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John Madison's avatar

I have to confess that a great chasm lies between my belief in God, which for me is the unity of being, life, mind, wisdom and love, and my refusal to believe that God knowingly creates a child who will be thrown alive into an oven in a Nazi concentration camp, or be shot to pieces in her second grade class room. Many believers solve this problem for themselves by taking the position that God purposely refuses to see the future. But for myself, a God who lives, creates, knows and loves only in the present speaks better for God. As far as the presence of evil itself, love being the greatest of all things needs free will...if it is not free will, it is not love. That means that evil is the vacuum left by the refusal and absence of love. Finally, as to the question of how we respond to those who have suffered, and I know the suffering of losing a child, simple presence and love transforms a truthful, "I don't know" into a sacred answer.

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Cercatore's avatar

Within my own spiritual journey, when confronted with the personal horrors of suffering and loss, the Paraclete has responded essentially in those very three ways that Kirby has described. But not in the order and manner in which my small mind would have preferred. To me, all three are not conflated or askew, but spring from the same root and are in effect ‘The three-fold cord’ found in Ecclesiastes. Intellectual, Moral and Pastoral Responses like [Faith, Tradition and Reason] must be held in a very difficult balance and in tension. An over reliance on any one mode or method, can lead to the perpetuation of isolation and continued suffering. Joy and growth occur in deep worship and fellowship, and when blended with intellectual acuity, together they can open up pathways of understand and healing for ourselves first, and then others.

The apparent incoherent and spiritual impalpability that a ‘Free Will Theodicy’ seems to offer, is not easily reconciled with an Omniscient & Loving God who appears complacent to the ongoing horrific nihilism of mankind. But in balance, [and it is the hardest balance to ever embrace intellectually] it is that the same Free Will granted to those who chose “Evil”, that is afforded to me as well; that I might chose the “Good”. The ‘chain of causality’ behind both, in any one person’s life, is not micromanaged and controlled by God, and if it were to be, it would be a Farcical Universe where True Self-Sacrificial Love did not exist, nor our ultimate redemption as created entities. But Love is who He is, and it is what He does [a-temporally], thus His ultimate answer to our pain, suffering and self-destructive predatory nihilism, is ‘The Cross’ [The Incarnation, His Death & Resurrection – [and ultimately OUR Resurrection!] It is not only our resurrection as individuals, but our resurrection as a ‘Species’ as well, intended to reflect His glory and spread His love into this universe and beyond. In and of ourselves, we cannot escape our own biology and the existential angst that comes along with it. Only when we are united with the Divine in Jesus, will any of us ever escape that trap.

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