It’s not very often that I post something on whim but this is an exception.
I was reading an online dialogue between NT Wright (Bishop in the Anglican Church) and Bart Ehrman (former evangelical turned agnostic turned atheist)…. I’m reading both their books too, but in a particular online dialogue between the two on the issue of Good and Evil (can there be a benevolent God in a world with so much prevailing evil?) I came across the best concise explanation of Christianity and how to address the problem of evil in our world I have ever read.
I wanted to share it with you, and although for some you may not resonate or even comprehend the statement in its entirety, it does offer a refreshing change from what you may have heard in the past.
From NT Wright:
I do persist in thinking that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then there would be no reason to hold any form of Christian faith. A wistful Judaism, perhaps, but not a faith in one who would be, then, a failed prophet of the kingdom. It is because I believe in Jesus’ resurrection that I believe that the creator God has inaugurated his new creation in which, at the last, he will wipe away all tears from all eyes. I don’t think you can start from observation of the world and somehow reason up to Christian faith, because one meets precisely the problems you have so rightly and graphically raised. But – and I wonder if this is actually the position you held when you yourself were still a practicing Christian? – if one believes, not merely as an intellectual assent to doctrine but as a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ, then the dark mystery of suffering can be seen within the context of his suffering, and be transformed by it.
More here: http://blog.beliefnet.com/blogalogue/2008/04/thanks-bart-for-your-response.html
Really refreshing–interesting too….