Tuesday, November 13

From the mouth of babes.....

The Sky Angel Cowboy! Logan is 13, and listens to 89.3 KSBJ which broadcasts from Houston, TX on Sky Angel because he lives on a ranch in a very small town in Nebraska. He called us distraught because he had to take down a calf. His words have wisdom beyond his years. Listen to what he had to say www.ksbj.org/eblogs/morningShow/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/logan-calf-story-mixdown.mp3

A Millennial's view to an age old question.

A friend and coworker of mine came to me concerning a question that he was given concerning God. He wanted to have a discussion with someone who is a Christian, to understand their view. I was honored to be chosen as that person.

" If God exists and sees all of the suffering of mankind, yet chooses not to act, God is not good. If God sees the suffering, chooses to act, yet lacks the power, he is impotent. If God chooses to act, has the power, yet lacks the plan of action, he is not all-knowing.

Although my friend, who has the label of Millennial (the generation between 1980 and 1995), isn't a Christian, he considers himself a seeker, not quite ready to commit to one religious model over another. With the reply he gave, we can see the hope of this generation, and indeed society as a whole, in its ability to define its moral arguments without fear and without hesitation. When the truth of Christianity reaches such as these, the faithful will be that more stronger......

My 'seeker' millennial friend responds with this statement. "One of the major downfalls to the Problem of Evil and how it relates to mankind's perceived "powers" of God is that it relates his power to terms that we, as mortal beings, understand and can relate to. Terms such as suffering, evil, knowledge, and power are used in relation to the human capability of these words.

As humans, we KNOW that a person suffers from a sickness or injury, or that someone suffers through financial hardships. We consider brutal acts to be evil. Some are even so arrogant as to assume that they can know the extent of the powers of God. Such is the nature of a being which is "outgrowing" its use for a belief in a deity.

To overcome something, one must first understand the limits of the object (or in this case God) that are being overcome. The fault in this lies with the basic understanding of every follower of every major religion. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and omnipresent. All-knowing means that God possesses the intimate knowledge of everything that ever did happen, is happening, or will happen and the effects that will have on everything else. All-powerful means that God has the ability to do every conceivable action, up to and including create or destroy. Omnipresent means that God is everywhere at every given point in time and space.

When humans try to take these ideas and "dumb them down" to human levels of understanding, they become watered down.

Applying the previous statement to the Problem of Evil, it can be said that God IS acting on every bit of suffering with all of his power, and all of his knowledge, but the actions and effects are beyond our simple level of understanding.

Join me on the slippery slope momentarily; without sickness or injury (easily construable as "suffering"), there would be no use for doctors. However, with no conditions of unhealthy, the human population would have choked out the Earth's resources long ago due to overcrowding.

Along those roads, many of the perceived "sufferings" of mankind are brought on by our own doing. War, poverty, and hunger could all be solved at a much lower level than through the intervention of God.

Why would a mother continue to breast feed her child when the child is more than capable of feeding itself?

So among these ramblings, hopefully I've been able to point out my opinion on a few of the flaws with the Problem of Evil. We simply are incapable of understanding the bounds of something that has no limits."