God can write straight with crooked lines.

[bill4long]

[I Have Questions]

agency also doesn't cover all evil. human agency didn't cause an earthquake under the ocean that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in tidal waves.

Are you suggesting getting rid of techtonic plates?

Good discussion all! Just checking in again. My wife and I returned from Idaho this evening after attending mother-in-law's funeral. December was an interesting month for us with my wife's injuries from the auto accident in addition to all that led up to the passing of a sweet Christlike woman.

When I saw this thread was still chugging along with some excellent contributions it made me happy. I'm glad that good discussion CAN take place when people put their minds to it without rancor and wagging fingers.

And without telling people they’ve shot themselves in the foot before running away when you realise it is actually yourself blowing your own toes off.

[I Have Questions]

Let me throw something else into the mix:

Fractal geometry offers a useful metaphor in this discussion as we consider that the “crooked,” jagged details of a fractal can embody a hidden, coherent pattern, much like a providential order running through the twists and failures of a human life.

Crooked lines becoming straight but from our point of view 'randomized' and somewhat incoherent and even incomprehensible...running many different directions at sometimes odd angles...but forming fractal patterns that may show, from the outside looking in (outside observer), a coherent pattern that actually makes sense from the view of the observer (God and those that are privy to being able to see the end from the beginning).

I would argue that our view within our limited dimension of reality doesn't do justice to patterns of complicated fractal designs.

Regards,
MG

Is child abuse by, say, an Apostle’s brother, that was further facilitated by the removal of a red flag from that persons church record by the First Presidency, a crooked line for the victims, or writing straight for the perpetrator?

Do that thing again where you latch onto a concept that you don’t understand and then apply it exactly ass backwards!

[I Have Questions]

How would existence look any different if it were nature writing the lines? If “God writes straight with crooked lines” can justify any theology, then it cannot function as a meaningful starting point for evaluating a specific one.

MG 2.0 has not yet addressed this key hole in his proposition.

Zeus writes straight with crooked lines.
Nature writes straight with crooked lines.
Pot luck, chance, and coincidence write straight with crooked lines.
Wishful thinking writes straight with crooked lines.
A magic 8 ball writes straight with crooked lines.
Thetans write straight with crooked lines.
The Force writes straight with crooked lines.

[Limnor]

On your question the moral worry you’re sensing is real. If God uses evil by causing it, then God becomes morally compromised.
Paul avoids this by insisting that God never needs to author evil and that evil already exists in human refusal.This makes God’s role as judicial, not manipulative. So, God does not lie, coerce, or deceive, but instead allows chosen paths to occur. Judgment in this regard is letting reality become honest. This is what keeps God asymmetrically sovereign, or rather, not bound by human limits, yet never acting through moral corruption.

There are reasons why Paul leans on mystery here. Notice what Paul doesn’t do in Romans 9. He does not explain how hardening works psychologically. We also don't read where he offers a mechanical model either. He actually refuses to reduce divine action to human categories and instead of this short cut, he draws a boundary.
God is not accountable to human expectations of fairness, but God is also not unjust. That tension is intentional giving us to understand that Paul is protecting transcendence without tyranny. Or to put it differently, Paul’s claim that God “hardens” does not require God to override human will. This can be understood to mean that God does not force people to do evil. Instead, God decides when to stop holding them back. When that restraint ends, people are allowed to follow the path they have already chosen, and the results of those choices play out in history. In this way, God’s plan can move forward without God causing evil or taking away anyone’s ability to choose. It’s like a teacher who keeps warning a student and stepping in to help. Eventually, the teacher stops intervening, not to make the student fail, but to let the student experience the result of their own decisions.

I think this is accurate. Paul seems less interested in explaining how it works than in saying God is like the vineyard owner—he keeps his promises and does no wrong, and he doesn’t owe an explanation for his choices.

[Limnor]

The fractal metaphor is appealing, and I get why it resonates. Romans 8 and Ecclesiastes paint a different picture though. Creation isn’t portrayed as an eye pleasing fractal so much as it is fractured, groaning while it waits for redemption.

[I Have Questions]

Over the years participating on this board, I have seen so many examples of this truth:

God can write straight with crooked lines.

Okay. Of the “so many” examples of God writing straight with crooked lines that you have seen whilst participating on this board, please can you provide one?

[Gadianton]

Philosophers distinquish between "natural evil" and "moral evil"

All these philosophers are also white men. Is that bad? are you going to call me "woke" for saying it? WWWS?

Plantinga's free will defense moves the conversation to natural evil, as God and free will are both present, in his interpretation, in all possible worlds. It doesn't matter how much evil by humans, God shrugs and walks away saying 'cuz freewill. The argument makes more sense than it sounds like it would. But that doesn't cover 9.0 earthquakes that kill hundreds of thousands of people. That is fully on God. MG says, "what God should get rid of plate tectonics?" flippantly, because like usual he doesn't take time to appreciate the problem. The answer is "yes" he should, otherwise he's evil. The only way out, really, is to suggest that earthquakes are caused by evil demons. We're back to the supernatural where everything is a result of moral agency. There is a way out unique to Mormons. Many Mormons believe that intelligence is fundamental to all matter in the universe, and that God doesn't use physics in the normal sense, but rather expresses his will to the intelligent counterpart to matter, which obeys him. I grew up hearing more exotic versions of this idea. My mom used to say that even the earth has a spirit. So in some versions of this, God doesn't have to talk every individual atom into what he wants but might speak with the emergent clumps, like planets. But planets still have free agency. So the earth "groans" because it's offended by all the sin done by humans and causes earthquakes. The earth isn't so much evil, as it's like an animal responding to pain.

[Fence Sitter]

Over the years participating on this board, I have seen so many examples of this truth:

God can write straight with crooked lines.

Okay. Of the “so many” examples of God writing straight with crooked lines that you have seen whilst participating on this board, please can you provide one?

The problem isn’t a lack of examples. The problem is that the criteria used to determine whether God is behind those examples is so broad that it allows virtually anything to be included, making it a useless tool for investigating or determining anything. We can see this clearly in Holland’s Wrong Roads talk. The same pattern shows up frequently in fast and testimony meetings, where people describe a difficult experience and then infer some hidden benefit from it. But literally any experience can be framed that way. So, when you ask MG to provide examples, whatever he offers will inevitably be Texas sharpshooter versions.

[bill4long]

Philosophers distinquish between "natural evil" and "moral evil"

All these philosophers are also white men. Is that bad? are you going to call me "woke" for saying it? WWWS?

What?