Faith
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
Any novels on someone struggling with his faith because of all the misery in the world?
the holy bible
>>7941883
Job
>>7941883
brothers k
something something dostoyevsky
>>7941883
Silence by Shusaku Endo is literally the perfect novel on the subject.
It's even named Silence because God sends no signs and his silence is crushing while the protagonist hears the moans and screams of innocent Christians who ever have a purer faith than him. Honestly 10/10 novel outside the prose because translations.
>>7941910
I was going to suggest precisely that author. His book, Deep River, is also a good choice.
>>7941883
Candide
>>7941910
that sounds like an exquisitely painful book
>>7941883
What a dumb reason to doubt in theism. All you have to do to resolve it is stop claiming God is good in the same way we recognize people as good, and that you worship him for his power. Just admit that God considers good whatever he commands, and our concept of good is related to animal instincts and not to God's commands.
>but muh feels
It's the divine command theory of morality. Closest thing to an intellectually honest theism there is so you'd better get used to it or start fedora shopping.
>>7941910
I once blew a steamy load of jizz on the face of the great-something granddaughter of a Japanese kakure kirishitan (Catholic) martyr recognized as a martyr by the church. True story.
Take that, Christfags.
>>7943480
>It's easy to speak as a sheltered first worlder for me and you both.
What does that even mean in this context? Sure, I don't feel the need for divine comfort as much as someone struggling to survive, but I also have the luxury of that detachment and time to examine the logic behind my beliefs. While someone who desires divine comfort more than I do will have a harder time admitting that it does not exist in a "real" sense, that does not make their opinions more valid.
If there is a God, he is a self-centered and unpredictable despot. He is not a good, super-moral man in the sky. He is a ruler with no oversight who we disobey at our peril.
>>7943191
for you
>>7943205
Divine Command Theory is retarded.
Just wanted to relay that message.
>>7943517
>closest thing to an intellectually honest theism
That was not an endorsement of divine command theory or of theism.
>>7941883
The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? by David Hart
>>7943519
No but Divine Command Theory is still retarded, and wouldn't stop any thinking person from feeling that there is a horrible disconnect between believing in an omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient deity existing universe while 5 year old children die in extremis from bone cancer.
Isn't that what faith is? If there wasn't any misery, what use would faith be for?
>>7941883
City of God.
>>7943562
You mean Confessions?
City of God is important because it argues against concept of God as a voluntatist and has an irrefutable argument for the problem of evil.
>>7943528
You're missing the point. Divine command theory implies that God is not omnibenevolent. He's just omnipotent and omniscient and that's all that matters, if you make "God said to do it" your standard for morality.
I don't even think the God of the Bible claims to be anything that would be omnibenevolent.
>>7941883
Not novels, but Blas de Otero dedicated a big chunk of his life to write poetry exactly about that topic
Esto es ser hombre
¡Horror a manos llenas!
>>7943620
It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.
>>7943819
That's a bit of a contradiction and God cannot use omnipotence for a metaphysical impossibility.
>>7943506
When did we define good?
>>7943827
>God cannot use omnipotence
He can use whatever he wants - that's what omnipotence means.
>>7941910
The movie is gonna be God-tier
>>7943827
Just because something doesn't exist doesn't mean it can't be omnipotent. Superman, for example, is pretty omnipotent and he doesn't exist.
>>7943881
Superman isn't metaphorically impossible. A square circle is. Big difference.
>>7943841
Omnipotence is bound by certain rules that stem from the nature of God. Goodness isn't that which god wills, goodness is that which stems from his being itself. He cannot not be good, for that would be metaphisically impossible.
The afterlife resolves it retard, a novella in two parts. By Anonymous
>>7943932
See, that's the problem with you atheists. I already conceded that God doesn't exist, and yet you keep going, and going, and going. Where does it end?
>>7943956
This is Aquinas and I'm a Catholic.
Square circle is metaphisically impossible therefore God cannot create it since logic and rules as well as goodness are at his very being making divine voluntarism that muslims are into impossible.
How the fuck does the fact that there is suffering make you struggle with your faith?
