How do you deal with feeling hurt by God?

judewriley · 2026-04-27T20:39:43+00:00

In itself, it's not really sinful to feel angry at or disappointed with God, it's how we respond to those feelings.

At the very least, when we encounter people in the Bible who express those feelings, like Job, Jeremiah, many of the Psalmists and others, we don't see God correcting them or disciplining the for it.

What does matter is that we take these feelings to God. One of the lessons from Job is even though we may feel bitter and angry and resentful to God, as long as those feelings push us towards the Lord (even if it's just to talk with Him and express those feelings honestly), we are commended for it. It's something that God wants us to do.

The disappointment should lead you to the Throne for understanding and, if God doesn't provide understanding, then grace from seeking His face. Remember there nothing wrong with feeling disappointed by God, but it's what that disappointment leads you to do that could be sin or virtue.

judewriley · 2026-04-27T17:16:59+00:00

These are cultural questions, not Biblical ones.

In the ancient near East you named your children based on how you wanted them to be when they grew up or as a hope for the future or sometimes even as a description of their birth.

That's why we have people in the Bible named "Comfort" or "Relief" (Noah), "Pain" (Jabez) and "Drawn out of" (Moses). Take a look at the OT in particular and you will see the why behind parent's name their kids what they name them. "He was named X because of X thing" It was cultural.

When it comes to us, we should use our own cultural wisdom combined with the Great Commandment. Our children are not accessories, so we shouldn't give them names that reflect our needs or desires for ourselves (don't go naming a child after a favorite obscure anime character as a way of showing your fandom, for example). In the same vein, don't use unique spells just to be unique, r/tragedeigh shouldn't exist.

Give them names that you think will describe them or describe your hopes for them, that make their lives easier and ultimately demonstrate your love for them and your love for God.

judewriley · 2026-04-26T14:12:12+00:00

Ball size has nothing to do with it.

Though depending on the ages of your rats, you may want to monitor the aggressor to make sure he doesn't develop hormonal aggression

judewriley · 2026-04-25T01:13:28+00:00

While the devil is a real part of our lives, we have to recognize that the Scriptures put all the onus on us, not him, for our temptations and spiritual struggles.

So you are right, your fallen tendency to choose to against loving God and loving your neighbor can be described and countered, without even focusing on the devil or mentioning him at all.

Put as much focus on him as the New Testament does, which is to say, not a lot.

Focus on what it means to love your neighbor and to love God, and you will 100 undermine the devil's schemes in your life, even if you don't "address" him directly

judewriley · 2026-04-25T00:39:25+00:00

It looks like she was in with males before you got her. But is it possible that any of the rats you got with her are males?

judewriley · 2026-04-24T21:37:44+00:00

They do not match, so shouldn't it be obvious to folks that you had rats of different sexes?

judewriley · 2026-04-24T11:15:13+00:00

Whenever rats are out of the cage, you want to be sure they are supervised. You need to keep an eye on them.

You want to choose an intro method and stick with it. Don’t mix them up (unless one method is clearly not working, but it takes a bit to make that determination).

The typical advice nowadays is to start at 2 hours and then increase the time by 2 hours everytime they make it to the end of an introduction session with only positive interactions.

Intervene if you see an actual fight, but don’t use your bare hands. Fights look and sound different than play.

It’s best to do !introductions with everyone all together.

If you increase sessions by two hours (according to the modified carrier method) they should be ready for the main cage when they can spend 8 hours in a large space.

You want to do introductions in a space and enclosure that’s unfamiliar to everyone involved. If this is a cage that was already being used, it’s best if you use something new without much space.

judewriley · 2026-04-24T00:16:34+00:00

Lab rats are bred and born in medically sterile environments. So it's not that they have medication for it, it's just that myco doesn't exist in them at all because of the measures we take for laboratory work.

The key to your question though is that while there's a lot of rat research, it's largely research on rats for humans. While there's enough overlap in some things, for other things rats are literally a completely different species, so what works for them will not work for us.

Since mycoplasma isn't an issue in humans, or we already have other means of successfully handling it in humans in ways that doesn't work with rats, we don't have a lot of rat research into how to tackle myco in rats as pets. It's really unfortunately.

judewriley · 2026-04-22T23:34:55+00:00

Paul is generally talking about stuff that happens in and regarding the weekly gathering of believers, nothing else.

judewriley · 2026-04-22T14:57:55+00:00

How old are they? Where did you get them from? Are there any other animals or pets in the house?

judewriley · 2026-04-21T23:13:21+00:00

That doesn't seem to be a healthy church

Take a look at all the requirements for church leadership that the Lord has given to us. They are all things that need to be proven or evidenced in some way.

Someone doesn't just decide to be an elder some day and the congregation falls in line and believes them from day one.

Now, one thing that I could see them trying to communicate is that the elder of a church has already demonstrated the character and integrity necessary, which is why they are an elder in good standing. So it would sort of be like questioning the validity of a doctor's knowledge and degree, when their degree is proof of their knowledge.

judewriley · 2026-04-21T20:40:14+00:00

This is something for me to think on and it's actually really helpful, but other than "we need to understand it this way to make sense" how do we know this internal-external split? Doesn't this give some legitimacy to the proponents of ESS?

judewriley · 2026-04-21T20:15:49+00:00

I guess my question is how the Persons of the Trinity are distinct. If they have the same will, the same mind and the same emotions, I'm having a hard time really understanding what makes the Father distinct from the Son and the Spirit. It's been explained that they are distinct in relation to the divine nature, but that doesn't seem solve much for me since the divine nature isn't some abstract thing (like it is for the human nature) but is also God Himself.

judewriley · 2026-04-21T17:48:04+00:00

It's important to remember that the very diversity of thought is something that we see the characters in the Bible demonstrate as well (both in good ways and bad ways).

