Sometimes, I find it almost impossible to believe there is a God...

[SKKY]

...The Christopher Barrios story, and what those 3 sick f*@ks did to him, has me seriously messed up. I mean, if there is a god, and he supposedly works in mysterious ways, why let that happen? What was he trying to show young Christopher before bringing him to heaven? If he is all powerful and all knowing, he must have seen this coming. Why did he let it happen? I'm apologize for the rant. I'm not usually like this. I guess fatherhood has changed me more than I thought.

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. Don't apologize ALS...I'm struggling with this too. I cry everytime

the story comes on. When I think of how close he was to his mother's home and safety and to have that happening it just about wrecks me for the day. I look at my son and cannot imagine anyone ever wanting to hurt my little boy. Then I look into the eyes of beautiful Christopher and wonder how any "merciful" God could let that happen. I've long thought these kinds of things. There are no "lessons" to be learned from losing the only thing worth getting up for in the morning. :hug:

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

7. That's sweet

It is a crazy world, no doubt.

[SKKY]

8. I agree, I went upstairs to my sons room, took him out of bed...

...and held him for about an hour. As a father, I can't imagine what Christopher's father must be thinking. I know I would be wrecked with guilt that I wasn't there to protect him- whether that's right or wrong. In some ways, if there is such evil in the world, then there must be good, and that's supposedly what God represents. I'm just having a very, very difficult time getting my brain around the "Why?" this had to happen.

[Midlodemocrat]

23. I can't even think about it becauseit makes me so sick to my stomach.

That poor little boy. That poor family.

[Burma Jones]

2. God? Well, if we had done what God directs us to do in Leviticus

We would have killed George Edenfield back when he molested a kid in the first place. God, at least in the Bible, is pretty direct about what to do with guys like Edenfield.

If you're not going to remove child molesters, either through death or lifetime incarceration, then you're going to see this happen again. All you can do is be vigilant as hell and hope your number doesn't come up in this horrific lottery.

[Random_Australian]

4. We would also killed a lot more people than just him, IIRC.

Though we need no book to tell us that slime is to be removed from society.

[MistressOverdone]

3. I will have to admit that

this story has hit me hard, and I, too, find myself questioning how this things are allowed to happen. And yeah, I know all the answers to that because I parrot them, myself: free will, yada, yada. And compared to, say, Darfur, this is probably a picnic. (well, not really, but you get my point) Here's where I get confused. My belief in God is based on the thought that we all have God within us. And I have to wonder now about that concept. What happened to THEIR internal spirit? Is what resides in THEM in ME, too?

I think my horror revolves around my grandchildren, who are around that age. We spend our lives protecting those kids from everything, including horrific stories, TV, etc. And they are so innocent and trusting, and to think that people can do something like this....

I don't know WHY this one has really hit me. I mean, it happens every week. Maybe it is seeing their pictures, seeing the woman involved. But hit me hard it has.

I really hope there IS a heaven and this little boy is in it.

[MonkeyFunk]

6. No

THIS doesn't happen every week. The details are just unimaginable.

It's hard to accept because at least we're jaded enough to know that a stranger could do this - or maybe ONE sick relative. But this is beyond all comprehension.

[MistressOverdone]

16. You are probably right

the fact that there were three relatives doing this together, with no sense of shame..that does NOT happen every week. Except on TV. Which is why I can't deal with shows like CSI anymore. But I'm not blaming this on TV. I don't know what the hell would malfunction in a human being to make this happen.

[Sequoia]

19. What details. I haven't heard. (Maybe I don't want to either)

But seriously, it galls me to no end that we let these people out of jail (like that man in FL and the little girl...he did not want to be out of jail because he knew he would do it again), yet we keep hungry people who take food in jail for looting.

[MistressOverdone]

26. I think MSNBC is still posting information

about the press conference regarding these people and what they are being charged for. You might be better off just imagining.

[SKKY]

10. And as I've said before, if there IS a heaven...

...I hope God, or whoever else lives there, gives Christopher a very, very, very special place. He fucking owes him for it.

[Deep13]

5. Then don't.

The world makes a lot more sense without the assumption that there is some kind of universal fairness at work.

[MistressOverdone]

17. Obviously not, and we all know that

but when things like this happen sometimes the questions bubble up, even though you know there are no answers.

[Shine]

18. I agree.

we are called to embrace the Mystery of Life....even when it sucks having to do so.

[raccoon]

9. Free will. If there is a God, would S/He intervene every time

something like this was going to happen, and stop it?

In the book WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE, Harold Kushner explains it better than I can.

[SKKY]

11. I guess that's what this comes down to...

...Why does Free Will have to mean Bad Things Happen To Good People. If I were a god, I would make ALL children exempt.

