October 4, 2009
WWGHA (Chapter 8)
You can read Chapter Eight here.
This is a tough, tough question – both intellectually and emotionally. And the author again picks clear examples of this to make his point. He starts the chapter with examples and questions, neither of which I wish to trivialize or nit-pick. And the author rightly points out two of the assumptions behind all this: God exists and He keeps score. I would say there are other assumptions as well, but the two the author mentions are key.
He is also right that, if we accept the belief that God is imaginary, this paradox disappears (though, as I mentioned in my response to chapter 5, atheism has its problems as well). However, as I have also mentioned, I am sincerely puzzled that there is no statistical difference in terms of things like cancer between people who are prayed for and people who aren’t (assuming this is true, which I have no reason to doubt).
As far as bad things happening to Christians and good things happening to non-believers, the Bible promises that this will be the case (Matthew 5:45 is one instance). So, it comes as no surprise to the Christian, nor does it present a logical difficulty (though emotional and existential difficulties are another matter).
As far as God’s plan goes, it doesn’t follow from the fact that God’s plan is good that everything He allows to happen is also good. Remember Romans 8:28? God uses all things, and He doesn’t think these things are good and neither should we. For another Biblical examples, see Isaiah 54:15-16. That doesn’t mean He can’t use them and give them meaning and purpose, but He’s not asking us to call Neva Winnecoup-Rogers’ death good (or any other atrocity mentioned). Additionally, Hitler was not “evil incarnate.”
The author then moves on to say that, if everything that happens is God’s plan, then free will is an illusion. I don’t have the space here to discuss in great detail the sovereignty-free will debate, but here are a couple thoughts.
From the Biblical verses mentioned earlier (and others), it is clear that free will is a part of God’s plan, not something destroyed by it. That is, it is not that God explicitly ordains every single things that happens. Rather, He uses those things which happen (including both the hurtful, malicious choices of men AND the prayers of the faithful) to accomplish His ends. This view of God’s plan does not lead to the same conclusions that the author’s view of God’s plan does.
Additionally, there is a wealth of literature on this debate. If the author wants to make this case, he will need to operate with a Biblical notion of God’s plan and present an argument. Things are not commonly agreed upon enough for him to simply state conclusions.
September 23, 2009
WWGHA (Chapter 7)
You can read Chapter Seven here.
I’ll skip the recap of the previous chapters and move on to the heart of this chapter.
I’m not sure exactly what the author means by “impossible prayers”. Would easily visible scars completely disappearing overnight be an impossible prayer? If so, then I know that sometimes impossible prayers get answered.
As far as Matthew 17:20 goes, I think it is reasonable to believe that Jesus is using hyperbole to make a point. I won’t go into my argument for this again, but you can see my response to Chapter 2 here if you want to see what I have to say.
So, I know that sometimes God answers impossible prayers (assuming by that the author means clearly non-coincidental). “Chris” thus fails to respond rightly to “Norm” on several fronts:
- Chris shouldn’t refuse to pray for these things when Norm asks. Who knows what God may do?
- Chris didn’t know enough about Biblical exegesis to know why the points he was making are good ones.
- Chris shouldn’t try to defend the idea that God never answers impossible prayers. Sometimes He does!
As far as the point about God “divinely inspiring” coal companies and the like, I agree with the author. That’s missing the point. That being said, who’s to say that God isn’t involved in what the author calls “human accomplishments”? They certainly aren’t evidence of God’s existence, but if God’s existence is supported by other evidence it’s reasonable to think He’s helping us advance scientifically/medically as well.
Since I’ve already discussed God answering non-coincidental prayers in past posts, I won’t reiterate that here. A lot of answers to prayer (even if they really are God) look like coincidences. But all of them aren’t that way, and that’s enough to make the author’s point questionable.
Is it possible that God is imaginary? Not based on what I’ve seen, and the author doesn’t give me a good reason to change my mind. However, I do wrestle sometimes with the goodness of God, and my wrestling seems to be perfectly consistent with the evidence.
WWGHA (Chapter 6)
You can read Chapter Six here.
The author begins with assertions that I contested in my response to the previous chapter. He then says that two conclusions are suggested by this, and gives an argument/question. Rather than addressing the conclusions directly, let’s look at the argument/question.
“If God answers medical prayers, then why do you need health insurance?”
