In Theory

When our first ancestors decided to eat from that tree rather than love God, they began a chain reaction. Those first ripples of rebellion have become tidal waves of famine, war, disease and destruction.

In order for the love to be real, the consequences of choosing not to love must also be real. Scripture tells us that the rain falls on the good and the evil alike. Now rain can be one man’s blessing and another man’s curse. It is all a matter of perspective.

A true believer isn’t so short sighted as to view divine justice as an immediate event, but looks ahead to eternity and finds peace in God’s timing, knowing that even in our waiting for justice, we can learn to be more like Jesus who “endured the cross and suffered the shame for the joy set before him.” The joy set before Jesus was a relationship with those who would believe in His message and love Him.

Ric Olsen

Lead Pastor, The Beacon

This greatest problem for religious faith is called “theodicy” from the Greek words meaning “deity” and “justice.” It wants to know what a good God is doing to confront manifold evils in this world, which hide us from God’s love. In “Absolute Truths,” Susan Howatch writes, “God never wills suffering, but works always to redeem it. It changes life but may not permanently diminish it, that’s up to the sufferer.”

Christians stand before innocent Jesus’ unjust suffering and realize there is nothing so dark or so obscene that our gracious God cannot turn to good. The love story of the Gospel forces us to abandon the perspective of spectator, in which the “problem of ‘theodidy’” is posed. Together we are to stand before the cross and pray, and then act by serving others who Jesus calls “friend.”

(The Very Rev’d Canon) Peter D. Haynes

Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar