Thoughts from John Collins, a United Methodist Pastor in the Flint Hills.
Time magazine has an interview with New Testament Scholar, and Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright on the subject of life after death. N. T. Wright is the author of the book Evil and the Justice of God which I spoke of in Sunday’s Sermon.
Link: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710844,00.html
According to Barbara Brown Taylor in The Luminious Web: Essays on Science and Religion, pages 29-30:
“In 1996 Pope John Paul II endorsed evolution as part of God’s master plan, just four years after he lifted the Roman Catholic Church’s three-hundred-fifty-year-old condemnation of Galileo. When he first ordered a reexamination of Galileo’s case in 1980, he made a statement that might have applied to Darwin as well. ‘Research performed in a truly scientific manner can never be in contrast with faith,’ he said, ‘because both profane and religious realities have their origin in the same God.'”
I’ve updated a couple of things on the church website at www.coffeyvillefirstumc.org. A revised version of the Lay Leadership Committee (formerly the Nominating Committee) Report is available on the “Downloads” page and more recommended books have been added to the “Books” page.
You may have noticed that the second slide (seen above) in this mornings presentation contained title and photographer information for the photo used in the background of the rest of the presentation . I thought I would explain a little about that here. Most of the time we use actual photographs for the background of our slides. Early on, I purchased photos from istockphoto.com. The problem is that prices at istockphoto.com keep going up. I found a partial solution in that there are many excellent pictures on the popular photo sharing site, flickr.com. These pictures are free and many are licensed for use under a Creative Commons license of the same kind that we use for the church website and this blog. One of the conditions of use is that credit is given to the photographer. This second slide (after the slide with our logo, mission statement, and BHAG) is an attempt to do just that.
The slide above was taken by Trey Ratcliff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic License.
Via Sojourners:
“One of the oddest questions I get asked in interviews, and I get asked a lot of questions, is: Is faith important to your politics? It’s like asking someone whether their health is important to them or their family. If you are someone “of faith,” it is the focal point of belief in your life. There is no conceivable way that it wouldn’t affect your politics.”
—Former Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair
The online church calendar is interactive. You can click on individual items to reveal details. You can also select from daily, weekly, or monthly viewing options. It can be found at www.coffeyvillefirstumc.org/Calendar.html.
Vacation Bible School is coming: July 14-18, 2008 9:00 a.m. to Noon.
This year for Vacation Bible School, our theme is, Beach Party: Surfin’ Through the Scriptures, where we will be learning some Beach Be-Attitudes.
We are still in need of volunteers for helping to make this year’s VBS another wonderful week of sharing God’s word in a fun and exciting way. If you are willing and able to help out either before or during VBS to decorate, help with snacks, crafts, as a class leader to take kids to the different areas, Bible storytelling, music, recreation, or childcare (for leaders with children too young to participate in VBS) please let me (Jenny) know at 251-3240, 251-4706 or johnandjenny@gmail.com.
In preparation for Sunday’s sermon, I’ve been reading Evil and the Justice of God by N. T. Wright. I’m in one of those situations where I’ve both learned a lot and now know less than I did when I started.
T-Shirts with the new logo are available at www.coffeyvillefirstumc.org/T-Shirts. We ordered some this morning, but I haven’t yet seen them in person so an early adopter tax may be applicable.
The June edition of The Parish Visitor (the newsletter of First United Methodist Church) is now available on the “Newsletter” page of www.coffeyvillefirstumc.org.
I added the parenthetical reference “(both theirs and ours)” to the third paragraph.
From the June edition of The Parish Visitor:
A View From the Pulpit: A Radical Thought on the Problem of Evil [1]
Rev. John R. Collins
Perhaps I should begin by attempting an adequate definition of the “Problem of Evil.” It is the ancient problem of claiming that God is omnipotent (all-powerful and all knowing [2]), and omnibenevolent (completely good), while confronting the fact that evil exists in the world. This problem raises difficult questions: wouldn’t an omnipotent God have knowledge of the existence of evil and the power to eliminate it? Wouldn’t an omnibenevolent God want to eliminate it? And yet, evil continues to exist. This problem is probably the most commonly cited reason given by people who don’t believe in God, for not believing in God.
There are three ill-advised “solutions” to this problem, each involves the failure to take one side of the quandary seriously. The first denies that evil really exists. I have seen too much suffering among parishioners and other people I love to go this route. The second would be to deny that God is omnipotent, to claim that evil exists because God is not capable of getting rid of it. The account of creation in Genesis 1.1-2.4, the example of the exodus from Egypt, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are examples of why I refuse to take this route. The third “solution,” seldom invoked, is the assertion that God is not wholly good, the most powerful rejoinder to this “solution” is the life and death of Jesus Christ. So we are back where we started, how can Christians assert God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence in the face of evil’s existence.
I believe that the best solution to the problem of evil is found in the second account of creation in Genesis, which begins right where the first account left off at Genesis 2.5. This is the story of how the primordial fall of Adam and Eve, due to their disobedience to God, brought an end to creation as God intended it. As we talked about Sunday, “Adam” is Hebrew for “John Doe” and Eve is Hebrew for “Jane Doe.” The story is metaphorical, describing a reality that the early Isaelites (and perhaps we as well) would not be able to understand if it were put any other way.) The point of the metaphor is that because of human sin (both theirs and ours), humanity can no longer experience the blessed existence free of evil that was the creator’s original intent. I believe that the effects of the fall were felt not only by Adam and Eve and their descendents, but by all of creation, that is, the fall of humanity from a state of grace had a cosmic impact.
Recently, my understanding of the problem of evil was enhanced by reading N.T. Wright’s engagement in a “blogalogue” [3] with the agnostic Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman (yes, apparently there are such people). Wright is the Anglican bishop of Durham and a leading New Testament scholar, renowned for his defense of the literal resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Wright made many good points, but I want to highlight just two. The first is that the Bible is less interested in addressing the question of why suffering exists than it is in describing what God is doing about it, namely the whole arc of salvation history from Genesis through the book of Revelation. The second (and this is the radical one) is one I will share in his own words and comes initially from the head of the Anglican Church, the archbishop of Canterbury: “I once heard Rowan Williams suggest that it might actually be immoral to try to ‘solve’ the problem of evil, because as soon as you say, ‘There, look, that makes it all right, doesn’t it?’ you have radically belittled the problem, blinding yourself to the real, powerful and radical nature of evil.” I am reminded that Job’s friends were initially doing well as they made themselves present to Job in empathy to his condition and sympathy to his plight. Things went wrong only when they began to attempt to explain why what was going on was going on. Perhaps we can all learn from their example.
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[1] Regular readers of the blog may recognize this title and some of the content of the article, but I have expanded it considerably.
[2] All knowing, or omniscience, is sometimes considered as a distinct attribute of God, but for this article I will consider God’s omniscience a sub-category of God’s omnipotence.
[3] A “blogaglogue” appears to be a dialogue in blog form. According to The American Heritage Dictionary: A blog is a Web site on which an individual or group of users produces an ongoing narrative.