I’m 72 and I guess you can say I’m a lapsed Catholic. Born and raised and attended Catholic school for 12 years. One thing that still bugs me is why would the all powerful, all knowing God create beings he knew were imperfect, would sin, and then condemn them to eternal suffering?
That is Molinism, which is opposed to Thomism. Thomism should be held by all since St. Thomas Aquinas, who is a saint and doctor, has a higher theological sentencia (more theological weight) than Luis de Molina, who is neither a saint nor doctor.
May the Lord’s Countenance be upon you.
Welcome to the forum : )
God created perfectly, but it was the fall that corrupted creation. God created free-will, for had He not, how can there be love? Robots are incapable of love. But, He did not create us robots, but rather in His own image (with the ability to love, create, and reason).
God is order and God is love. Without Him, man is disordered and cannot love in the way in which God intended. For without God, man’s love becomes disordered.
I would like to recommend a book to you that I have recommended to many others in this forum. The book is titled, “A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God’s Covenant Love in Scripture” by Dr. Scott Hahn. In it, Dr. Hahn points out the many chances our God has given us throughout Salvation History (like a Father often does). I think it will give you a better understanding of God’s vengeance and justice, as well as His love and mercy.
Thank you for you genuine and honest question. My Grandma also struggled with this, and she was/is a saint. Christ’s peace! And if you ever want to come back to Church, know that you are always welcome! When I felt God calling me back, I had many thoughts like, Would I be welcomed back and How much have things changed since I fell away. But, God assured me the day that I returned that I was indeed welcomed back and that His love for me has not changed!
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The Old Testament God: Warring tribes and humans in Old Testament times seemed to closely emulate the Old Testament God (e.g. war, jealousy, smite, killing, etc). It’s argued that the similarity between Man and God was not that Man was emulating God…but that God was emulating Man (ie God is a human construct modeled after human behavior).
Related to this topic, I’ve also seen the argument raised that animals, wild animals, the natural world experiences a tremendous amount of suffering and why would a loving God subject animals to undo and an untold level of suffering? Collateral damage perhaps, but some seem to still beg the question.
This Sunday’s First Reading shows the mercy of God in the Old Testament and also shows how annoying we can be at times, but God encourages us to be persistent in our Prayers (even if we think we are annoying Him ; )
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He created human beings out of Divine benevolence, that instead if being automatons we would freely choose the Good. As St. Paul says, He ‘made us like gods’. We can create, we can build, we can love. He also nurtured our ancestors, as He does us, plenty of pointers and a conscience as foundation to guide our steps. And sin, wrongdoing, He made a distant possibility to the point of a mere vague abstraction or faint idea so that His created beings, His children, would not be thundered at by looming temptations to go about anything but being in His Holy keep and company (evil-doing when one has been in the way of negative experience and allowed it to consume us), as it was enough for us to be free and truly living creatures to have only the potential for evil and which God when He created humanity did not let this highly unlikely yet possible future occurrence act as a deterrent as He in each moment takes us in expectation at our best and which is to be like Him - as Christ says, ‘Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect’.
Then along came Satan, having once been Lucifer, who fell with the other angels who followed his lead, from Heaven, because He wanted to take God’s place, and who tempted Eve and who then seduced Adam. He was the principle agent, the catalyst factor in sin becoming heavy on their minds (from wrongdoing having only been a distant possibility). Their fall from grace was unfathomable, as if sending shockwaves through the Universe, a spiritual catastrophe upon Earth, Paradise lost, as obedience alone was that which would see God’s Creation chaperoned in a utopia as they walked with Him in the Eden of their hearts.
The journey back to God for humanity meant people having to learn of God from a remote view, their consciences blighted from Adam and Eve’s fall, this meaning that generations of Jews, His chosen peoples, the most observant and attentive race through which God would walk, must succeed in making God known throughout the ages, with prophecies of their return back to Paradise, and which they misinterpreted as being another King David, of this world, and only for the Jews.
Then God gave His only Son.
“Vengeful”? Jealous! Are you speaking of the Greek’s and the Roman’s Grecian-adopted deities who craved power and strength with ambition and worldly aims?
God is indeed those things, vengeful (‘protective’, is more accurate) and jealous, yet the difference being that He is those things because He wishes for primary place in our lives and the lives ultimately of all of humanity because God loves His creation and knows what is good for us. ‘God is Love’, exclaims St. Paul. Were He not those things, we would be like a sailor with neither map nor stars or even a heavily disabled person without a care-worker. It is for love, and is Love, that humanity is chased for our attention and we can see His benevolence in Creation and all around us.
It is as Christ said, ‘Only God is Good’.
And it is through Christ’s Life, Death and Resurrection that in His Mercy, God made sure humanity could have a way back.
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