Tag Archives: evil

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Evil and Suffering, Blessing or Disaster?

“There is an old story about a wise man living on one of Chinas vast frontiers. One day, for no apparent reason, a young mans horse ran away and was taken by nomads across the border. Everyone tried to offer consolation for the mans bad fortune, but his father, a wise man, said “What makes you so sure this is not a blessing?”

Months later, his horse returned, bringing with her a magnificent stallion. This time everyone was full of congratulations for the son’s good fortune. But now his father said, “What makes you so sure this isn’t a disaster?”

Their household was made richer by this fine horse the son loved to ride. But one day he fell off the horse and broke his hip. Once again, everyone offered their consolation for his bad luck, but his father said, “What makes you so sure this is not a blessing?”

A year later nomads invaded across the border, and every able bodied man was required to take his bow and go into battle. The Chinese families living on the border lost 9 out of 10 men. Only because the son was lame did father and son survive and take care of each other.

What appeared like a blessing and success has been a terrible thing.  What has appeared to be a terrible event has often turned out to be a rich blessing.”-Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, location 1378

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Where is God? Part 2: No Where Else To Go (CREATOR)

During our 6 week series titled: Where is God? We will be exploring 6 C’s of Evil and Suffering: Connection, Creator, Choice, Cross, Compassion, and Conclusions.

Part 2 addressed the Creator by looking at the Book of Job.

  • Why ask Why? It is ok to ask why in times of suffering.
  • Friends or Fiends? Job’s friends had it right the first time when the comforted Job with not trying to answer why but being present with him.  The most honest answer may be: I don’t know, or as C.S. Lewis responded to a theologian friend of his when his wife, Joy, died, “It’s just a bloody mess!”
  • The God of our misunderstanding.  Job’s heart was right, but his theology was wrong.  When we go through a dark time, we often turn to our false understanding of God.  I turned to my understanding of God–a distant God who told me that I was not enough.  Our times of suffering are defining times because we will either run away from a false god of our own making, or we will finally see the true God who is closer than we could ever imagine and who is whispering in our ear, “you are enough! You are my beloved child!”
  • Why to Who.  Finally we turn away from the why and focus on the Who.
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The Suffering of Christ for us: Station 7 of the Cross

How do we ‘modernize’ the suffering of Christ on the cross? How do we depict His suffering so that we can best understand the brutality of our sin? One artist has tried:

“This piece was originally created by Jackson Potts II, for a collection of works hanging in Xnihilo Gallery. The installation is a modern take on the traditional Stations of the Cross, and the gallery requested 15 artists to each depict one of the stations. Due to reasons which will be explained in subsequent posts, the gallery was not able to hang this piece. We invite you to view it here and to comment upon it.
Here is Jackson’s artist statement.

Jesus Falls for the Second Time.
When I came up with this idea for my piece, one of the things that I wanted to show was that Jesus was innocent, and the crowd still wanted him to die. So I used a child (my brother Dietrich) to show the innocence of Jesus and how wrong it was for him to be treated that way. The police officer was just doing his job, as was the guard that was escorting Jesus to Skull Hill. The crowd was angry and violent except the one girl in the blue dress, who represents the people who loved Jesus.”

Here is the link to view the photo (it is brutal but thought provoking):

http://jacksonsstation.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html

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Is there really a satan? PART 3

This is the 3rd part of a 3 part series on the Biblical foundation of the spiritual truth of the demonic, the evidence of the demonic, and some evidence of the demonic learned from experience and C.S. Lewis. Uberlumen has chosen this 3 part series because we in the western world have lost site of the demonic.  As one friend has said: Don’t you think satan is real if Paul wrote about him?  Part of our Christian growth and walk must acknowledge the truths that we don’t like to think about and that we put into question in our society.
“The commonest question [I am asked about The Screwtape Letters] is whether I really ‘believe in the Devil.’
Now, if by ‘the Devil’ you mean a power opposite to God and, like God, self-existent from all eternity, the answer is certainly No.  There is no uncreated being except God.  God has no opposite.  No being could attain a ‘perfect badness’ opposite to the perfect goodness of God; for when you have taken away every kind of good thing (intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence itself), there would be none of him left.
The proper question is whether I believe in devils.  I do.  That is to say, I believe in angels, and I believe that some of these, by the abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God and , as a corollary, to us.  These we may call devils.  They do not differ in nature from good angels, but their nature is depraved.  Devil is the opposite of angel only as Bad Man is the opposite of Good Man.  Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.
I believe this not in the sense that it is part of my creed, but in the sense that it is one of my opinions.  My religion would not be in ruins if this opinion were shown to be false.  Till that happens–and proofs of a negative and hard to come by–I shall retain it.  It seems to me to explain a good many facts.  It agrees with the plain sense of Scripture, the tradition of Christendom, and the beliefs of most men at most times.  And it conflicts with nothing that any of the sciences has shown to be true.”-C.S. Lewis, The Joyful Christian, pg 145
“One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe–a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin.  The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong.  Christianity agrees…this universe is at war.”-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“…so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”-2 Cor. 4:16-18
As C.S. Lewis has pointed out in his ‘essential Christian reading’ book: The Screwtape Letters in which a young demon is mentored by his ‘uncle’ demon:
“Dear Wormwood…Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head.  He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false’, but as ‘academic’ or ‘practical’, ‘outworn’ or ‘contemporary’, ‘conventional’ or ‘ruthless’.  Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.  Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true!  Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous–that it is the philosophy of the future.  That’s the sort of thing he cares about…your affectionate uncle [demon]…Screwtape”
I also learned a great deal from a book on spiritual warfare titled:  The Invisible War by Chip Ingram
I also came across a very interesting and thought provoking article from Greg Boyd’s Blog where he discusses with a scientist the idea that there is too much evil for the kingdom of darkness NOT to exist…
Please share your insights with us.
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Is there REALLY a satan? PART 1

