After my last post, I checked my email and this is the newsletter from my favorite church. It really spoke to me about my last post. Does it make anything better in my life, not yet but I would rather live in a world with love and color. I love how they phrase that!
E-Thought::
God and Suffering
Jeff Groen
“The fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith, and has been in every generation. Its distribution and degree appear to be entirely random and therefore unfair. Sensitive spirits ask if it can possibly be reconciled with God’s justice and love.” John Stott
Portions of the chapter written by Peter Kreeft:
“Now the classic defense of God against the problem of evil is that it’s not logically possible to have FREE WILL and no possibility of moral evil. In other words, once God chose to create human beings with free will, then it was up to them, rather than God, as to whether there was sin or not. That’s what free will means. Built into the situation of God deciding to created human beings is the chance of evil and, consequently, the suffering that results.
“It’s a self-contradiction – a meaningless nothing – to have a world where there’s real choice while at the same time no possibility of choosing evil. To ask why God didn’t create such a world is like asking why God didn’t create colorless color or round squares.
“The source of evil is not God’s power but mankind’s freedom. Even an all-powerful God could not have created a world in which people had genuine freedom and yet there was no potentiality for sin, because our freedom includes the possibility of sin within its own meaning.
“Why didn’t God create a world without human freedom? Because that would have been a world without humans. Would it have been a place without hate? Yes. A place without suffering? Yes. But also would have been a world without love, which is the highest value in the universe. That highest good never could have been experienced. Real love- our love of God and our love for each other – must involve a choice. But with the granting of that choice comes the possibility that people would choose instead to hate.”
“If there is a God, why is there so much evil? If there is no God, why is there so much good?” St. Augustine
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ (freely) laid down his life for us. And we ought (freely chose) to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” 1 John 3:16
All of this challenges me to choose LOVE, as much as I can, with as many as I can.
E-Thought::
God and Suffering
Jeff Groen
“The fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith, and has been in every generation. Its distribution and degree appear to be entirely random and therefore unfair. Sensitive spirits ask if it can possibly be reconciled with God’s justice and love.” John Stott
Portions of the chapter written by Peter Kreeft:
“Now the classic defense of God against the problem of evil is that it’s not logically possible to have FREE WILL and no possibility of moral evil. In other words, once God chose to create human beings with free will, then it was up to them, rather than God, as to whether there was sin or not. That’s what free will means. Built into the situation of God deciding to created human beings is the chance of evil and, consequently, the suffering that results.
“It’s a self-contradiction – a meaningless nothing – to have a world where there’s real choice while at the same time no possibility of choosing evil. To ask why God didn’t create such a world is like asking why God didn’t create colorless color or round squares.
“The source of evil is not God’s power but mankind’s freedom. Even an all-powerful God could not have created a world in which people had genuine freedom and yet there was no potentiality for sin, because our freedom includes the possibility of sin within its own meaning.
“Why didn’t God create a world without human freedom? Because that would have been a world without humans. Would it have been a place without hate? Yes. A place without suffering? Yes. But also would have been a world without love, which is the highest value in the universe. That highest good never could have been experienced. Real love- our love of God and our love for each other – must involve a choice. But with the granting of that choice comes the possibility that people would choose instead to hate.”
“If there is a God, why is there so much evil? If there is no God, why is there so much good?” St. Augustine
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ (freely) laid down his life for us. And we ought (freely chose) to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” 1 John 3:16
All of this challenges me to choose LOVE, as much as I can, with as many as I can.
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