Global writhing

Anyone with blood running through his veins is thinking about suffering right now. In whatever direction you turn on the compass, it's there. A whole branch of philosophy called Theodicy has evolved to explain the problem of evil. Here are a couple of thoughts to steady wobbly knees, namely my own:

First, whenever I am just about to bail out of Christianity because of the problem of suffering, it is then that I am confronted with a different problem on the other side --- the problem of good, and of beauty. In the beginning, the bugbear was that evil didn't seem to fit my theology of a good God; now, in the new camp, it is all the goodness and loveliness I see that are a philosophical fly in the ointment.

Next, I concede that there is a lot about justice and righteousness that I don't understand. I can't even make up my mind whether it's okay to take my dog to a park that has a "No dogs" sign that is universally ignored. And even from nation to nation we can't agree on things like the just way to deal with criminals. Life in prison? Electric chair?

Also, I have noticed that I am not inclined to want God when I am doing quite well without him. If we presume that we are made for relationship and eternal bliss with him, I am advantaged if he uses the megaphone of affliction to get my attention.

C.S.Lewis challenges the oft heard wail about the "unimaginable sum of human misery." He says "there is no such thing, for no one suffers it. When we have reached the maximum that a single person can suffer, we have, no doubt, reached something very horrible, but we have reached all the suffering there can be in the universe."