the hard stuff.

There are several books I read during my undergrad that I didn't, or possibly couldn't, appreciate for their full value at the time.  Perhaps I still can't, but I've started to go back and re-read them without the "I'm doing this simply to write a summary and get the points for it" attitude.

First on the list is Evil and the Justice of God by N.T. Wright.


He writes (emphasis mine):

"There is a noble Christian tradition which takes evil so seriously that it warns against the temptation to 'solve' it in any obvious way.  If you offer an analysis of evil which leaves us saying, "Well, that's all right then; we now see how it happens and what to do about it," you have belittled the problem... For the Christian, the problem is how to understand and celebrate the goodness and God-givenness of creation and, at the same time, understand and face up to the reality and seriousness of evil."

The "hard" issues, Christians tend to brush off with phrases like "God is sovereign" or "I guess we'll just have to wait and find out in heaven," while some are left wrestling with these questions void of support from the Church.

If we make light of the hard stuff, for what did God give us a mental capacity?  (On a related note, another book on my reread list is Love the Lord Your God with All Your Mind by J.P. Moreland)  Given in the shema in Deuteronomy, even before the Ten Commandments were spoken for the first time, we are commanded to love the Lord with all our mind.  ALL our mind.  Not just for the easy stuff.  Not just for the day-to-day processing of events and conversations, but for the difficult, the hard to reconcile, the doubts, the questions, the wrestling.  God gives us permission to engage our minds:  to use our ability to reason, to research, to collaborate - all so that we can come to understand Him better, with the end goal of loving Him more.

Let us come together, engage our God-given intelligence, and have a grand collaboration of minds.  Let us not be afraid to ask questions, because no question is bigger than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The same God who parted the Red Sea, sent manna from heaven, healed people, walked on water, and redeemed His creation.

Have confidence in the One who made you.

(I apologize for a post that went far off course from its original intent, which was to say that a second reading is always deeper and more thorough than the first and I would recommend it.
Clearly I'm a wonderful blogger who plans out her posts and targets them to her audience and follows a pattern of posting.  Bah.  Hardly.)