[B3Nut]

12. Free will is, IMHO, a cop-out.

If that was a legitimate defense for failing to excercise moral government, we would have to immediately disband all police departments, since a crook could claim that the cop arresting him while he tries to commit a crime is violating his free will! We wouldn't dream of giving a cop a pass based on such an excuse, so why should we let a supposedly all-powerful all-knowing being off the hook? It's things like this that have pretty much shattered what was left of my faith...it has all but disintegrated. The biblegod passes himself off as a powerful governor...but his alleged government is conspicuous by its painful absence. Watching my uncle (despite being a Republican, he's a good human being and was an amazing guitarist) suffer the brain damage effects of an aneurysm hasn't helped matters either.

Listen to the track "Judith" by A Perfect Circle (explicit lyrics version)...it lays it out with a sledgehammer.

"It's not like you killed someone
It's not like you drove a hateful spear into his side
Praise the one who left you broken down and paralyzed
He did it all for you!"

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[Guava Jelly]

13. The horrors that mankind and nature unleash on humans and Animals

Has destroyed any faith i had in a Higher power.
For one thing I refuse to believe in a god that would let so much evil happen.
If he exist I am caling him out as an @$$hole..

[crim son]

14. If there is a God, It bears no resemblance to the god the

Christians worship, I'm convinced, for if He knew the number of hair on that child's head, would He not have sheltered the whole body? And what about the beaten children, the child slaves, the child whores, the grown men braving the pain from their terminal disease, the families that sicken and die because there is no fresh water? Suffering is not a "mystery" but a fact of human existence.

The personal God is a fairy tale.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

15. The God of the Old Testament was a dickhead, no doubt.

A relentless dickhead, at that. Richard Dawkins was right; it so often is nothing but a pretty delusion. And in that case, not even pretty.

[Zavulon]

20. Things like this are why few things piss me off more than when...

...someone looks at a case like this and says "the Lord works in mysterious ways" or "it was God's will." You can write off anything with that.

My answer when I hear stuff like this: "If I cave in your fucking face, would that also be God's will?" :mad:

Sorry for the rant, but I can't think of anything that throws me into a rage so quickly. If there were a god that exerted influence over our lives, that kid would still be alive - or, even if he had been hit by a bus, he wouldn't have been subjected to what he suffered through.

[SPKrazy]

21. I Think That

any god or gawds or whatever is a lot different than any traditional stories would have us believe.

I do however believe in a power for goodness in the universe. I don't think that it is necessarily interested in us as individuals, but it can be tapped into at times for good?

hell if I know d00d, If i think too much about shit like that i just toss the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.

i don't know if i believe in coincidence or not, i've had some pretty unlikely people put into my life at different times when i needed them... amazingly that even includes here on DU

several people have impacted my life in ways that i would not ever have imagined because our paths crossed on the electronic superhighway...

:shrug:

fatherhood does indeed change a man... hopefully in good ways.

:pals:

[Shine]

22. I believe in something bigger than ourselves, the Divine, God/Goddess

there are many names...I see myself as connected to the the whole, as we all are. We are all facets of the same diamond, here to remember the connection we have with each other and with the Divine. In truth, there is only ONE of us here. I feel this with all my heart and soul.

Christopher's story is heartbreaking and hard to comprehend. How can we make sense of such suffering and cruelty? :shrug: I don't know and I don't think we're meant to know, quite frankly. We are challenged to see beyond the illusion of separation and remember that Christopher's story and his parents' story is connected with ours, in some way. It reflects back to us a part of our cultural and collective identity. It is both painful and yet necessary for us to become aware of that because it gets us in touch with our Compassion.

Perhaps there's something "higher" being played out by having to bear witness to this dance of suffering. IS there any "meaning" to be given to these sorts of situations?? :shrug: Who knows?????

I have no answers, but I know with all my heart that when we are confronted with the darkest and most painful aspects of our collective human psyche, we are called to remember and embrace the Shadow within ourselves and by doing so, we have the great capacity to be healed with Compassion, Love and Grace.

In the Darkness, we are called to remember the Light. I know this is True. :loveya:

[jobycom]

24. I don't believe in God, but not for reasons like this.

Intellectually, I can envision a creator god who constructs a world and loves his or her creations, but who must create the world to function in a certain way. That may include allowing horrible things to happen. Since none of us have created a world, none of us can truly understand why something like this might have to happen in order for that world to function, but that doesn't mean they don't. Of course, from a theological perspective, it's hard to argue that God is all powerful if he or she can't create a world without suffering, or if god is all powerful, that he or she is benign yet allows suffering.

Faith is faith, though. If you believe, you just have to believe. I didn't, so I don't. :)

[leftofthedial]

25. if there is a god

it is one sick fuck

[SKKY]

27. Or, at the very least...

....grossly negligent in his duties. I'm still holding out hope, but I gotta say, stuff like what happened to Christopher Barrios pushing me in opposite direction.