>>7944328
That's certainly not the Christian view on things. If it were so we couldn't speak of any universal such as goodness because goodness would be arbitrary and depending only on the will of God.
>>7944316
Read Silence by Endo.
It's a priest who listens to screams of Christians being tortured while looking for some kind of a sign. It's truly a fantastic novel, highly recommended. Reading Kiku's prayer right now, it's not as interesting, but truly an unparalleled view into a period and land extremely foreign to us.
>>7944316
Not OP, and you don't sound very open to an explanation, but I can speak from firsthand experience. This is an old question that has troubled believers for centuries. It can have such an impact faith because it puts a person in a position to try to reconcile (on the one hand) the presence of evil, suffering, and so on with (on the other hand) an all-powerful and merciful God. The conundrum even has a name: theodicy.
>>7944467
It's really more of an emotional problem than an intellectual one.
As I've said before, Augustine gave an irrefutable argument, assuming you accept the framework, in which he states that everything eventually falls under God's plan and leads to eternal justice with the final judgement and eternal life or death.
>>7944497
I wonder how closely Augustine experienced the evils of the world. I also have little patience for a facile appeal to the sovereignty of God (which by the way was modeled by Job's so-called 'friends' and shown up in that book for the limited response it is).
I'm struggling with my faith because Christian Europe is being defiled and polluted and all the Pope can do (besides endorsing borderline Communism) is wash the feet of Islamist invaders and chastise countries who aren't down with open borders.
>>7941906
>4 word post
>still manages to posture
>>7944647
If there is one thing Jesus taught, it was ethnic homogeneity and love within borders.
>>7944673
Well I'm glad Charles Martel didn't think like you did.
>>7941883
F A U S T
A
U
S
T
(if you can deal with it being a play instead of a novel)
François Mauriac's “The Enemy”.
>>7944441
Pro tip: this is what real believers believe. Everyone expecting God to be a source of coherent morality that appeals to our human tendencies is a sentimental child. Real followers of the lord know that he gives orders as he pleases and there is no rhyme or reason that we will ever discern.
The Exorcist
>>7944921
>There is only one correct Christian way.
Ironically, this is what every Christian thinks.
>>7944932
I'm not even a Christian. I took the faith extremely seriously before I finally dropped it, and I think the difference between Christians who approach their faith honestly and those who are just there because they don't know anything else is that the serious ones are completely okay with God being unappealing from the perspective of their gut-feelings about morality.
>>7944962
It's a little more complicated that that.
>>7941910
how was the prose on the translation, though?
>>7944964
Not really though. One group accepts a lot of absurdity and denies mystery, because to them religion is meant to answer questions, not raise unanswerable ones. These have found a way to make every act of God a "good" thing, or at least a societally acceptable thing, for God to do as if their judgement means anything when taken with the rest of their professed beliefs. I know it seems arrogant to be so dismissive of this when it's the position of many respected scholars, but so it goes.
The other accepts mystery and cosmic terror, rather than absurdity, which is a position of more humility and total surrender to God, and therefore more consistent with what God asks of his church.
>>7944992
I'm glad you've solved the problem.
>>7944998
I mean, there are scholars on both sides of this and have been for centuries.
>>7945006
>duality
That's for politics.
>>7945016
>religion isn't politics
O I am laffin
>>7945043
>Everything is political.
Well parsed out ideas.
>>7944972
Pretty mediocre and I couldn't get anime out of my head when they translated words like baka.
>>7944921
You are not taking the middle way between sentimentality and voluntarism which Catholicism takes. God always has the highest good in mind and his laws do lead to the highest good and do form a coherent morality, but on a subjective level can seem nonsensical, like with Abraham.
>>7945086
It's not duality and something in-between. Knowledge isn't a complete pyramid.
>>7945086
That's not an in-between. It's just what everyone who can't let go of the idea of a humanely moral god believes anyway unless they're actually retarded.
>>7945134
It's between theological voluntarism (Islam and trash theologians like Calvin) and american protestantism.
>>7945162
That approach accepts enough mystery that it should raise your eyebrows if you're remotely skeptical.
