We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

On Suffering and God’s Goodness

On Suffering

Hani Amir via Compfight

Seth Haines wrote a guest post on Tanya Marlow’s blog called The Overcoming Kingdom.  He reflects on his young son’s illness and the questions it provoked in him, and the hope he came to in the process. Real suffering challenges our easy answers and drives us to Jesus in a way that nothing else can.

From his guest post:

When life upends you, it’s tricky to balance human suffering and the goodness of God. It’s tempting to default to cliché tautologies–God is good because he is God–but these kinds of pat answers seem unsatisfying in the moment, and the starkness of our personal suffering seems to heighten awareness of the plight of all humanity. There are wars, famines, diseases, injustices, and where, pray tell, is God?

Related Reading

The Evangelical Heart

qthomasbower via Compfight Rachel Held Evans posted recently about The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart. Citing a comment by John Piper (“It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.”) she notes that when we approach the Bible in…

Jesus: Our Vision of God

At the beginning of his Gospel John taught that “no one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known” (Jn 1:18). He is claiming that, outside of Christ, no one has ever truly known God. In the…

Topics:

Close Encounters of the Third (Kingdom) Kind: A Reflection on the Missio Alliance Conference

What an incredible gathering we had last week! It was invigorating, informative and fun! What stands out most to me was the family-feel of the conference. Like most of you, I have usually felt a bit alien when attending Christian conferences throughout the years. Not this one. You could sense the shared kingdom ethos in…

Who is Responsible for Job’s Suffering?

In the prologue of the Book of Job, the author seems to ascribe the responsibility for Job’s affliction to Yahweh. For instance, Satan challenges God to “stretch out [his] hand and strike everything he has,“ believing that this would incite Job to curse God to his face (1:11). The fact that the Lord responds by…

Lord Willing? Part 2

In Part 2 of Greg’s interview of Jessica Kelley about her book Lord Willing?, they discuss the theology that helped Jessica through her son Henry’s illness and death. You can find Part 1 of the interview here, and part 3 here.

Lord Willing?

Lord Willing? Wrestling with God’s Role in My Child’s Death, by Jessica Kelley In November 2012, I received one of the most touching emails I have ever received. A young mother named Jessica Kelley explained to me that her four-year-old son had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. Despite his parents’ and doctors’ valiant…