggle to reconcile God’s professed holiness and perfection with the continuance of sin and suffering day after day. Even more troublesome to some is the thought that sinful acts could in any way fit into God’s designs. Maybe I’m simple-minded, but I’m more puzzled by the view through the other end of that looking-glass. Which of our thoughts and actions is without sin? Are not the hearts of men wicked, tainting all noble motives? If God were not long-suffering, and therefore willing to preserve cities and nations of great wickedness because of the imperfect, sin-tainted faithfulness of a few (Nineveh, Israel in Elijah’s day), fervent heat would have purified His fallen creation long ago.

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I’ve yet to find anyone who can tell me how losing a child can be a good thing – someone who has a right to say anything about it at all, that is. I’m not saying I haven’t seen anything good thing come of it, but that isn’t the same as it being a good thing.

Some things are just bad. We have to accept them along with the good, as Job and Andree have said.

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I see God operating in the Bible in the same way and regardless whether it seems He makes a big pictuer difference, He still does. I know heresy for some but that is how I see Him. A cosmic coach preparing us for our work. We represent Him, for good or for bad, and He gets the credit for the “wins” and “losses”. It’s my responsibilty to follow direction and run until He subs me.

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Consider this: If you go to any culture where Christianity is absent or a minority view, you will see the exact same kind of events happening. Some people will have successes in their marriages, families, economic fortunes, careers, and others will have failures and setbacks. Babies will be born, people will die, some will find the perfect job, others will labor on unhappily at low paying work.

The only difference is that they will not be thanking the Christian God for their good fortunes or struggling to understand his intentions when things go badly.

Whatever God may or may not do seems to make no difference in the big picture. So how is there any evidence that what happens in the lives of believers is in any way different from what happens in the lives of otehrs?

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Prayer then becomes more than simply asking – as if God were a kind of Santa Claus. But it includes asking and trusting that we are in dialogue with the prime mover and the one who knows us more than we know ourselves (as well as all circumstances past and present). Our confidence in prayer is not based on our asking as much as on the one to whom we appeal. Even if our “son does not survive a wreck” God is at work in ways we can only know by faith in this life. This is not fatalistic but hopeful because he is calling us to lives centered on him instead of ourselves.

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I am not easily definable theologically, but “Deist” is probably the term that comes closest. I believe God gave us reasoning abilities and physical capabilities to make our way in the world, but does not manipulate circumstances, whether for us or against us.

Events unspool as they do, the never-predictable interaction of natural forces, human will, limited knowledge and moment-to-moment decisions. Sometimes things go our way and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes something that seems bad can turn to a good. But that works in the other direction too.

I believe God doesn’t intervene in those things. Some people have greater natural abilities than others, and some people get luckier than others. (Nothing mystical about luck, either.)

I understand the idea that “God works in mysterious ways” and what might seem bad to us is good from God’s point of view. But I think that is just rationalization. The homeless man may tell himself “God is preventing me from getting back on my feet because I need to learn humility,” but they guy is still sleeping on a heating grate at night and getting beat up in the alley while God sits by and allows it.

See, you can do that with anything. If the police drive by in time to keep the hooligans from beating up the homeless guy, that’s God intervening for his protection. If no one comes and they beat and kick him until he’s bloody, that’s God not interfering in their free will to sin.

You know, God, in Ms. Seu’s view, could have easily prevented 9/11. All he’d have to do is make sure a few mechanical problems kept some of the hijackers from getting to the airports on time, and nothing would have happened that day. So I hear rationalizations, ranging from “God was punishing the US for its tolerance of sin,” to “We needed something to snap us out of complacency.” (At a cost of thousands of lives both on the day and in the years since.)

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The answer has more to do with what you see God as, a brutal micromanager like Jigsaw, a Creator who designs some “bad” to accomplish “good” (Romans 9:22, John 17:12, Genesis 45:5, taken in context), or as a grandfather who gets his grandkids wound up before sending them home for bed.

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It actually is all about you, Andree. This idea that God is so intensely interested in your personal well-being is the height of egotism.

I don’t mean to single you out personally; it’s a common belief. But all you’re doing is looking at what has happened to you and finding a way to rationalize it that allows you to see it as God working behind the scenes on your behalf, instead of what it really is.

And what it really is is the effect of people interacting, making decisions, being affected in some cases by pure luck, and using their skills and intellect to take advantage of opportunities.

If God is really pulling the strings for all of us, that means he allowed four teenagers to die in a car crash near my community a week ago. It means that God designates some soldiers in Iraq to turn at just the right time to dodge a bullet they didn’t see coming, and designates others to take the bullet and leave their families bereaved.

You wrote in an earlier post of believing your son would have been killed in a wreck had you not prayed, which means God is in heaven saying “Ask me nicely or your son doesn’t get out of this.” That’s not God, that’s the madman from the “Saw” movies.

If God micromanages our lives the way you portray it, and you want to credit Him for every good thing, then you have to blame Him for every senseless tragedy too. Sure, it’s the robber who chooses to pull the trigger and murder the clerk at the store he’s robbing, but God could have clerk slip in a puddle and fall just in time to be spared.

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