As we’ve already seen in previous chapters, the Bible does not promise that every prayer (medical or otherwise) will be answered exactly how we want each and every time we ask. The author’s argument only works if God’s promise is to give us exactly what we want every time we ask. That’s not the promise at all. So, most of us who can afford to do so get medical insurance.
I won’t touch on the mock conversation and the notes that follow except to make three points.
- God not answering every prayer (and/or us not being able to detect a pattern) is not proof of randomness.
- Biblically speaking, God’s plan does not operate independently of natural things; in fact, it often makes use of them. (For example: Moses’ staff, Samson’s jawbone of an ass, David’s slingshot, Israel’s army, etc.) Romans 8:28 says God uses all things to accomplish His purposes.)
- I love the use of names (NORMal and CHRIStian). A little snarky, perhaps, but very funny.
Let’s talk a minute about the author’s use of the various Scriptures
Matthew 6:25-34
First of all, it is possible to plan without worrying. Jesus seems to be talking about obsessing over things so that they dominate the landscape of your mind; He’s not talking about responsible foresight. That is encouraged (see Proverbs 15:22, Proverbs 21:5, Proverbs 24:27, and Luke 14:25-33 for some examples).
Matthew 6:19
There is a difference between responsible spending and hoarding wealth.
Matthew 19:21
This is a command to a specific person, with no implication of being a general rule for every Christian to follow.
Proverbs 3:5-8
We trust in the Lord because we know that even our best preparations are inadequate. There is never any indication that we are not to do our best to prepare unless the Lord specifically instructs otherwise.
Moving on, the form of hiddenness that the author addresses here (and in the last chapter) is weak. I agree with the author here . (For a slightly more detailed treatment, see my response to the previous chapter). The author’s response to the “gumball machine” idea is covered by my response to his interpretation of the Biblical passages.
As far as the argument about the rate at which people get healed, I have no good response. Because I have seen unambiguous, non-coincidental miracles, I don’t doubt the existence of God based on this, but I do question what’s going on. I also agree that, as Christians, we need to be as honest with ourselves and others about unanswered prayers as we are about answered ones. This is a tough thing to do, and I don’t do it very often. But it’s the right thing.
As far as the Jeanna case, the author makes the argument (which I will summarize):
If God healed Jeanna in response to prayer, He will eliminate rabies in response to prayer. He won’t eliminate rabies, so He didn’t heal Jeanna.
Independent of the question of whether or not God will eliminate rabies in response to prayer (and I’m not convinced He wouldn’t), this is just a bad argument; the conclusion doesn’t follow.
The author ends with a summation, but I believe I’ve already touched on all his points. My hope is that, as Christians, we won’t talk like “Chris” does, not fessing up to the reality of unanswered prayer. My hope is also that more of us will begin to really start praying for people.
September 21, 2009
WWGHA (Chapter 5)
You can read Chapter 5 here.
I discussed Jesus’ teachings and promises about prayer earlier. You can see that post here.
I will remain agnostic on whether or not the healing of Jeanna Giese was the result of direct intervention from God (though it does meet the dictionary definition for “miracle” given in the article). However, I do wish to dispute the author’s claim that we can answer whether or not God healed Jeanna by conducting the “experiment” mentioned. This argument fails on several levels.
First, there is no deductive or inductive connection between what happened to Jeanna and what would happen to the “devout veteran”.
- The premise “God delights in healing and heals often” is not strong enough to make the connection. One would need the premise “God delights in healing and heals every time we pray” to make the deductive case. And, as I covered in my response to Ch. 2, that is not the best interpretation of the Biblical passages.
- Inductively there is no connection between what happened to Jeanna and what would happen to the devout veteran. It would be akin to the argument, “We can know whether or not it rained in Buffalo yesterday based on whether or not in rains in Honolulu today.”
This is important because, if we are to take what happens to the devout veteran to say something about what happened to Jeanna, there needs to be a logical connection between the two cases. There is no such connection. Thus, if our devout veteran gets his leg back, it doesn’t prove that God intervened in Jeanna’s case. And if his leg doesn’t grow back . . . you get the idea.
Second, I don’t know how the author justifies the assertion that nothing will happen in the case of the devout veteran. The author cites no evidence; what is revealed is merely the bias of the author.
Third, I don’t see the importance of searching through all the medical journals and not finding a single case of a leg being regenerated. Wouldn’t it have been true before Jeanna that you could have searched all the medical journals and not found a single instance of someone surviving rabies without the vaccine? And isn’t it possible (just possible) that healings happen that don’t get recorded in medical journals?
