Via NT Wrong’s Blog. I shan’t comment, as I don’t think either of them have an edge on the other (and they are debating a question which shall never be satisfactorily answered). Such debates, really, remind me of the ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin’ nonsense so popular in philosophical theology in the Middle Ages. The simple fact is, suffering is sometimes explainable (like when alcoholics get liver disease) and sometimes not (like when poor folk in New Orleans get drowned along with the misbehaving miscreants).
[I guess I did comment after all... Oh well, what are you gonna' do?]
And for natural disasters, people should not live on fault lines, below sea level on a gulf shore, in a high risk tornado area, an area that has brush fires and mudslides every year, and then complain about their suffering. Nature does not care about you or your house built into the side of a cliff in LA. That’s why people died in Indonesia and why New Orleans was flooded out.
” people should not live on fault lines, below sea level on a gulf shore, in a high risk tornado area, an area that has brush fires and mudslides every year”
Yeah, let’s move to outer space. No wait… space debris.
Maybe hobbits had it right: a nice hole in the ground. About six feet under. There’s a place to escape natural disasters….
Chuck forgot to quote the rest, “and then complain about their suffering”. If you move in a high risk area, you have to know what you are getting yourself into. Just check your insurance premium and there’s your risk assessment. Someday my ground floor could flood and I would have no way to stop it. Will I blame God or ask why or lose my faith like Ehrman? Nope.
This may expose my tendency to be idealistically naive in some areas, but I honestly do not think the problem of evil was meant to be solved by mere (stupid) mortals such as ourselves. To think that we can (or should) causes us to adopt a responsibility that was never meant to be ours. More to the point: our propensity for impatience with respect to obtaining the final effects of the solution to the problem reveals a shaky (if not absent) faith in the divine solution that has been provided. Either Christ has defeated the power of sin and evil, or he has not. Either we believe that such is the case, or we do not. If Christ has defeated sin and evil and we believe it, we must therefore be patient in awaiting the full solution to manifest itself: a solution that is characterized by the absence of sin and evil.
Drew, what about the population of Bangladesh, which is geographically fated to suffer monsoons? Are they permitted to complain about their suffering? Or should they all just pack up and move to someplace safe, like Teaneck, NJ say?
I simply meant that it near impossible to live somewhere where there is no danger.
As for suffering, there is a relevant quote:
Heb 12:7-11 NET. Endure your suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? (8) But if you do not experience discipline, something all sons have shared in, then you are illegitimate and are not sons. (9) Besides, we have experienced discipline from our earthly fathers and we respected them; shall we not submit ourselves all the more to the Father of spirits and receive life? (10) For they disciplined us for a little while as seemed good to them, but he does so for our benefit, that we may share his holiness. (11) Now all discipline seems painful at the time, not joyful. But later it produces the fruit of peace and righteousness for those trained by it.
I always remember a church member who died of cancer. He was in one of those support groups, where people voiced the eternal, “Why me, Lord?” This man always said, “Why not me?”