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The Suffering of God
This seems like a good follow-up post from what Greg posted yesterday. Charisma posted this reflection on the problem of evil and the suffering of God. It’s a great summary of our thinking about what accounts for the kind of world we see where tragedies like Newtown occur.
From the article:
C. S. Lewis sagely observed, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself … Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata–of creatures that work like machines–would hardly be worth creating.”
Put another way, love cannot be coerced; it must be freely chosen.
Related Reading
Podcast: What is Gender Based On?
Greg talks about the mysteries of gender and cautions Christians to avoid certain extreme positions. Dan apologizes for a reckless joke. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0402.mp3
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In this continuing series on free will, Greg discusses how evil can only be accounted for if we acknowledge free will. This is especially true if you believe that God is good.
Past Sermon Series: Crap Happens
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Grieving
Henning Mühlinghaus via Compfight Here’s a post by Rachel Held Evans about the shootings in Connecticut today. From the post: So let’s grieve together. And let’s give one another the space to be shocked, to be pissed, to appeal to God, to be angry with God, to find peace in God, to question God, to…