/lit/ - Literature

>>13195481
>If God is omnipotent/omniscient, then why would he bend the laws of physics to accommodate your request?
Why would you let your son have a cookie only if they said please? Why would you only buy him an xbox if he got good grades? Why would you give him a bad look if he didn't thank you for it?
>his would imply that somehow his creation is imperfect, that he "changes" things for you
We don't exist for the universe, the universe exists for us. We are the pinnacle of creation. Just like moving a frame in a movie is meant to perfect the final cut that is published, so are our life experiences (and the universe in which they happen) meant to perfect us spiritually to become one with God.
>Undoubtedly this has occurred, why were her innocent prayers unanswered?
How do you know it was unanswered? Life doesn't end at death. Her prayer doesn't have to be answered while she is still on earth. People may not get what they deserve in this life if God plans it this way for reasons that we obviously cannot know (just like we don't know the why of most things, ever, not even contemplating God into the picture), but that changes in the afterlife.
>The unending and immense deaths from child birth, both child and mother. The prayers. Can you even contemplate how people must have prayed throughout history and been left abandoned? Please don't let my child die of cancer? Please bring my love back to me. What were they doing wrong? The prayers. Seems sort of, arbitrary does it not?
This is based on a metaphysics of "pain bad, pleasure good" and therefore by principle fallacious. Meditate on the suffering of Christ and you'll find hints of why suffering is a necessary part of this life.

So, after a thread was posted here about Yukio Mishima's book Sun and Steel I downloaded a copy on libgen to see what it was all about. Just the first page got me. The way the book presents itself, the prose it uses and the seemingly endless vocabulary of Yukio just left me feeling self conscious. Like a lot of people on this board, and even more so this site, I am a low IQ individual. I struggle to convey my thoughts and feelings adequately and usually have am left with using sentences like "you know what I mean" and "you just had to be there" to summarise my speech. But Yukio was different. After having such a wonderful time reading Sun and Steel I downloaded another one of his books called confessions of a mask. Funny story about me reading that, there was a point where he talks about playing with a toy. The way the you was described made me wonder if there's more to this toy than I thought. I looked for other translations to see if I could get a better idea and upon going back I realised he was talking about his penis. Wild. But anyway, just seeing the wide vocabulary he had and the depth of his lexicon just made me feel so inadequate. I tried replicating his feats by writing my own essays but at every sentence I was stuck as to how I should explain myself. I tried going on Google to find synonyms of words I was gonna use to try and be more verbose. I even tried to try different sentence structure but couldn't replicate what that man did. It made me feel so made and made me realise more how chained I am. Just looking at his work and the freedom he had in his speech to convey actions and concepts in such a vivid way made me envious of him. I also desired to have that freedom but can't imagine I ever will be able to. Is there any cure to this?

Wow, this became such a rant. To make this thread somewhat meaningful let's have a Sun and Steel discussion thread.

nigga I don't have time for that

>>11067564
What do you mean by valid? From the Orthodox view other traditions are only valid insofar as they approximate the Truth to varying degrees but because they do not have Christ they do not have the fullness of the Truth.

I just finished reading Dumitru Staniloae's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology and it completely destroyed any perennialist sympathies I had. Basically, an Absolute that isn't personal but absolutely simple essence doesn't allow for a real Theosis.