Comparing Hefling's The Good And Punishment Of Evil

At the same time, suffering remains always a mystery to understand. But suffering could be understood when it is connected with redemption. For Aquinas, evil is the privation of good, as is seen above, there immediately arises the question whether is it absolute privation? If it is absolute privation how could it bring something good out of evil? Pope John Paul II says that evil is privation, but it becomes not as the total privation or total absence of good.

Only in God and with God’s word, their needs could be satisfied. However, people are often influenced by the things in this world. Moreover, since the Fall, Satan has been working to deceive mankind. That is why people need God’s wisdom to choose to obey God. Though we are saved, and the power of sin has been broken, but we still could have sinful, unbelieving heart.

Humans are naturally evil and deserving of hell because of their failure to reach God’s standard of holiness, the sin they choose to commit, and their sinful nature, making them fully responsible. One must understand how holy God is and how wicked humans are in comparison to understand why we are evil. God is mentioned as “holy, holy, holy” in the Bible (Isaiah 6). In Hebrew culture, repetition marks significance, for ancient Hebrew writing did not have punctuation like exclamation marks. Also, threefold repetition marks completion with a beginning, middle, and end (Patterson, The Use of Three in the Bible).

Even in today 's age, these two stories still affirm the evil that manifests inside humans. In these two stories, both Young Goodman Brown and Monstresor see the evil in others, which motivates their actions. No matter how we try to be faithful, loyal, or pure, we as humans cannot escape the evil that is concealed in our hearts and minds. The

1. What is the purpose of this book and its central thesis (philosophy or perspective)? Unmasking administrative evil is a book about the relationship between evil and public administration and other related fields. This book analyses the evil of how unjustly or needless pain and suffering or death on other human being, not seeing other human being as human.

“What can we do to accept one another through our differences?” Being different from one another is a positive thing because it gives us something unique or special, unlike a world that is full of boredom. In the book “The Chrysalids,” by John Wyndham, people who are identified as abnormal or have deviations are symbolized by the image of the devil. Therefore, they are either killed or abandoned at birth because of their abnormality that people disapprove of. The intolerance that people show in the story and the actions David displays against it reveals the definition of being human.

Humanity seems to be in revolt against both God and humanity. Then, God is deus duplex, meaning that while He provides grace and mercy through Jesus Christ, there is wrath and darkness in the world. The world is equally a paradox, therefore, both have been created and has fallen, both are good and corrupt and has the potential for good and evil. And despite all of this, God can still do good in the evil world and culture … which He, by the way,

Thus, the Cider House Rules challenges the beliefs of the dominant culture and develops a specific vision of the problem of human nature, in which making mistakes and behaving in the ways that may not be accepted well by the society is a norm. In contrast to the mentioned perspective concerning the Christianity, the Children of Men seems to align with the principles of the religion. The humanity is here depicted as faulty in the events that occur, which means that it is destroying the surrounding world feeling it as God. At the same time, the saving of the last child seems to be the beginning of the new humanity, which would appear improved. As a result, the religious perspective is emphasized in the

It is a convenient and comforting respond to unfortunate and even devastating ‘fate’. The pain becomes bearable to those who suffer because it is all part of a bigger plan, it is more than ‘you’. This concept is also built upon an irrational fundamental attitude, “the surrender of self to the ordering power of society.” (54) The problem of theodicy does not end at that.

However, the speaker is not satisfied with simply accepting humanities sin. As the poem continues the speaker asks God why ‘If lecherous goats, if serpents envious/Cannot be damn’d alas why should I be? /Why should intent, or reason, born in me, /Make

Hick acknowledges that there is a knowledgeable separation between God and people, and he states that people are morally flawed and “immature creatures”. Because of these two statements, Hick thinks God has created people in his image, but not as replicas of

The puritans were those who had it right. Puritans believed they were born totally depraved with the original sin, showing that evil is the nature of men and they had it all correct. They believed everyone had sin and it took an extraordinary person to overcome their evil impulses. The innocent persons

Whether these evils be moral or natural, humans have the free will to react to them in whatever manner they choose. Therefore, God’s test lies in a human’s reaction to the suffering they receive from the evils inflicted upon them. Often times, in cases of illness or natural disaster, when one deals with extreme loss, they also may lose God in the process. Essentially, there are two reactions that can occur when humans deal with worldly evils. When one suffers from acts of evil, they may question God’s existence because of his permittance of these evils, and may even denounce God.

God has a right to be angry at the human world. Humans make mistakes left and right, but we don’t sin in purpose. God forgives us for our sins, but the Author of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” said something different. Jonathan Edwards told many that even the smallest sin, even a sin that can easily be set right, deserves the same punishment as killing someone.

Everything around us is built of our faith in our senses, and our faith in other people. Without faith we are surrounded by the fear of the known, every neighbour could be planning our death, our senses could be simulated by some machine; and without faith in God, for many people can be the difference between bearing the evil of the world and slipping into the world of oblivion and chaos. Yet is this faith in God rational or not? Mackie thinks not, in his essay “Evil and Omnipotence” he uses the problem of evil in the world to expose the irrationality of God. He shows how, the contradicts of an Omni God makes the belief in such a being irrational.