Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he`can but does not want to ;or he cannot and does not want to .If he wants to ,but cannot, he is impotent .If he can and does not want to, he is wicked .If God can and wants to abolish evil, then how comes evil in the world?
~Epicurus, Philosopher~
Guess life once in a while we all hits rock bottom or face challenges we can’t comprend.Some hurtful situation, at times tragic happens in our lives, and we start getting those deep questions. The questions that demand answers of Why.
I’m not a leading philosopher or something, im just a guy like you, wondering over such an issue. Recently a friend told me of a situation that happened to a distant friend of our. A truly nice guy, religious and well rounded I must say. He has found himself in uncharted waters and he pretty confused, distressed and worse.
I would really like to acknowledge such feeling as legitimate and necessary for the particular situation. A year and a half ago, I walked an almost similar road to hell.I don’t particularly claim to know the answers, but I admire the questions and would like to wonder with you and offer my own reflections.
Why did it happen?
Why did this happen? This is a totally legitimate question. We want to know the reason for how thing s turns out this way. Someone somewhere has to give the answers. So we clinch the first and wait for the answer. I have done this, you probably haven’t. I have demanded answers from god and, I must say I have gotten none. Is he there? And if yes, does he have the answers?
I will give you my answer to this later but for now let’s go to the second question
Why did it happen to ME?
Why on earth did it of all the people, occur to me? What at did I do? How did I deserve such a situation? Did I break some universal law or what? I’m I repaying some sins to God or is god playing the Job-experiment on me.
The Answer
The answer is that i have no answer .I’m not God, I don’t wish to be. Here are my thought though on the two questions are:
I admire a guy called Harv Erker, he runs The Millionare School, a financial literacy institute some sort. I have an audio book of one of his conferences in which he brought a panel of millionaires to give some their life experiences. I was pariculary impressed by a quote of one of the millionaire panel. he said”never seeks the answers, remain in the question, and the answer will be revealed to you.”
The vigorous philosophical judos and rebuttals from atheists and theists o the issue will eventually fill the mind, but the pain is deeper and the questions, personal, and after the philosopher have written their volumes, they won’t erase it. That’s why the answers shouldn’t be looked there only.
In the biblical story of Job, who I call the ultimate questioner. He lost everything; literary.He then embarks on very deep conversations and questions along side his friends. At one point the concludes that a stillborn baby is better than him, and in subsequent verses he goes on with the same train of thought.
Finally God Shows up and does something unique. He Asks him 64 questions back-to-back on things in the universe.Job has not even one answer to them. Ravi Zacharias concludes that, what God was saying is that “there are so many questions to which we don’t have answers to”. Jim Rohn ,American leading philosopher talks of the “Inevitable” ,he also calls it “one of those things!” in his classical exposé of the parable of the sower Rohn talks of the seed that fell on the road an were eaten by birds. In this particular scenario he proposes two solutions to the problem of the ‘birds’. One of them is to chase the birds and leave the field, thus exposing it to more birds. He says things will happen once in a while that are not favorable but rather than concentrating on the them lets keep the question and move on,coz ”more often than not things are fine”
Life happens, we all have to make sure that whatever we march forward. What about the questions one may say…this is my suggestion”write them down and the moment you arrive in heaven you will ask God himself, mine are entitled my 5,000,000 questions to God. I guess they may reach that much.
In the action movie The Punisher War Zone, the leading actor Ray Stevenson after meeting with his seminary friend he utters these words almost under his breath “Sometimes I would like to get my hands on God
Maybe it’s the Answerer rather than the answers that we may need to take us through.
Copyright reserved to lkwalimba Inc. Production 2009
3 comments:
im just thinkin..wat du u think?
What takes us through is often "the leap of faith" into the unknown, the leap beyond question and answer. These are deep thoughts, Lawrence, Nile deep!
well..we have to think deeply at times..."the leap of faith" is important other wise we waste our lives looking for answers as life pass us by....its nice hearing from you
Post a Comment