12/27/2004 04:54:55 PM|||Patrick|||It's inevitable that after a tragedy such as the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean that someone will ask a question like this one that I saw on one of the discussions I frequent:

Seriously, doesn't anyone really question how a just and loving God could let something like this happen?

I saw the following quote in response and thought it was appropriate for today.

A synopsis of John Hick's Soul Making Theodicy.

In creating the world, God did not create a hedonistic paradise but a place to make souls. Rational agents freely choose to develop certain valuable moral traits of character and to know and love God. In order to do this they must be free to make mistakes and consequently to cause evil. This freedom accounts for the moral evil in the world. Moreover, in order to develop moral and spiritual character there must be a struggle and obstacles to surmount. In a world without suffering, natural calamities, disease, and the like, there would be no obstacles and no struggle. Consequently, there would be no soul making. This account, then, also explains natural evil. Since soul making is of unsurpassed value, it outweighs any moral or natural evil that results from or is a necessary means to it.

~~~~~


Psalm 8:3-5

3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

~~~~~
|||110418947577537740|||Bad Things and Good People