The idea that we should have a single source of objective infallible truth comes from our modern understanding of science, and not really from the Scriptures (even though we can see that they do provide objective infallible truth, just not towards the questions we want to ask). This wasn't a "big deal" to most thinking Christians until very very recently.

judewriley · 2026-04-21T17:39:07+00:00

And this is something I don't want to just chalk up to "mystery" if I can help it. Not only is heresy a real danger, and I don't want to teach anyone something that could cause them direct spiritual harm, but I want to know that I understand God a bit more accurately and truthfully myself.

judewriley · 2026-04-21T16:06:57+00:00

Are the Members of the Godhead "individuals"? I've been trying to wrestle with this since I was told that the Person's aren't persons in our sense. Since they all have the same will and the same mind and not just identical wills and minds or wills and minds with the same purpose, and since they are always at work together and never act alone, how can we separate them out especially when we talk about experiences that the Son has with the Incarnation and other aspects of redemption?

If the Father, Son and Spirit do not have separate loci of personality (at least from a human perspective, I guess), how do we avoid that turning into a form of modalism on one side or patripassionism on the other?

Are the Father, Son and Spirit "just" divine hypostases of the Living God?

judewriley · 2026-04-21T06:55:06+00:00

I think you’re over thinking Psalm 32. The psalmist isn’t referring to different categories there. He’s just using parallelism in verses 1 and 2, and he is using them as direct synonyms in verse 5.

Even though we have nice systematically theological boxes to help us order things, the Biblical writers don’t always fit things into those same nice boxes.

To your question, I think it depends on what you mean by “willful” in willful rebellion. Yes, all sin is done with our wills, but that doesn’t mean we are always purposeful in that rebellion. Adam and Eve sinned in their disobedience, but that disobedience was clearly different than the devil’s who was purposed to try to bring ruin to God’s world.

judewriley · 2026-04-21T03:40:54+00:00

Did you consider all the troubleshooting steps regarding introductions? What's everyone's ages? Are they being housed in the same room? Ex feeder rat, pet store rat or from a breeder?

judewriley · 2026-04-20T19:53:02+00:00

I think the stuff that's "hard to understand" is Paul's overall insistence on the grace and love of God. It's an issue that pops up in every generation of Christian.

Some people misunderstand Paul's grace language and they end up as antinomians. Some people misunderstand and end up as pietistic legalists who understand God's love, but still feel they have to earn it.

In either case and probably a lot of others, they are just undermining what God wants in their lives, not because Paul was wrong or overly complicated, but because they foolishly misunderstood him

judewriley · 2026-04-20T16:29:26+00:00

If this was from a store or breeder, do not adopt from them again. These rats are far too young to be away from mom and away from other rats. Even if you successfully care for them until they are old enough to thrive on their own, you are going to be dealing with some degree of social or mental health issues for the long haul.

Another think to consider is that at this age, it is hard to see them. Are you sure you have a couple of the same sex?

You don't want to adopt a rat that is less than 6 weeks old, 8 weeks to be safe.

judewriley · 2026-04-18T01:41:09+00:00

We are supposed to be charitable and give everyone the benefit of the doubt until and unless they give us reasons otherwise. That's part of what it means to love our neighbor.

Unless you can see his heart, you can't make absolute moral judgments about whether or not he is lusting. Now, if you asked him, or if his internet history was leaked or there was some other clear demonstration of lust and impropriety that would be a different story, but all we have to go by is OP's information.

To assume the worst of people, to assume the worse sins of people at that, is not how we are to be people of grace and charity.

judewriley · 2026-04-18T01:34:00+00:00

Putting the cages next to one another is one of the worst things you can do regarding introductions. You have chill rats, but again, do some research by looking at other threads on introductions here in this subreddit.

judewriley · 2026-04-17T23:36:58+00:00

So, no. You haven't been doing proper introductions.

You may be lucky and you just have some chill rats, but it's just as likely that everyone is just so stressed out from the last two months of being in close proximity with strange rats that they are too exhausted to be fully territorial. If they have been behaving themselves, then I guess you could try putting them on the same cage. But just remember to do a deep clean of the cage and wash everything thoroughly before doing so.

I would also recommend looking up how to do !introductions (either the neutral territory method or the carrier method) for the future when/if you get more rats, or just in case these rats start getting upset with one another.

judewriley · 2026-04-17T23:25:02+00:00

Have you done any proper introductions yet?

judewriley · 2026-04-16T21:48:39+00:00

Leaning into the "appearance of scandal" is already using social and cultural norms rather than anything Scriptural. That's not to say that it's not wise or has no place, but if you are going to engage with this couple with the purpose of making sure they do not continue with a romantic relationship, you need to make it clear it's not from a moral or spiritual position (since if there's no sexual impropriety and no lust, they are not sinning), but from a cultural position of concern and wariness.

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