I just read that Psalm 100 was to be read at Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church; but the shooting occurred before the scripture reading. I am curious how you all would respond to a critic in reference to this scripture and what happened.

“Shout triumphantly to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs. Acknowledge that Yahweh is God. He made us, and we are His — His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name. For Yahweh is good, and His love is eternal; His faithfulness endures through all generations.”
Psalm 100

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Todd

"Are we to accept what is good from God but not tragedy?"

"The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD."

Job 2:10 and 1:21

If such an answer was good enough for Job it's good enough for me.

Because, as Jesus said, even if one were to be raised from the dead, still they'd not believe.

If these Texans came out of their graves tomorrow, would Richard Dawkins repent and believe. Or would he write another best seller to slander and impugn the Name of the Author of life.

Likely the latter.

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Todd

Jonathan and Monique could give a good answer as well.

https://youtu.be/jf6z98ZxhT0

They've been, "Through Deep Waters"

Technically though a believer’s RESPONSE to very bad circumstance is irrelevant to the question of how one deals with the actual scripture that says Yahweh is good, loves eternally and is faithful through all generations.

Consider this argument that an atheist might make: a child who is obedient, faithful and defends a parent who mercilessly beats him on a regular basis does not prove that the parent is good. Some might call the child a misguided fool, at worst, or brainwashed, at best.

The question people ask is “how could God allow such a thing to happen to the sheep in his flock? He would not seem to be a very good shepherd.”

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Todd

It is one of the exact criticisms I saw being lodged by many on Twitter in the aftermath of the shooting.

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Tim

This obviously has been a major stone thrown at Christianity for centuries; we are no closer to having a satisfactory answer now than we did then.

All this said, I would certainly agree that Job’s response is best, because realistically there is no other option.

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Todd

Todd:

I would say there multitudes of texts that answer the Bad God good man question.

Savannah's text quote was a good one.

The first misunderstanding is...and I always go here first.

The question is put in the framework that God did bad by not...(fill in the blank) because those good men didn't deserve such treatment by God.

The spiritual reality...

God is good, man is not.
God can judge anytime, anyone, anywhere in any circumstance.

The retort... "Well, are you saying God doesn't care about his own? That doesn't sound like a good God"

The spiritual reality...For the unbeliever its because of people like yourself, who have made God your enemy, who are alienated from God by your own wickedness, your own suppression of the truth and your own ignorance of spiritual reality that you presume a great deal by posing some deficiency in God because the "threat of danger is not removed by God's love and the actual death of many is not stopped by Gods power".
Fact is, the unbeliever is every moment of every day exposed to a Hell just waiting for him to enter, the devils are everyday blinding, tempting, seducing and dragging the unbeliever along by his own rope. It is because God is good you are not in hell now. It is because God is kind you are not tormented in flame.

But this kind of straightforward answer is too direct, a slap in the face of their pride. They think their moral judgment of God has justified their refusal to obey God and reconcile themselves to him. They are dead wrong.
They are blind to the fact that their moral judgment of God does not excuse them from God's judgment of their sinful lives...in their judgment they make excuse and argument to us as if by persuading the Christian he is serving a mean God, they are justified to serve Satan and the flesh in love with the world. They are dead wrong.

Those murdered people, many no doubt believers foretell the coming judgment upon the wicked, where in a time they know not, in a way they know not God will require their soul and bring it to judgment. For those saints, they are with the Lord, and others attending that meeting outside of Christ are in hell.

The pretense behind the Bad God, good man question begs for the judgment of God because it assumes what is false about God and presumes in ignorance about men.

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Marvin

But a very cynical person would say that God created this whole system in the first place.

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Todd

The questions are not easy ones. I mean, they can be easy enough to give responses that satisfy us who know Him personally. But, for the unsaved, the answers don't slide down their gullets. They choke on them.

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Tim