I was confident that I wouldn't even attempt to write anything about the horrible shooting on Friday. Of course we are sick of it. Sick of it in the same way we saw the planes hitting the Twin Towers, over and over and over . . . for what seemed like weeks. I've tried to avoid the sadness, because, as a father and now grandfather, it is too grievous to consider.
I've heard that it is a challenge to faith when these things occur. I will qualify that by only two bands on the spectrum.
On one end are the atheists. The tragedy is a treat to them because it screams of meaning (although a sad meaning) in a vacuum where there can be none. In the atheists' universe, there is no difference between shooting 20 innocent first graders with an assault rifle and curing cancer. They are two meaningless points in space without reference points. But no atheist can really live this way. They feel the pain and sense the grief that it is real . . . and it is evil.
In the other band, near the other end or the spectrum are the evangelicals who are backed into a corner where they believe that the only way their God can be big enough, is that he plans every movement of every atom . . . with no randomness. In His destiny, these Christians try to resolve an irreconcilable beliefs that their God loves everyone (at least the good people) with an endless love, but at the same time, plotted the most disgusting cruelty against them. Somehow they live with that in the same way the atheists try to live with their perplexing ideas of meaning without a cause for meaning.
Second, unrelated point. I took my wife and son to Handel's Messiah, performed by the professionals of Seattle's Symphony and Chorus. It was totally incredible. For the first time, I followed every word of the three and half hour performance from the program. This is what praise music suppose to be. A totally God-centered rendering of the whole Gospel.
More later.
I've heard that it is a challenge to faith when these things occur. I will qualify that by only two bands on the spectrum.
On one end are the atheists. The tragedy is a treat to them because it screams of meaning (although a sad meaning) in a vacuum where there can be none. In the atheists' universe, there is no difference between shooting 20 innocent first graders with an assault rifle and curing cancer. They are two meaningless points in space without reference points. But no atheist can really live this way. They feel the pain and sense the grief that it is real . . . and it is evil.
In the other band, near the other end or the spectrum are the evangelicals who are backed into a corner where they believe that the only way their God can be big enough, is that he plans every movement of every atom . . . with no randomness. In His destiny, these Christians try to resolve an irreconcilable beliefs that their God loves everyone (at least the good people) with an endless love, but at the same time, plotted the most disgusting cruelty against them. Somehow they live with that in the same way the atheists try to live with their perplexing ideas of meaning without a cause for meaning.
Second, unrelated point. I took my wife and son to Handel's Messiah, performed by the professionals of Seattle's Symphony and Chorus. It was totally incredible. For the first time, I followed every word of the three and half hour performance from the program. This is what praise music suppose to be. A totally God-centered rendering of the whole Gospel.
More later.
1 comment:
In the other band, near the other end or the spectrum are the evangelicals who are backed into a corner where they believe that the only way their God can be big enough, is that he plans every movement of every atom . . . with no randomness. In His destiny, these Christians try to resolve an irreconcilable beliefs that their God loves everyone (at least the good people) with an endless love, but at the same time, plotted the most disgusting cruelty against them.
The God who is Omnipotent but NOT Benevolent.
"IN'SHAL'LAH..."
Post a Comment