The Big Picture points to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan and other countries in Africa.
Pray.
See more pictures here.
Archive for the 'suffering' Category
Page 2 of 9
Tim Challies:
Norway has experienced a nightmare—3 hours of abject terror. On Friday afternoon, right around 3:30, thirty-two year-old Anders Behring Breivik ignited a bomb outside government offices in Oslo, killing at least 7. As the bomb exploded, he was on his way to Utoya Island, about 20 miles from Oslo, the location of a youth camp run by a political party. Dressed in a police uniform, he asked to address the group (there were some 700 people at the camp) before opening fire on them. He killed at least 86, gunning them down in cold blood. By 6:30 PM Breivik was in police custody, having taken almost 100 lives in 3 short hours. In the meantime, the eyes of the whole world had shifted to Norway and millions were wondering just who would do something like this, and why.
Within hours of the event, news headlines were proclaiming that this was the work of a Christian fundamentalist or extremist. The Atlantic splashed this headline on their site: “The Christian Extremist Suspect in Norway’s Massacre.” The Washington Post said, “‘What we know is that he is right wing and he is Christian fundamentalist,’ deputy police chief Roger Andresen said Saturday morning at a televised news conference. ‘We have not been able to link him up to an anti-Islamic group.’ He said that the suspect had not been arrested before, and that police were unsure if he had acted alone.”
Was this the work of a Christian? Was this terror consistent with a man who claims to be a follower of Christ? Many believe that it is.
The declaration that Breivik is a Christian seems to have come largely from his Facebook profile where he assigned himself the labels “Christian” and “Conservative.” That was enough for many people, and especially for those with an anti-Christian agenda. Frank Schaeffer immediately jumped online and said, “I told you so!”, writing on his blog, “In my new book ‘Sex, Mom and God’ I predicted just such an action. I predicted that right wing Christians will unleash terror here in America too. I predict that they will copy Islamic extremists, and may eventually even make common cause with them.” Carl Trueman gets it right when he says:
If a man doesn’t hesitate to use his parents’ sex lives to get a cheap laugh and sell a few books, one should not be surprised if he sees yesterday’s events in Norway as a great opportunity for puffing his own prophetic insights, trying to flog a few more copies of his own recent book and demonstrating that the Left too can have as tenuous a grip on logic, evidence and argument as Glenn Beck (who would ever have thought there was link between Tim Keller, Bill Edgar and religious terrorism?). Yes, you guessed it, Frank Schaeffer has done it again. Just goes to show that every cloud has a silver lining — if you are sufficiently self-absorbed, that is.
How are we, as Christians, to understand this event? . . .
Read the rest here.
I recently posted about how we consider the reality of evil and suffering.
I mentioned that a theodicy is “a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.” A theodicy speaks to the question, “If God is good and all-powerful, how do we explain the existence of evil.”
In the comments, Dan Phillips pointed to a brief theodicy (explanation of the problem of evil) that he has written. It is well worth reading.
I recently read what stuck me as yet another cut-and-pasted essay attacking the God of the Bible. It was a fairly representative, boilerplate “Why I Don’t Believe In God: Excuse #47″ essay, this one focusing on The Problem Of Evil. (Frequent usage merits the capitalization.)
I do think the existence of evil is a vital, valid and pressing question. I have no problem, to say the least, with someone raising the issue, or even asking how evil can exist, if the God of the Bible is the true and living God. However, if someone hasn’t yet acknowledged that, in his heart, he knows there is a God (cf. Romans 1:18-23), a discussion of theodicy (the defense of God in the face of the existence of evil) probably will be beside the point. If he wants to make himself feel better for “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness” by simply cut-and-pasting his line of excuses, I have no help to offer him. “Help” isn’t actually what he wants.
Having said that, of course I again openly acknowledge that the issue of evil has always been a vexing concern. For a believer, it is a tough one (cf. Psalm 73). For a non-Christian, the issue is utterly insoluble. For the Christian, again, it is difficult, trying, even heart-rending — but only the Bible-believing Christian has a final and satisfying answer. I thought I’d use the occasion of the rejected essay to offer a few thoughts (from the Bible, through my own heart — not from the Windows clipboard) toward that end.
The following propositions are in no particular order, at this point:
First: evil only exists if the God of the Bible exists.
Here to read more.
A theodicy is “a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.” A theodicy speaks to the question, “If God is good and all-powerful, how do we explain the existence of evil.”
So how do Christians explain the problem of evil?
The reality is, we can’t provide an exhaustive theodicy or explanation of the existence of evil. Our minds cannot fully fathom “why.”
But, in his recommended book, Return to Reason, Kelly Clark, explains why Christians need not feel intellectually compromised if they cannot explain the existence of evil. Here is how he concludes the discussion.
