September 1, 2005 @ 6:54 am
Human Suffering
I have long been critical of TV news-snipitry, but a minute and ten second clip on CNN perfectly caught and expressed the suffering caused by Katrina. A man stood holding small child by the hand. He simply said, "I’ve lost everything" and went on to describe how his wife slipped out of his grasp. Her last words were, "You can’t hold me…take care of the kids and grandkids" and then she slipped away.
I couldn’t help myself. The tears just streamed down my face.
The Karamazov Return
In the Brothers Karamazov Ivan tells Alyosha terrible stories about acts of gratuitous cruelty to children. One of the tales is about a small girl who freezes to death. When she is found there are frozen tears on her cheeks, and Ivan says that if his ticket of admission to God’s plan is that he accept that as justified, then he will return the ticket. Me, too.
The Plan
The day after the hurricane some Louisiana official, I’ve forgotten who, asked everyone in New Orleans to pray. (Some of them have started to prey, instead.) What in the world made the official think that God was in a position to do anything?
The stock answer to the problem of evil has always been, "God has a plan…in the long run everything will be for the best, everything will be justified." Oh.
What is that plan?
No one can say, God’s plan is unknowable.
Really? Then how do you know there is a plan?
