Thanks for this. MANY thanks for this. I'm eager to get in to it.

There's a lot more in this reply for me to agree with than otherwise. It's enjoyable getting detailed replies, because the picture of the other person's position becomes clearer.

Curiously, around the third paragraph I found myself asking whether you believe in God or not. I'll get to that in a minute.

some (like you? Not being a jerk - just honestly do you agree?) that if we could just round up & exterminate all child molesters & serial killers; that we should NOT do it because “wrong.” is that what you think?

haha. Great that you can stipulate not being a jerk! Because I see so often people taking offense because they misread or otherwise inject meaning into text that wasn't originally written to have that meaning!

My question about God is a bigger one, because how one views or understands God shapes so many other aspects of one's worldview. If you believe in God, in some manner, I would invite you to think about the question; Why does not God just obliterate the people who do evil? Why does God 'allow that evil' to continue to exist?

This is a fundamental question that impacts one's understanding (or view) of what Good and Evil are, how they continue to exist together in our world, and what Justice is, etc.

As I invite you to think about this question, I want to forewarn you that, no, my view on this is unlikely to be one that you are familiar with. You might go to the stock answers that some people adhere to, but most of them will be wrong (imo) and are essentially shorthand attempts to resolve the question by skipping logic and reasoning, or any comprehensive solution.

Regardless, its an important and fundamental question, imo. I'm curious what you would come up with.

The phrasing "round up & exterminate all child molesters & serial killers; that we should NOT do it because “wrong.” is that what you think?" seems very simplistic to me, and a lot of it hinges on the concept of 'wrong'.

I can empathize with your expressed view, that "the far bigger crime is leaving criminals alive and free to go on and continue victimizing innocent people", but I don't necessarily agree with it.

I think you've expressed a few points to me that reveal not just your view but your experience that underlies the views you've chosen to go with. E.g. "completely lose my shit when obviously guilty and evil people can abuse our bloated & corrupt legal system to defeat cases against them"

Obviously, there is a lot of emotion in that, including anger, outrage hinging on a sense of injustice. From my view, if you are being driven primarily by anger, rage and outrage, it's going to be easy to ignore or justify putting aside other aspects or nuances that may seem to hinder execution (no pun intended) the unfolding of that anger or rage. BUT, it's a primarily vulnerable position. When anger and rage etc, become a primary driving force, the very enemies we seek to counter can very easily abuse and manipulate that motive and direction. Which, imo, is one reason to be wary of it. Careful, I mean. Reflective, and self examination are important here.

BTW, I used to have some severe anger problems. I never acted on them in violence (aside from sometimes slamming the table or hitting a wall, etc), but with the assistance of my family, I came to realize where that anger was coming from, what was its origin, and how it was not serving me but hindering me.

Righteous anger can be a good thing, but in 9 cases out of 10, what people assume or believe to be righteous anger is in fact rooted in other issues. The 'righteous' part comes from a need to justify the behavior and choices.

With apologies, I'm not attempting to psychoanalyze you or lecture; I'm just putting these thoughts out here for reflection and consideration.

much of our laws & legal system are ridiculous, insanely bloated to the point of being blatantly unconstitutional and counter to the original purpose of carrying out true justice

I am in full agreement with you there! Over the last 3-4 years I've been going down a good number of law-legal-justice system rabbit holes, and I can tell you, it's changed my view of the matrix big time! Very big time! But that's another discussion!

The vast majority of the time when more leftist / government / globalist crap is uncovered, the first / most frequent comments are “God will judge them” and infinite variations on that.

I suspect you may be focusing on and giving your attention to specific and certain comments, perhaps because they are tied so closely to your views (in that they seem to embody the opposite of your view and maybe trigger that anger or sense of wrongness).

Myself, I have not seen or observed that, and based on my experience, I would disagree. aka I don't think the first or most frequent comments are "God will judge them" or variations of that.

But the whole direction of our discussion via our replies points to the issues of accountability, of Divine and Human roles in accomplishing justice or even 'rightness'. I get the sense that for you 'justice' is not really the big priority, but rather 'rightness', in the sense that some situations (i.e. crimes) are so WRONG in their nature that whether it is just or not, certain actions need to be taken to make them RIGHT at least to an acceptable level. Would you agree?

I think in general that people tend to tie the idea of Justice up with what is RIGHT, but I think that in truth, justice is far more about balance than it is about what is right.

If is NOT right that innocent people suffer, let alone the most vulnerable among us, but I don't think that such wrongness can be corrected by metering out 'corrective' measures regardless of whether they are just or not.

It seems clear that we disagree on this point, at least in part, but I think that's this is probably because of differing views of what is right and wrong, and what causes those wrong to exist in the first place.

