Flash Forward
The next several Sunday's I want to explore in our "Where is God?" series, "Where is God in Evil?" The texts are: Judges 2:6-13, Ephesians 6:10-18, and Luke 13:1-5. It was the destruction of the Twin Towers in Manhattan six years ago that brought evil back into the spotlight.
From a Christian point of view, you can say that the problem of evil is probably the most difficult to explain or understand. In theological terms we are dealing with theodicy, "the justification of a deity's justice and goodness in light of suffering and evil" (Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, Donald McKim, 239). If God is good and loving, how can God allow, permit, make happen things like tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes (natural evil) and holocausts, slavery, child abuse, etc. (moral evil)?
These are difficult questions that philosophers and theologians have been addressing for centuries. I hope perhaps to do a little more than scratch the surface of this issue, but invite you to think and meditate about this issue. We live in a culture that for the most part, I believe, as a very inadequate view of evil.
From a Christian point of view, you can say that the problem of evil is probably the most difficult to explain or understand. In theological terms we are dealing with theodicy, "the justification of a deity's justice and goodness in light of suffering and evil" (Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, Donald McKim, 239). If God is good and loving, how can God allow, permit, make happen things like tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes (natural evil) and holocausts, slavery, child abuse, etc. (moral evil)?
These are difficult questions that philosophers and theologians have been addressing for centuries. I hope perhaps to do a little more than scratch the surface of this issue, but invite you to think and meditate about this issue. We live in a culture that for the most part, I believe, as a very inadequate view of evil.
posted by UCC Medfield at 10:10 AM
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