Thus, there is no justification for the assertion that God never heals amputees. Now, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We can’t conclude on this basis that God does heal amputees, but we don’t have to in order to refute the author’s point.
Let’s look at the various rationalizations the author talks about. I’ll briefly state the rationalization in bold and then address what the author has to say.
- (Healing amputees is not part of God’s plan.) I don’t buy this rationalization any more than the author does. There is no reason I can think of to exclude amputees from God’s healing grace (and anyway, I’m not convinced God has never healed an amputee).
- (Sometimes the answer to prayer is no.) As I’ve already stated, there’s no way of knowing that, “God’s answer to amputees is always no,” and the interpretation of the Bible the author uses is lacking.
- (God needs to stay hidden and healing an amputee is too obvious.) There is a strong Biblical case to be made for God’s use of hiddenness to accomplish His purposes (just check out the posts on this blog not about WWGHA!) However, there is no reason to think that God would never heal an amputee out of a desire to stay hidden. As the author mentions, there are plenty of miraculous things in the Bible that are as obvious or more.
- (God has a special plan for amputees.) I agree with the author here. It’s possible that God would use some amputees in special ways, but to never heal a single one? Sounds fishy. That being said, I would probably be inclined to grant a more prominent role to “God’s special plan” than the author does.
- (God has to honor our free will, so he won’t heal wounds that are the result of consciously going to war.) I agree with the author. The free will argument (while an important piece of a Christian response to the Problem of Evil) is weak here.
- (God heals amputees through the advancement of medical science, like with prosthetics.) I’m not as dismissive as the author is of the role God plays in the development of medical science. However this rationalization is weak, mainly because it misses the point. We’re talking about the miraculous regeneration of a limb, not getting a prosthetic strapped on.
- (God won’t respond to our testing Him.) There may very well be a difference between asking God to heal someone in order to see if He’s real and asking Him to heal out of compassion for the person. It may be that what the author is doing here is more test than compassion, making the Scripture reference relevant. However, one could conduct the “experiment” with the right spirit (at this point it would probably cease to be an experiment), to see what happens. In fact, I believe the Church should be praying for amputees.
- (God will answer the prayers in the next life.) I agree with the author, though I do think that many prayers only get answered in the next life (in fact, all prayer finds its fullest answer only in the next life). However, there is no reason to think that all prayer for amputees is of this sort.
- (We need to be patient as we wait for God’s response to prayer.) Same response as #8, but patience and persistence in prayer is important.
- (The Bible doesn’t promise that God will answer every prayer.) The author dismisses this as rationalizing away the literal reading of Scripture. As I argued in an earlier post, this isn’t even reading the Bible literally. It’s reading it out of context and assigning to it an interpretation that the readers of the time would not have taken from it. So, I don’t think is a rationalization; I think it’s responsible exegesis.
- (No one can understand the mysteries of God.) The author says this answer is uncomfortable when we look at our world. I agree that even the best answers Christians can give aren’t comfortable (though neither are the answers critics can give). However, there are rational answers. And why should we think that the Christians’ answers should be unassailable? There is certainly no Biblical reason to think so, and many would argue that intellectual unassailability is impossible for anything (see Lesslie Newbigin’s “Proper Confidence” for a wonderful, short book on the subject).
Now let’s look at the author’s answer to the problem on unanswered prayer: God is imaginary.
I agree that the idea that God is imaginary offers a way of understanding the cases mentioned that avoids paradox. However, the author’s account of the paradox that besets Christianity is overstated for a number of reasons, which I have already touched upon and will sum up in two statements.
- The Bible doesn’t say what the author claims it says.
- The author can’t prove that God has never healed an amputee, spinal cord, congenital birth defect or genetic disease. Since the author’s point is that it is clear to all that these things can’t happen, he has to prove it. It is not enough to say that Christians can’t prove that God has (and many claim that He has healed such things). In this case, the burden of proof is on the author.
Furthermore, the belief that God is imaginary has its own problems. It has questions it can’t answer (like the origin of the Universe or the nagging persistence of belief in some sort of transcendent morality). But perhaps most relevantly, it can’t explain the presence of answered prayers where those answers cannot reasonably be explained by ambiguity or coincidence (like the girl whose scars disappeared or the waitress who was able to serve without pain). Thus, I can say from personal experience that the author’s assertion that, “God never answers prayers if there is no possibility of coincidence” is false.