The Christian theist need not be troubled by is his ignorance of a theodicy. This ignorance is not insincere, questionable or obscurantist. Rather, it is quite consistent with his theistic beliefs. The Christian theist will believe that God has a good reason for allowing evil, although he does not know what it is or know it in any detail. He believes that God has a good reason because of God’s redemptive incarnational revelation. It is not rationally incumbent upon the theist to produce a successful theodicy; the theist, in order to be rational, must simply believe that God has a good reason for allowing evil. A God who shares in our pain, who redeems our sorrows and our shortcomings, who wipes away ever tear, is surely a good God. (page 89).
***********************
If you want to stretch yourself intellectually, and learn more about Reformed epistemology, then this is an excellent place to begin.
Justin Taylor:
A letter from one mother to another who just found out her baby in the womb has ARPKD, a rare genetic disorder of the kidneys that has no cure. (HT: LJT)
Emma,
I am so sorry that you received this news. Please know there are hundreds around you who have been in this same or a very similar position. We know the pain that facing this decision brings you. Many others before you . . .
Read more here.
Letters of note is becoming one of my favorite blogs.
April 29th, 1865: Queen Victoria, still grieving and “utterly broken-hearted” following the death of Prince Albert four years previous, writes an empathetic letter of condolence to Mary Todd Lincoln following the recent assassination of her husband, Abraham Lincoln.
Transcript follows. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Read more here.
Thesis: Always be ready.
A doctor tells the story of what it was like when the Joplin tornado hit:
You never know that it will be the most important day of your life until the day is over. The day started like any other day for me: waking up, eating, going to the gym, showering, and going to my 4 pm ED shift. As I drove to the hospital, I mentally prepared for my shift as I always do, but nothing could ever have prepared me for what was going to happen on this shift.
Things were normal for the first hour and half. At approximately 5:30 pm, we received a warning that a tornado had been spotted. Although I work in Joplin and went to medical school in Oklahoma, I live in New Jersey, and I have never seen or been in a tornado. I learned that a “code gray” was being called. We were to start bringing patients to safer spots within the ED and hospital.
At 5:42 pm, a security guard yelled to everyone, “Take cover! We are about to get hit by a tornado!” While others scattered to various places, I ran with a pregnant RN, Shilo Cook, to the only place that I was familiar with in the hospital without windows — a small doctor’s office in the ED.
Read the rest here.
HT: Trevin Wax
SI writer tells of a baseball team persevering after the tornado devastated their coach’s home:
Baseball is all about getting home. But what happens when you get there and it’s gone?
It happened to Hueytown (Ala.) High School baseball head coach Rick Patterson on Wednesday. He walked to his house only to find a tornado had taken it.
Pitchers love making saves. But what happens when the save you have to make is your sister’s life?
It happened to 15-year-old Hueytown JV pitcher Brandon Miller that same day. He was hiding under a mattress in the hallway of his house, wearing his baseball helmet, when a twister took the roof off. Then it started to take his 14-year-old sister, Sara. He reached up and grabbed her in the final fraction of the moment.
High school sports is about playing for love of school. But what happens if your school closed for a week because nobody can drive the roads to get to it?
You keep playing is what happens.
In the eye of all that, Hueytown carried on in the Alabama 5A state playoffs Monday, splitting its first two games with Briarwood Christian in the best-of-three second round. Afterward, each Briarwood player donated $20 to Patterson to help out.
And you think your team has distractions?
“Boys, if you wanna help me, keep winning,” Patterson told his players before the games. “Because as long as we keep winning, I don’t have to think about the rest of my life.”
The rest of his life is scattered over blocks and blocks of Pleasant Grove, Ala., where he and his wife, Debra, were supposed to be living. But two months ago . . .
Read the rest here.
Tim Challies links to the web site of a pastor of a church ravaged by the Tsunami and nuclear accident:
Yesterday a reader of this site sent me a link to an interesting series of blog posts—posts written by Pastor Akira Sato, who is the pastor for the Fukushima First Baptist Church, near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The email included this poignant paragraph:”Yesterday (Friday, March 18) one member who has been with us since the disaster had received an order from his company and left for work in the nuclear plant. (He is a leader of the plumbing job). As the family of God, knowing the departing pains of his loved ones, in tears we dispatched the brother with prayers. He left here with the Lord. Beside him, there are others, our precious members, who have been working hard at the plant. O, Lord, please protect them with your almighty hand! I beg you, please! ‘Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, ….that thine hand might be with me, and that wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me.’ (1 Chronicles 4:10)”
Here are several other excerpts from the pastor’s blogs:
[March 13] This has been triple disasters. Because of the quake, some member’s house was partially destroyed. I still haven’t been able to get in touch with the families who live near the beach. JR Tomioka station has been washed away by the tsunami. The city was utterly destroyed. You have already heard of the accident of Fukushima first nuclear power plant. All the residents were forced to evacuate, and my church members had to get on a bus without any belongings and sent to schools and gyms separately. It’s been hard to find out how they are doing. . .
Read more here.