This is the 1st of a 3 part series on the Biblical foundation of the spiritual truth of the demonic, the evidence of the demonic, and some evidence of the demonic learned from experience and C.S. Lewis. Uberlumen has chosen this 3 part series because we in the western world have lost site of the demonic.  As one friend has said: Don’t you think satan is real if Paul wrote about him?  Part of our Christian growth and walk must acknowledge the truths that we don’t like to think about and that we put into question in our society.
PART 1: The Biblical foundations of this spiritual truth.  We live between a clash of 2 kingdoms.  Enjoy this sermon by Mike on the Biblical truth of the kingdom of darkness.
As always please share with us your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
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The Science of Loss

“A pair psychologist from the University of Michigan recently conducted a fascinating study that shed some neurological light on the fear of loss.  First, volunteers donned caps containing electrodes.  Then they engaged in a computer simulated betting game, while researchers analyzed their brain electrical activity in response to winning and losing.  With each bet, the medial frontal cortex in her brain showed increased electrical activity with any matter of milliseconds.  But what intrigued the researchers was that negativity showed a larger dip after a loss and positivity rose after her win.  In fact, during a string of setbacks, medial frontal negativity dipped lower and lower.  Each loss was compounded by the previous loss.  Researchers came to a simple yet profound conclusion: losses loom larger than games.  In other words, the aversion to loss of a certain magnitude is greater than the attraction to gain of the same magnitude.”-Mark Batterson, Chasing the Holy Spirit, Purpose Driven Connection, volume 1, pg 84-85

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Part 4: Does suffering show us God?

This is the 4th of a 5 part series that we did at Pathways Church.  Bucky does a powerful job of sharing the uniqueness of Christianity and the power of the cross to help us during our suffering.  Evil and suffering is a topic of great concern to all of us.  We have a history of posts on this important topic that you can review by simply scrolling down and looking to the right to see under the categories section: Evil and Suffering link.

As always, please share your thoughts with us.

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Men’s Group: April 8, 2009 Suffering

Last Wednesday was one of those Men of the Path sessions where you just had to be there to fully appreciate what went on.  Perhaps I should have written this last Friday, because Francisco taught on pain and suffering.  What better day to reflect on pain and suffering than Good Friday, right?  If you have not gotten to know Francisco I encourage you to do so.  If you attend Wednesday mornings and have had the opportunity to sit at Francisco’s table you know why I said that.  He is a man of few words.  Generally, Francisco does not speak until the end; but when he does, everyone at the table is in awe.  God’s words just flow through him.  We are blessed to have such a man of God in our church community.  Please ask Francisco to share some of his story with you.

Francisco gave us three Scripture verses and three questions.  The Scriptures were:
Matthew 26:39
John 5:30
Hebrews 5:7-8

Take a moment and read each one.  My favorite of those is Hebrews 5:7-8, “While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry, to the one who could rescue him from death.  And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God.  Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.”

Incredible, isn’t it?  Even though God heard Jesus’ prayers and knew the deep reverence He had for God, God allowed Jesus to suffer. Why?  Because Jesus, in the form of a man, learned obedience from His suffering.  Knowing this helps in meditating on the questions Francisco had for us.  After all, we seem to be more willing to be obedient, and more willing to give God the steering wheel to our lives when pain and suffering come. 

The questions Francisco had for us are the kind that I cannot answer for you; they are ones that you should answer and record in your journal.  The questions were:

Have you experienced pain and suffering without the help of the Lord?
What is the difference in having those same feelings but having the Lord by your side?
How has the greatness of God’s love affected your life to this day?

For those of you that heard my testimony, you know what happened when I told God, “That’s okay, I want to control my own life; just stay out of it and let me be.  I know what is best for me.”  
Some comments about the second and third questions were:
God gives us a peace in knowing He is with us in every situation;
Even though we may have seen our share of difficulties in this life, having a relationship with God gives us hope;
God is the only One that can do the things He’s done in our lives.

I have asked on occasion that you write me with some of your answers and comments.  I am not going to do that today.  I am going to ask that you go to Drew’s website, www.uberlumen.comand send Drew what God is saying to you about pain and suffering; how He is helping you through today’s problems.  Drew would welcome your comments.

Have a great week; remember, no meeting at the clubhouse this week.  We are supporting Bruce and the rest of the men who put together the All Pro Dads program at Hicks Canyon Elementary by meeting there at 6:30 a.m and putting Servant Leadership into effect.  I hope God has it on your heart to come help.  Who knows, you may even get to eat a few pancakes.