Christian Carnival LXX

The latest Christian Carnival is up at A Penitent Blogger.

This week, the Vita ab Alto link on CC features part of the discussion between Izmud and me on the merits of the late Pope John Paul and, by way of that, modern relativism and many other topics besides.

This week's theme deals with an issue that Izmud brings up in his last post to me: How can there be a personally-interested God if there's so much suffering in the world?" Several posts deal with this issue very well.

Here's one from Dr Ray Pritchard of crosswalk.com that admirably sums up the Christian argument:

Jonathan Edwards said that in eternity, we will marvel at how God used evil on the earth to bring forth good to his own glory. For the moment, and most of the time, we see only the evil and the pain. But that's not the end of the story. God will have the last word and it will be good.

Pastor Louie Marsh of Marshian Chronicles points out a trap many Christians fall into when dealing with the type of sins Dr Pritchard writes of:

In the middle of all this O’Reilly was discussing the rage and how it drives sick people to extremes and finally to actually kill not only children, but their own children! Then he said something like, “it’s at that point where he departs the human race.”

That’s a common and comforting thought, and it’s said in various ways by almost everyone. Unfortunately it’s also completely and profoundly untrue. It’s not just an unimportant error either, it strikes at the very heart of the human condition, and on our understanding of it hinges not only the future of the human race, but our own salvation as well.

The ugly truth is that humans and only humans do this kind of thing. You don’t see animals torturing and burying their young alive after sexually assaulting them do you? Oh there are examples in the animal kingdom of the eating of the young, but that’s rare and done for survival reasons.

The Bible tells us that apart from God the human condition is sick indeed. It’s no wonder we see this happening all around us, in fact if you know your Bible you ought to expect this kind of thing.

I agree. He says that this kind of horror seems to be happening more often these days, but as I read the Old Testament, there was plenty enough bad going down--I doubt very much that the per-capita incidence of this sort of thing has ever been much different, regardless of the age.

Lots of great stuff at CC this week! Enjoy!

Monk