All that being said (and it’s a mouthful), I have absolutely no compelling answer as to why the studies mentioned so no statistical difference between prayer and coincidence. (I have heard of some studies showing the effectiveness of prayer, but have heard many of those have been discredited; if you know anything about this, please comment). It confuses me primarily because I (and many of my close friends) have seen unambiguous, non-coincidental answers to prayer.
Finally, there is a lot that could be said about the lack of scientific evidence for God’s existence. I’m sure this will get more air time in later chapters, so I won’t belabor the point now. I do, however, want to make one point I believe to be crucial.
The lack of scientific evidence for God’s existence (if indeed there is such a lack) is only deeply problematic if science is the only reliable justification for belief (i.e. if a belief is rational only if it is scientifically verifiable). There are at least two reasons to question whether or not that is the case.
- Science as the sole justifier of belief is a very new notion that is not universally accepted and is likely to change. The dominant account of Rationality changes frequently over time and even varies from culture to culture. (For a rigorous account of this phenomenon, read Alasdair MacIntyre’s “Whose Justice? Which Rationality?”)
- Science as the sole justifier of belief is self-contradictory. That is, you cannot prove on the basis of science that science is the sole justifier of belief. This may seem like a bit of philosophical trickery, but it’s an important point. Logically speaking, self-defeating criteria can’t be true.
Now, it could still be that the lack of scientific evidence for God (if there is such a lack) is problematic for Christians. However, the author will need to give an account of what counts as knowledge that makes this so and isn’t self-defeating.
WWGHA (Chapter 4)
You can read Chapter Four here.
I find it interesting that the author notes the difficulty of arguing with God, if only because the author doesn’t really seem to have any difficulty at all arguing with God. One of the key arguments Christians (and most theists) make when discussing God’s plan and the mystery involved is the superiority of God’s thinking to ours (sometimes Isaiah 55:8-9 is cited). Most atheists view it as a cop out, and for someone who rejects belief in God it certainly has to seem that way. However, I’d like to make three quick points.
- This point does not deny the rationality of God’s actions. Rather, it argues that they (and He) are supra-rational.
- Atheists have their unanswerable questions (and accompanying “cop outs”) as well (the origin of the Universe is one example). It isn’t that no answers aren’t offered, but that they fall just as flat as the people who try to give compelling answers to why God allows suffering (perhaps even more flat).
- How does one decide whether these things are cop outs or simply questions that we don’t have the answers to yet? I’m not sure I know, but I’m trying to come up with some rational criteria of deciding (any help would be much appreciated). Practically, it seems like people tend to lean toward whatever answer reinforces the worldview they already have (i.e. these issues aren’t usually what leads people to change their worldview). They are simply too nebulous to be the foundation of a rational adjudication between worldviews.
To be honest, the “paradox” in this chapter hits me harder than the others for some reason. Maybe it’s Ranika’s age and the drawn out death, maybe it’s Tim’s lack of malice and the guilt he must feel . . . I’m not sure. And stuff like this happens every day. Tragedies on the order of those mentioned earlier in the chapter happen with some regularity as well. And in it all sometimes all I can do is ask God why this happens and pray for more compassion on those who suffer (and more grace in my suffering).
September 20, 2009
WWGHA (Chapter 3)
You can read Chapter Three here.
It should be noted that this Standard Model of God is a model of the Christian God specifically. That being said, I agree with the authors about the view being “remarkably clear and consistent.” I agree with the dictionary definition, and the only clarification I want to make is with point #6.
There is widespread agreement on the fact that the Bible is uniquely inspired by God (literally God-breathed) and authoritative for doctrine (belief). However, the Bible says very little beyond that about the nature of its inspiration, and you will find the Christian community contains many different perspectives on the way in which the Bible is inspired and what that means for how we read it.
I can’t give an exhaustive account of the different views, but if anyone would like to read more I can send you some papers on the subject. Suffice to say, I believe the Bible is a reliable source of doctrine (and the primary authority against which doctrine is judged) when interpreted correctly, which includes taking the human authors’ intent, cultural context, literary genre, and other factors into account. This process is sometimes difficult and messy, and good people sometimes disagree. I believe the Bible is more clear on essential teachings and less clear on others.
