Messy

This morning I talked about messiness. You can listen to the message here.

o God loves the world.
o God is all-powerful.
o Terrible things happen in the world.

As followers of Jesus, we believe all three of these things are true. It is interesting that any of these two statements make sense when used with each other. Putting all three of these statements together makes no sense at all. The problem of evil is probably the greatest problem of the Christian faith.

Books have been written on the subject. The newspaper headline reads something like: “Teenage girl molested and beaten to death.” Details are on page three if you have the stomach to read them. Airplanes full of people are hijacked and crashed into buildings full of people. The young child in Africa has AIDS. He sits in crowded hut fighting off the bugs dreaming of some food as he slowly withers away. The couple is married with a few kids. They are overextended, overstressed, overwhelmed, and under loved.

Other religions try to answer the question of evil. Even people with no religion try to answer the question of evil. Their answers fall short of acceptable. I haven’t found that Christianity offers a grand theological explanation of how God can be loving and powerful and yet terrible things still happen. Christianity simply leads us to the cross, a picture of evil if there ever was one, and tells us that there is no evil that is so sinister and so ominous that God can’t find something good to come out of it. Know this: God loves you and the world can be a messy place. I pray that in our mess, instead of pulling away from God, that we draw closer to God. He wants to help.

No running today. Not much time.