More than you can handle?

[Baruch]

If God exists, then is temptation or testing a good thing or a bad thing?

Is God doing good or evil by this?

Great questions!  You are not a sorcerer's apprentice ;-)  So I won't Mickey Mouse with you ;-))

In human language, we divide things into two or more categories ... in almost all cases.  This limits our conversation to false dichotomies.  There is no escape in thought, speech or writing.  So the answer to both your rhetorical questions, the answer is yes.  The Buddhists are much more clear on this ... because they are more grounded and understand the futility of language.

So these are false dichotomies.  For example "is Bob taller or shorter than John?"  That is one kind of question.  Another kind would be "is Bob tall or is John short?".  The first kind is reasonable ... "tall" and "short" depend on what you are comparing.  The second (2) questions are ill formed.  They presuppose and unstated absolute standard.  This applies to all vocabulary ... and it is culturally dependent as well.  In Chinese, "blue" has a different range of meaning than it does in English.  So the question of "exist or not exist" is in fact ... a false dichotomy.  Nothing wrong with using language, but it makes a great difference to one, if one knows what one is doing or not.  Mastering language/thought is a never ending challenge.  And with out that, we literally don't know what we are talking about!

[Blackleaf]

I found a relevant video on this topic.

[Baruch]

I give marginal credit to the OT ... in that the Book of Job was included.  Confirmation of exactly what that video says.  Though in that context, you don't have the mumbo-jumbo of Christian dogma added on.  Don't miss the bit I added about Acharya S ... where the interview with one of the other others debunking Christianity says that ... even before Christianity became a Roman state religion, it was controlled opposition.

[widdershins]

A popular saying among Christians is, "God will never give you more than you can handle." Like the concept of free will, it's taken for granted without any Biblical support. Also like free will, it's complete BS. I don't even know what it's supposed to mean. Does it mean that God won't give you more than you can physically handle? What about the martyrs who died for their faith? Seems to me that a death blow for sticking to your guns is more than one can physically handle.

Maybe it means that God will never give you more temptation than you can handle. As in, he won't allow so much suffering in your life that you will be unable to continue to believe, and your faith will be strengthened. This is one I've heard many before, and many here are living proof that that is also a load of horse dung. I was the most faithful Christian I could be, helping out in many ministries, attending church one to three times a week, and applying my beliefs in my every day life. But as more and more weight was put on my shoulders, I begged God to give me some relief. I struggled with depression, I lost all my church friends when my family changed churches, my sister came out as lesbian, my dreams of becoming a councilor were crushed. Unless he's incompetent, he knew my limits, and he went well beyond them. He gave me more than I could handle.

So what does it mean? God allows Christians to be murdered when they've done nothing wrong, he allows them to lose faith when they've tried their hardest to hold onto it, and Christians know both of these things are true. Is it just an excuse to blame ex-Christians for not believing hard enough, or are they just meaningless words meant to make Christians feel better about their god allowing them to suffer?

Man, so much of that reminds me of my days as a Christian and the horrible end that created the dark and soulless creature I am today.  My parents didn't change churches, though.  Doing so would have been choosing the devil over God because they had found an "easier" path.  The path to righteousness isn't supposed to be easy!  And it was my sister's son that came out as gay, though that was years later.  God, I love that kid!  He is pure, undiluted dick covered in skin.  He invented cynicism and just has an awesome sense of humor.  But I digress.

You got it right with the excuse to blame the ex-Christian.  I'm sure you remember the days well, but depending on how long ago it was, you might not yet have realized that while you were faithful, EVERYTHING good in your life came from God, right down to every single bite of every single meal you worked your ass off to put on the table.  You got credit for NOTHING but being faithful enough.  And the bad?  Who was responsible for that?  It was either a test of your faith (a good thing) or a combination of the devil AND yourself.  If you were depressed it's because YOU let the devil in.  Yes, the devil oppresses people, but ONLY if they let him.  In other words, everything good that happened no matter how big a part you played was 100% God's doing, everything bad that happened you, personally, held at least some responsibility for, and usually a considerable amount.  This is not a way of life that leads to well-adjusted mentally stable individuals.

And the "more than you can handle" really has no meaning.  It's psychobabble, as I like to call it.  It's when you say something that "sounds" really smart, but when you stop and think about it to figure out what is being said you can come to no conclusion but "That makes no fucking sense!"  It's like "There's no I in 'team'".  So?  There's an M and an E?  Does that have meaning?  Or one of my personal favorites I saw on a commercial or PSA years ago, "Nobody ever always or nevers".  You mean they "never" do?  It's meaningless shit which sounds wise because if vaguely confers some meaning in a manner which seems mysterious because it's incomprehensible nonsense.

As for the concept of "free will", not only is that not in the Bible, there are cases in the Bible where it is explicitly shown to be not a thing God was concerned about.  Like when Moses was asking Pharaoh to free the Jews, but that would have really fucked up God's plans to kill a bunch of people, so God "hardened his heart" because, apparently, left of his own devices, Pharaoh would have been totally cool about it and said, "Yeah, all right.  It's not like you're actually here anyway, right?  I mean, history will have no record of your slavery whatsoever, so you're probably not even here anyway.  Might as well bugger off, then."  But then God wouldn't have been able to go all Dumbledore on their asses, so he did an Imperius curse on him so that he could rain Hell down on them like he planned.

As for whether God is doing good or evil by testing people, what his intentions are, etc., it really doesn't matter because it really doesn't happen.  God is just a human invention to make people feel special, powerful and good.  It is a device to give a sense of wonder to those too mentally shallow to look out into the universe and get one for themselves.  It is a device to alleviate people of the bad feelings they have for doing wrong and to excuse future wrongdoing, either through forgiveness or as the "will of God".  It is an excuse to legitimize bigotry, hatred and violence and to feel good about subjugating women as if they were still property.  And when the devout paint themselves into a corner, preventing them from doing something they really want to do, they invent exceptions to allow for their own desires.  This is very apparent in Jewish culture, where they surround an entire neighborhood with a string, inside of which they are allowed to do something (I forget exactly what) which they normally cannot do on the Sabbath or something.  Or they invent phones that are much harder to use because they can't have buttons because pushing a button is "work" as it was defined when pushing buttons at work became commonplace.  Christians are like amateur lawyers, always trying to convince the judge within themselves that what they want is the actual right thing to do as defined by an unquestionable authority.

[drunkenshoe]

I didn't know that Christian phrase as "God will never give you more than you can handle" in future tense, but in present tense as "God never gives us more than we can handle" which intends to cover past-present-future; inidivudal's destiny and god's plan for each and as a whole. But I think it comes to the same point.

I think the interpretation is that what god gives you; everything in your destiny; every little thing that happens to you and you do is what you can handle and conquer, fight and make the best of it, and of course if you can't, you are the guilty and the 'unworthy one' that failed, because god knows what you can handle and doesn't give you that.

So God is just, washed off from any responsibility and has nothing to do with what is wrong. Only humans are responsible from anything that goes wrong. You!

-Another means of absolute control; prevent people from questioning anything or stop them to stand up to anything oppressive; revolting.

If you think about the standard life until around 200 years ago, this has more to do with your soveriegn, landlord, master or whoever you have to work for without questioning to your death without any rights than it has to do with any god. Think about it as some sort of a pre-caution against any possibility of rebellion, uprising or revolution. Because every little bullshit in every religion actually has a function in real life. Rest is just fairy tales.

Does it still work? Oh yeah, big time. I actually think it works better now today -considering the circumstances of the time we live in- compared to hundreds or even thousands of years ago when people really had rights.