I also believe that proper interpretation cannot happen apart from a community of believers led by the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures were entrusted to the church, and as a group we are better able to read them than can individuals on their own (this is true for any text, but even more so for a text that is designed to be the devotional reading for a community). We must have the Holy Spirit living inside of us in order for the Bible to “come fully alive” for us, and for us to able to understand it rightly. This is not to say that people who don’t believe can’t come to the Bible and get truth, just that the relate to it less fully than do those who have the Spirit.
For a brief article on the clarity of Scripture and a list of verses that talk about it, see here.
I agree with what the author(s) write(s) about prayer, and agree once again with the paradox: something is just not right about the death of Neva Winnecoup-Rogers, and the only tragedies that happen in our world.
September 17, 2009
WWGHA (Chapter 2)
You can read chapter two here.
As we established in the previous post, there is no way of proving that God completely ignored Neva Winnecoup-Rogers. Rather, what we know is that He did not stop Jeff Weise from killing her. We do not know what else He might have done that day, or how He might have been working within Neva’s heart and mind.
The question is a good one though: Why didn’t God protect Neva Winnecoup-Rogers’ life? And I am going to say right now that I have absolutely no idea. What I disagree with is not that this question isn’t troubling; I think it is deeply troubling and something we need to wrestle with both intellectually and emotionally. What I disagree with is the assertion that the honest wrestling with this question (call it intellectual integrity or rationality, if you like) makes disbelief in God the only viable option. That is the claim I will be disputing throughout.
The question of unanswered prayer (particularly in light of Jesus’ promises mentioned in this chapter) is troubling. I have personally seen God do some incredible things in response to prayer (remove a boil off a man’s leg overnight, cause a girl’s scars from self-mutilation to completely fade overnight, heal a waitress’ wrist so she could work without pain or a brace, heal my crossbite to the extent that I no longer require surgery, etc.) And yet, I have also seen many of my prayers go unanswered (healing for my wife’s chronic pain conditions, healing for a friend’s bum knee, good sleep for a friend suffering from insomnia, etc).
I have seen enough that cannot reasonably be considered coincidence or chance that I cannot rationally doubt that God is alive and active in this world. Even so, there have been enough times where God did not do what I thought He should do that I sometimes wrestle with whether or not God is all-powerful or perfectly good.
I do not fall into the camp that wants to use God’s “hidden will” as an excuse for unanswered prayer. Andrew Murray in his book “With Christ In The School of Prayer” does a fantastic job of showing that “God’s will” as it occurs in verses like 1st John 5:14 is not talking about God’s hidden will but His revealed will (i.e. what we know about His nature and character). Thus, we pray expectantly for God to heal amputees (or whatever) because it has been revealed that He is a God who delights in healing and restoration.
I do, however, want to understand Jesus’ promises in context. It is a basic principle of exegesis that we understand the part in reference to the whole (in this case, we understand Jesus’ promises in light of the Old and New Testaments). We also want to understand Jesus’ promises in light of everything else He says and does. The Principle of Charity (see here) requires that we give Jesus (and everyone else!) the best reading possible, meaning we assume a logical consistency among everything He says and does unless there is no interpretation that allows us to do so. Finally, it is important to understand how early Christians interpreted Jesus’ promises, because they give us a big clue about how His audience would have understood Him.
With that in mind, I’d like to mention the following:
- The Old Testament is full of unanswered prayers and wrestling with the mystery/hiddenness of God.
- There’s an entire literary genre in the Old Testament (Psalms of Lament) devoted to this very thing.
- The Jews of Jesus’ time had been crying out for years and years to God for deliverance from the Romans with no apparent answer.
- Jesus, like most rabbis, used hyperbole as a rhetorical teaching device (Luke 14:26 is a clear example).
- Jesus says that true belief is necessary (Mark 11:24), and that the answered prayer must glorify the Father (John 14:12-14).
- Jesus had at least one of His prayers go unanswered (Luke 22:42).
- The New Testament talks regularly about the possibility of unanswered prayer.
- Unanswered prayer and miraculous answers to prayer were both part of the normal experience and teaching of early Christians. You’ll find no theologian or teacher (as best as I can tell) in the early church who understood Jesus to be saying that every prayer will be answered exactly how we want it to each and every time. (If there was someone who did, this was certainly not the dominant interpretation).
