I know exactly what it means. Look up orchestration. Look up choreograph. You can absolutely know what something is, its effects, without knowing at all how it is accomplished.
(Sorry about the order – this reply belongs chronologically before the two above.)
It’s not something I concern myself about. Satan is immobile without Father’s acquiescence, suiting his purposes. God is good. All the time. Difficult things may be Satan’s futile attempts thwart God’s good purposes, but that’s all they are. There’s a song lyric that says something like ‘God can recycle pain into gain.’† And he does. À la Job, à la Nate Saint, à la Dale’s nephrectomy – it’s been good for me, and I’m hopeful that it may help others, too, to see and to trust God and Jesus.
(My nephrectomy was helpful in my accepting evolutionary science, and maybe understanding a minuscule bit of it, too. Ü Recognizing God’s sovereignty over the mutations – that I did implicitly, because I am practiced at trusting him – helped me to recognize his sovereignty over eons of mutations, along with discussions here at PS about the failed science of ID and the recognition that God does not want his existence to be ‘provable’. John @Mercer’s comment†† pretty well clinched it. Hence my Discourse post-nominal whatevertheycallit of ‘…Providentialist’, or maybe it should be Evolutionary Providentialist. (Btw, that was not really a request for a change, @swamidass. Ü)
†Another song I like a lot with respect to difficult providence is Laura Story’s Blessings.
††Mercer:
Not in any way helpful.
One would think, after all that practice, that you would have become better at it.
Now it’s getting creepy. It’s only a short step from there to “AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality” and such.
If you know what it means, why can you do nothing more than repeat these lame analogies?
So the works of Satan are the works of God at second-hand, so it doesn’t matter which one did it, it’s all good. And it’s all providence, even when Satan is let loose on those who aren’t children of God. Thus there is no difference, and again you contradict yourself.
Really? 
Those statements have pretty much nothing to do with each other except that God is referenced in each. I don’t think it helps to make “one step away from [name your bigot/social evil]” type arguments, even as tempting as they might be for emphasis. Christians should resist throwing all atheists in with Stalin and Pol Pot, and atheists, in my view, should resist throwing every statement of orthodox Christian theology in with Westboro Baptist.
You need to look back at the quoted post for the consequences of not being a child of God. It really does relate.
It looks as though my copy of the book is packed away at the moment. I’ll see if I have some notes on it that I can quote from tomorrow.
I did, you asked him who “His children are”, he answered. If you have issue with @DaleCutler’s theodicy, then fine, I will take back my eye roll and just suggest you make that clearer. Instead it just looked like you were saying that Christians defining those who are and aren’t God’s children was “one short step away …”.
Go on. What’s the difference in Dale’s claims between God’s treatment of his children and his treatment of the others?
Incidentally, would you agree that only Christians are God’s children?
I think this is a much bigger quagmire than just “what’s the difference between a miracle and providence?”
Christian traditions vary on how they would answer your specific question but I would think all the major, historic, orthodox traditions would affirm that the world is divided (at least) into those who have faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah/Lord/Savior and those who don’t. The Bible includes that first group in the “children of God”. I think there has been some disagreement as to whether other people (Jews, babies, those who haven’t heard the Gospel, etc.) may also be included via some other mechanism.
That God would treat his children differently than those who are not, seems logical to me. That’s not the same thing as saying he punishes those people and certainly not that he gave homosexuals AIDS as a punishment. Most Christian traditions have a doctrine along the lines of “common grace”, that says that God gives some measure of grace (or holds back the fullness of evil) to all people.
Well, I believe that Christians are God’s children, but I’m less certain about who else would be included and it depends on what you mean by the phrase. If you mean “God’s children” in the sort of generic “humanity was created in God’s image and deserves respect and God cares about them” then I would say all people. I believe God loves all people and wants them to come to him. If you’re specifically asking about “who is a part of the Church and God’s kingdom”, then I would say it’s more exclusive, though I don’t know how far beyond Christians it would go. Like I said above, certainly at least Old Testament Jews, infants, and those who haven’t heard the Gospel are historical question marks.
God judges hearts. Scripture tells us, and so does experience, that no one’s heart is pure. There are occasionally some delightful young children who are more innocent and pure than others (I don’t think I that I was one of them), but there are also some that are quite nasty. I believe that God is just and fair, after all is said and done.
There is a young officer, Emeth, in The Last Battle, the last book of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series, who had a pure heart, even though he worshiped an evil god. The Wikipedia article contains a synopsis and its implications in Christian theology. I am not sure, but I take no serious umbrage with it.
I do, however, recall reading (probably over half a century ago) of a native in the nineteenth century in an aboriginal African tribe who was distressed by the animistic religion of his peers and would not accept it. He set out on his own, literally seeking God, I would say, and found missionaries working with another tribe or tribes – I do not recall how distant or how long it took, and ultimately became a Christian. I do not think the story was apocryphal.
God also works with or lets alone different individuals and groupings of people, analogous to governments’ dealings. If my father committed income tax fraud, I would suffer. If, as an employee of a small business who’s owner had committed income tax fraud and the business had to close, my family would suffer, through no fault of its own. Similar scenarios can be projected for other groupings – city, county, state and national governments (think international law, human rights and global warming), and other kinds of institutions – academic and religious ones, for instance. Justice is an encompassing subject.
Here’s where I get all this:
So God does nice, providential things for his children and lets Satan loose on other people. But Satan’s works serve God’s purpose. So if Satan inflicts AIDS on non-believers, logically that’s God’s purpose being served. Perhaps the purpose isn’t punishment, but it might as well be. Bad things, apparently, happen to non-Christians. It can happen to Christians too, but that’s either unavoidable collateral damage or, seen properly, it’s good for them; Dale has variously employed both justifications.
Dale has said it is a mystery how God deals with people, orchestrating and choreographing and at the same time (remembering that he is omnitemporal) not violating their libertarian free will and ‘letting them have their way’, being perfectly just and good all the while.
Your recollection is faulty. Was it ‘nice’ that Nate Saint was killed? Was it ‘nice’ that I got cancer?
Yes, it’s also a mystery how he makes blue, orange square circles.
Yes, because, according to you, it gave you valuable wisdom.
It is wonderful that he can take things that are difficult and/or evil and them them into good, à la Maggie, Nate Saint, et al.
How so? Why do you constantly fixate on a good outcome?
It’s a mater of perspective. Is the glass half full or half empty? If your head is in the right place, @T_aquaticus, it’s overflowing. I fear no evil.
For us atheists, we have asked ourselves what the world would look like if God did not exist. In this case, we would see bad things and good things happen to people without any explanation as to why. This is exactly what we see in the world. Could God act in such a way that it appears he doesn’t exist? I guess, which is why I never claim that gods don’t exist.
If I sacrificed a candy bar each day to an idol in the shape of a Star Wars figure, would good things happen to me? Probably. Would really strange and coincidental good things happen to me at some point in my life? Probably. Could I then say that it was the god of the Star Wars figure that guided it? Would it be convincing to anyone else?