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Lucy Coppes's avatar

America has a culture of human achievement, of striving against anything that would show weakness. We don't have TIME to sit around and lament about things, pick yourself up by your bootstraps and with enough effort, you should be able to accomplish your wildest dreams!

It makes it hard to have a Middle Eastern point of view when in that culture there is always the threat of warfare, then and now. America just has a war of ideas all the time, while wearisome, you could easily withdraw from the sparring of ideas and just do your own thing. Very rarely is our life in danger.

The churches that deal with real life will have a place where it is normal to express pain and sorrow in a healthy way. Most of our churches, progressive or evangelical, do not allow you to show pain in public, that would be like you are committing a mortal sin or having a lack of faith. Thank God there are places still were the hurting can go to have their wounds tended to.

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Henrique Assunção's avatar

Great series as always.

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Ethan Stuart's avatar

Very astute observations. I think of myself as having more progressive tendencies in this regard and tend to draw away from God in the midst of deep pain (at least temporarily). But then after processing and going through grief, I look for the hope of Christ’s victory over death and suffering on the cross. And maybe that’s somewhere closer to the middle.

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