I believe that - yes, ultimate judgement lies with God, of course - but I believe it is 100% our responsibility to arrange the meeting. And much SOONER rather than later.

By and large, I agree with this, but I may disagree without about the HOW. In certain cases, human responsibility involves our holding our own people (other humans) to account, and sometimes, that will involve capital punishment - a death penalty. But there are other things that we CANNOT hold others to account for, and if we do, we can move into a space of violating the critical principle of responsibility.

Which leads me back to the question of why God allows evil to exist in the world, and why he doesn't, for example, simply obliterate those who commit evil or such horrendous proportions that no sane person would tolerate them.

This was a question I struggled a lot with when I became a teenager, and my critical thinking faculties began to kick in. Why does God allow such evil (and suffering) to exist in the world? As a teenager, I came to the conclusion that because God allows suffering to exist, then I do not like that God and I would refuse to acknowledge him! So for about 3 or 4 years in my teenage youth, I decided that I would be an atheist!

There have been a LOT of theories put forward over the centuries to try to resolve this problem, but as far as I know, all of them fail to fully elucidate and provide a satisfactory answer that reconciles logic and reasoning with faith and understanding of heart, etc.

Many will draw up the idea of free will, and leave it there. Or that God allows suffering (some think God creates the suffering!) to teach people a lesson, etc. Or that in his own good time, God will resolve it, and we simply cannot know.

None of those are satisfactory, imo. But the problem is complex, because it is connected directly to how evil came to exist in the first place, and why God did not prevent that from happening. God of love? Then WHY did God even allow evil to come into existence? Or did God create evil (some think so!)?

The Key to all this is to understand the principle of responsibility and how it is tied into God's purpose for the universe and humanity. We know the idea that there is no freedom without responsibility. But what is also true is that without responsibility, there is no growth or development or maturing of character. A child who has no responsibility at all will NOT develop the capacity to be responsible as an adult, and adults who are irresponsible are merely immature humans who never developed their capacity to be responsible.

Importantly, there are two forms of 'irresponsibility' that need to be clearly recognized: one, not taking responsibility for things we are properly responsible for. Two, taking 'responsibility' for things we are properly NOT responsible for. Both of these are aberrations, and distort the realm of responsibility, which in my view is the root cause of ALL the problems in the world.

When a man lies or cheats and then refuses to take responsibility for that, he violates the principle of responsibility. But also, when a man approaches you and tells you to do x or y or z when he actually has no authority to tell you or demand that you do that, he also violates the principle of responsibility.

That second form of abuse of responsibility manifests as control over others without the right authority. A govt telling living men or women what to do when it has not proper authority to do so, violates the responsibility of those men or women.

In God's original design, each human being is created to grow to spiritual maturity by exercising and fulfilling his or her responsibility. This involves making choices and living by the consequences. Spiritual growth is essentially the growth of the capacity to give and receive unconditional love. The responsibility that was given to human beings to complete that growth was faith in the word (Commandment) that God gave them: not to 'eat the fruit'.

Without going into what the fruit actually was, we can say that the original human ancestors were tempted and lured to abandon their responsibility to keep the faith, and the rest is history. (notice, when God came to Adam, he asked "what happened?" Adam's first reply was "Not MY fault, the woman YOU gave me tempted me!" signifying Adam failing to take responsibility for his choice. Instead, he blamed the woman and also subtly implied it was God's fault because God created the woman in the first place. When God asked Eve, she also behaved the same: "Not MY fault. The Serpent in the garden tempted me!"

The reason God does not, cannot interfere with certain realities in the world aka (the existence of evil) is because ultimately, it was the human beings failing in their responsibility in the first place, and then NOT taking responsibility in the second place, that gave birth to the existence of evil. While God works to assist, guide and help us resolve evil, he himself cannot liquidate it himself. He must adhere to the principle of not violating human responsibility, because he himself created that principle.

Could he do it? That's debatable. The question is, could God ever contradict himself? I believe the answer is no.

So, throughout history, God has worked to bring human beings in to a place where they can reverse the mistake by a) fulfilling their responsibility to believe and follow the word and b) take responsibility for the consequences of our actions.

When the Israelites believed in God's word to them, they were setting conditions to reverse the mistake of NOT believing in God's word that Adam and Eve coimmitted. Likewise, when a Christian affirms and believe sin Jesus, the embodiment of the word or the word in substance, we reverse that original mistake and set a condition that we fulfill our responsibility. BECAUSE we do that, God now can intervere and influence us without violating our responsibility, because we've set the condition to fulfill it.

(Cont.)