Tish Harrison Warren offers important insight into what appears to be an inescapable predicament. Here’s the issue: In the throes of real pain and genuine suffering, we struggle to make sense out of the goodness of God (assuming there is some sense to be made under such pressure). This predicament favors no one and applies to everyone, whether …Continue Reading
In his classic Confessions (Book X), Augustine prays, “Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou willest.”
Some say that God never demands more than we can handle, but is this true? You may say,
“Of course it’s true! After all, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:13: ‘No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to us all. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.’”
But note: the text does not say God give will never give us more than we are able to handle. It says he does not give us more than we can handle ON OUR OWN. How else will our need for God manifest unless we are at our wits end?
My experience has shown me time and again that …Continue Reading
The most well-known prayer of all, the Lord’s Prayer (from Matthew 6:9-13), has been such an inspiration to me over the years. As I pray through it each day, I’ve finally written down some reflections and decided to compile them here. Nothing technical or complicated. Just a few thoughts andContinue Reading
When John W. Cooper’s Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate came out I was not only intrigued but sold on his views of what it means to be an integrated human, body and soul. Much later J. P. Moreland’s The Soul: How We Know It’sContinue Reading
As hard as it is to accept, I propose that my cognitive and moral equipment is handicapped and my interpretive skills are inadequate when it comes to making sense out of evil and suffering. True “we know in part” (1 Cor 13:9), but the pain of not knowing why GodContinue Reading
I’m almost finished with Eleonore Stump‘s most excellent Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. As thoughtful as it is thorough, she takes the characters of Job, Abraham, Sampson, and Mary of Bethany from the biblical narratives and shows that the benefits received because of suffering are greater than theContinue Reading
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