So, one cannot reasonably interpret Jesus’ promises as do the author(s) of the website. We only get this interpretation if we take the words at face value independent of context (this is often called the “literal” reading, though that’s a bit of a misnomer). I understand this is an approach to the Bible that some Christians take, but it has always been the minority view and has little to no grounding in the interpretations of early Christians.
This leaves us with the question of what exactly Jesus is talking about. In light of Jesus’ Resurrection and the fact that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit, His promises seem to be an encouragement for believers to use the power and authority they have in Christ to pray for healing, deliverance/exorcism, etc. This would signal a change from the Old Testament, would line up with the totality of what Jesus said and did, and affirms the experience of the early church where miracles happened frequently (Athanasius’ “On The Incarnation” is a wonderful example of this).
Thus, both Christianity and atheism are logically consistent with the fact of unanswered prayer, but only some sort of theism can explain answered prayer (where it can’t reasonably be considered coincidence or chance). There are a great many times where what people claim are miracles could be explained by coincidence (which doesn’t mean it isn’t God – it just means we don’t know that it is). However, there seem to be times where that explanation won’t hold (in the case of the fading scars I mentioned earlier, for instance).
I realize that many aren’t convinced that there are such things as true miracles, and bemoan the fact that they haven’t seen one that is empirically-verifiable. The natural question is: If God is still in the business of miracles, why won’t He prove it (and Himself) in a way that would be accepted by all?
My answer to this question, in the end, will once again be, “I don’t know.” However, later I will get into the question of whether this is a reasonable expectation to have of God, and whether we need a proof of this kind to rationally justify belief in Him. The author(s) of the website go(es) into this in a later chapter, so I’ll save my thoughts for then.
As far as Steve’s miracle and the questions the author(s) ask(s), they are good ones. God could have easily saved all the houses, but He chose not to. Presumably He had a reason, but the best attempts we can muster all seem pretty . . . well, lacking (not logically, but emotionally). It’s clear Biblically that God is not the author of evil, but He seems to allow a lot of it to happen.
With the author(s) I ask, “Why is God so mysterious?”
September 12, 2009
WWGHA (Chapter 1)
This is the first of what I hope will be a series responding to the claims of the website whywontgodhealamputees.com. This is my response to their first chapter, which you can read here.
The story that begins this chapter is powerful. It is detailed, perfectly scripted for the point of the chapter, and most importantly relevant (it actually happened and could easily happen again). However, the moves that come next, while rhetorically vital, are questionable at best (and let’s ignore, for the moment, the question of what God should do).
- What help has Jesus promised? If we look at the Biblical claims (which the website does later), a lot of the force of this point is lost. There is nothing that says God will help exactly how we want Him to each and every time we ask (though the author(s) of later chapters make that claim). However, it is right to say that Jesus promised God’s help.
- This kid (whose name was Jeff Weise) certainly isn’t pure evil. In all likelihood, this is a boy who has been wounded emotionally and perhaps physically. He has probably suffered at the hands of parents and/or authority. We know for a fact he suffered at the hands of his peers (see here). What he is doing is certainly evil, but he himself is more deserving of pity than hatred.
- Neva Winnecoup-Rogers’ exhibited tremendous courage and faith in the face of a great threat, knowingly risking her life. However, to make her the chief exemplar of faith and goodness is too much, as I’m sure she would attest if she could.
- It isn’t clear that God “completely ignore[d] the prayers”. The account says she prayed that God would be with them and help them. We have no way of knowing God wasn’t with them, and all we know is that He didn’t stop the shooting; we don’t know He didn’t “help” in other ways.
All that being said, this situation (and others like it) is deeply paradoxical, just as the author claims. And there must be a reason why, just as the author claims. The questions at the end of the chapter are important ones, ones that Christians and non-Christians alike need to take seriously. Unfortunately, too few people take the time to do so honestly and carefully. I hope to be one who does.
September 5, 2009
Blaise Pascal
“What meets our eyes [in overall experience] denotes neither total absence or manifest presence of the divine, but the presence of a hidden God.”
Pascal, Pensées
July 24, 2009
Quick Thought
If faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1), what does it mean that we have faith in the goodness of God? Might it be that sometimes, at least sometimes, we can’t see it? And not because of any fault or omission of ours, but simply because of how things are designed?
If that’s right, maybe we need to change how we articulate faith and how we encourage people who struggle with whether or not God is good.
