Fed up

"I'm fed up with God!" (2 Kings 6:33, The Messenger )

Bart D. Ehrman got fed up with God and wrote a book about it entitled God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question --- Why We Suffer.

Most of us have flirted with this kind of mutiny --- in the face of pictures of starving children and genocides and tsunamis under which planet Earth groans.

Suffering is the wedge that cleaves humanity into two camps --- the "curse God and die" (Job 2:9) camp, symbolized by Job's wife; the "though he slay me, I will hope in him" (Job 13:15) camp, symbolized by Job. There are only two possible "chairs" to sit in, as Francis Schaeffer observed.

Man, beginning with his own mind, tries to draw a circle big enough to circumscribe all reality. He sets out to take in the evidence and judge it, but of course that's as ludicrous as a child trying to empty the sea with a Dixie cup.

What do you do with the evidence of unspeakable beauty --- a perfect lily; a baby's softness? Which is more reasonable to believe --- that God is schizophrenic? Or that there is a mysterious Enemy skulking about who has thrown a wrench in everything? (Matthew 13).

What do you do with the evidence of changed lives: Murderers to ministers of the gospel?

Yesterday I got a letter in the mailbag from a woman who lost her husband five years ago in a freak accident while on a missions trip, serving the Lord. And she has drawn closer to God through it. Go figure.

There is much we don't see behind the curtain. And where can I go? He has the words of life.