The Prophetic Imagination - Part 6

During a TV interview, British comedian and outspoken atheist, Stephen Fry, was asked, “What would you do if you died and found out God existed?” Fry responded that he would walk up to God and say, "Bone cancer in children. What’s that about? How dare you create a world where there is so much misery that is not our fault. It’s evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?"

Stephen Fry isn’t wrong when he says that our world is full of injustice and pain. Jeremiah and the Psalms are filled with obvious anger and frustration directed at God, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician? Why has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?"

The same feelings of resentment and rage that Stephen Fry directs towards God are in fact echoed with as much vitriol and despair within the Bible itself.
 
Pastor Stephen once said, “The problem of evil and suffering in the world is as much a philosophical problem for Christians as it is for everyone. The question of innocent suffering before a good, all-powerful God is the engine that drives the entire biblical narrative. It’s in multiple psalms, every verse of the book of Job, in the cry of Jesus on the cross. The Bible creates space for and provides us language to bring our complaints against God.”

The Biblical narrative itself is designed to hand us the language of lament in times when our own words fail us and when all we have is a wordless groan.

In response to the Prosperity Gospel in American Christianity, Kate Bowler (professor of American Religious History at Duke who was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 35) says, “We don’t serve a Quid Pro Quo God. Our lives are built with such delicate material; it doesn’t take a lot to topple the whole thing over... our culture makes us feel embarrassed for the terrible things that happen to us. It makes us feel ashamed, lonely and like a loser. I would love if we had a culture that could embrace those of us that fall... give us a language and support to help us feel like we’re not problems to be solved, we’re just people to be loved.”

 

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