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
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?
Category: General
Tags: God's Character, Kingdom, Suffering, Theodicy
Related Reading
“Natural” Evil? 7 Arguments Implicating Satan
Image by Jmos® via Flickr We believe that God is the Creator of nature, but nature simply does not seem to point to a God of love. Parasites, viruses, bacteria, diseases and cancer kill millions and torment millions more, humans and animals alike. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, mudslides and volcanoes do the same. Theists have traditionally argued that…
Podcast: Isn’t God the Author of Suffering in the Crucifixion?
Greg considers the implications of his Cruciform Hermeneutic on his previous work in God at War. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0274.mp3
A Calvinist Take on the Problem of Evil
Carnie Lewis via Compfight Here’s a Calvinist view on the problem(s) of evil in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings. It’s the old God-as-author analogy. In essence, this is how Calvinism views God’s role in any instance of radical evil (quoted from the Desiring God article): But, of course, the Bible says more than…
Isn’t the World Unsafe If God Doesn’t Control Everything?
If God isn’t in control of everything, the world feels unsafe. If the future is open and if things can happen outside of God’s will, what guarantee is there that there is a point to a person’s suffering? Maybe it’s all just bad luck. My experience has been that many of those who honestly examine…
Violent Parables?
Some try to argue that Jesus did not make loving enemies and refraining from violence an absolute mandate. They make their case on the basis of several passages from the Gospels. The first concerns the cleansing of the temple which we addressed here, while the second is about how Jesus spoke harsh words to the…
Open2013 Reflections
Both participants and leaders share about what was happening at Open2013 and some of their thoughts on Open Theism. Listen in and hear from Greg Boyd, John Sanders, Tom Oord, T. C. Moore, Jessica Kelley and many more.