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Notes -
The cynicism is in comfortable people deploying the actual suffering of others to bash Christians, often ignoring the sufferers’ own feelings on the matter and without displaying any interest in said suffering except as a handy cudgel.
I don’t mean that as an accusation of anyone here necessarily but it’s definitely something I’ve seen and it prejudices me against this form of argument.
There's also a broader points of rejecting axioms of expectations and substituting their own.
The Abrahamic theological promise is that genuine faith promises safety and comfort in the next life, not the current. The nature of discomfort in this life varies- the old testament has more than a few example of God allowing collective punishments / humblings of worshippers for collective failures- but even New Testament Jesus was more 'give up your worldly wealth (and by extension the comforts it brings) for the time before you die.' The reward of heaven after death is premised on death after a virtuous- but not ideally comfortable- life.
By contrast, nearly each and every scenario in anon's comic ends and begins... at the worldly death. This rests on an implicit understanding / expectation that 'reason' / God's Plan should result in good things / not-having bad things in life, including not dying.
It doesn't address the requirement to live a good life before death. It doesn't address the premise of judgement after death. It doesn't address the rewards (or lack of rewards) afterwards. In a four-stage process- live a good life, die, judgement, afterlife- the comic treats stage 2 as some sort of ironic commentary or disproof.
A structural parallel would be a comic mocking advice that overweight people should work out - lose weight - feel better by depicting fat people struggling and being uncomfortable at the gym.
I think this is a common if not universal understanding, yes. It’s a corollary to giving Him credit whenever those good things happen.
I understand that there’s a theological motte where the praise is for His goodness in designing the world that included such temporal happiness, or that He only chooses such interventions insofar as they bring glory to His Church. I don’t believe this is what the average, lay Christian thinks when he wins a lottery ticket. You raise people on an entire Old Testament of transactional worship, a New Testament of miracles benefiting Christians, and two millennia of Whig history? They’re going to see God’s hand in worldly matters.
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