Shows Matters of Life & Death: Baby loss 2: Rising abortion numbers, pills by post, ‘the pregnancy remains’, and Schrodinger’s fetus The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God.” (Romans 8:18-19) “I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us. We offer our thoughts and prayers to the world not to show that misery loves company but to be responsible children of God intent on setting the creation free from its bondage to decay. We should be a people of hope who know nothing but Christ crucified and yet embrace the promise of a resurrected life. A God who took the worst the world could throw at him and transformed it into salvation for everyone who could feel his pain. A God who gave us a Spirit to articulate our groans. I believe that in tragic times hope can only be found in a God who wasn’t immune to our suffering but took them upon himself. The question for us then is which spirit will come to our rescue? A new age spirit that only helps us if we think good thoughts, an Eastern religious spirit powerless in the face of bad karma, or a mother earth spirit that is incapable of recognizing the evil wrought by one of its own? We cry out for a spirit to save us when we are faced with a physical tragedy. A God who hears us cry: “ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” and yet listens intently to every painful word we say, “ for he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him”. Thoughts and prayers are nothing but empathetic tropes of emotional solidarity unless they are offered to a God who redeems suffering. The spiritual cries generated by our physical tragedy are answered by a God who unites them on the cross and then stunningly declares victory. Jesus isn’t spiritual wish fulfillment but rather boots on the ground to meet a physical enemy. ![]() We can trust Jesus as the most qualified technician because he embodied the perfect factory image and understood what it meant to suffer and die at the hands of human malware. The world computer may feel like it is infected with a virus but we know that Jesus will come to scrub it clean and restore it to its original Edenic settings. Sadly, the materialist can’t cry “ out damn spot” in a world red in tooth and claw.Ĭhristianity acknowledges that the world is not the way it should be, but is confident that one day it will be put right. Suffering is the metric evolutionary theory employs to measure its productivity, therefore the louder the screams the more confident we can be that it is hard at work. Sadly, the materialists who suggest that life is just a throw of the dice have nothing to offer those who suffer except to tell them that they just crapped out. Natural selection seems to be a sound theory when it only involves a few extinct species but is an unwelcome guest when it threatens the very creatures who came up with it in the first place. Why would broken chemicals try to convene a séance when they can practice better living through chemistry? In fact, if you are a materialist, a world that eliminates the evolutionarily unfit through tragedy is actually working just fine. ![]() If you believe that the Universe is just matter in motion, then a spiritual care package seems a bit underwhelming. ![]() I think that those who believe that religion is an illusion must at least acknowledge that faith can still be a very useful fiction for those who feel like their story is coming to an end. Surprisingly, the moment when the atheist argument against God should speak most loudly is the moment when it is most muted. However, when tragedy strikes and the material resources of the planet are exhausted it seems that the rest of the world wants to jump into the Living Water with them. seems determined to deconstruct our spiritual help desk and replace it with a dunking tank where we can toss our anger at a Christian and watch him or her splash into the water below. (Freedom from Religion Foundation) aggressively pushing religion out of the public square during these tragedies? Why are materialists so sheepish when everyone around them is crying out for a Shepherd? It appears that separating the sacred and secular only works when things are going well but is less than helpful when the planet is afflicted by a series of unfortunate events.
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