Virginia Tech

I’ve had a little time to reflect on the murders at Virginia Tech a week ago. The best thing I’ve found so far was written by George Barna. I think I agree with his assessment, with one small exception. I’d flip the list upside down. I’m pretty sure I’d rather live next door to someone who came from a healthy family who had seen too much violent programming than vice versa. But that’s a small quibble.

I also don’t like using the word tragedy to describe the shooting. I think of tragedies as things like tornadoes and plane crashes. Acts of moral evil should occupy a different category in my mind. Certainly, the results of each are devastating, but I don’t like the implied moral equivocation. I’m not picking on Barna here. I’ve actually used the word myself when talking about the shooting. I just don’t like any implication.

Of course this massacre causes us to reflect on the problem of evil. Many apologists concede that this is the toughest question Christianity faces. I don’t know if humans have come up with any perfect answers to the question: How could an all-good, all-powerful God permit something like a tsunami, or 9/11 or Virginia Tech?

Here’s a brief summary of some standard replies. I don’t do them justice, but they’re a starting point for discussion:

1. “The problem of good”: This doesn’t answer the problem of evil, but turns it around. If there is no God, how could things like love and sunsets and Breyer’s ice cream and puppies exist? The atheist has some explaining to do.
2. “The problem of freedom”: The greatest possible good involves freedom. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself what you’d do if you found out that your best friend (in my case my wife) was actually a robot and did not “choose” your friendship? The greatest possible world includes love. Love entails a choice. A choice entails freedom. Freedom requires the possibility of evil. If God were to immediately stop all evil, what else would necessarily be lost?
3. “God understands”: No matter what evil or suffering you’ve faced, God understands what you’re dealing with. The suffering of Christ on the cross is unfathomable to the human mind. Jesus was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”.
4. Read the Book of Job. Is it possible that if God did answer this question, we wouldn’t understand his answer?
5. Melinda at STR wrote this.

I'm back

I’m back. Did you miss me?

Didn’t think so. I’m glad that my comment count doesn’t reflect my actual value in the eyes of God.

When I first thought of doing this, I figured that no one would read the thing, so why bother. But then one of my profs suggested that it would be good practice to do something like this, so I dove in.

But the last three months have been pretty busy with some other projects.