David Attenborough's problem with evil

Someone says: ‘I believe a God of infinite mercy created every single species and the Lord looks after us and all the animals.’ Well, what about that little African boy, five years old, sitting on the banks of a river, and he’s got a worm in his eye that’s going to turn him blind in three years? Did this God that you talk about actually design this worm and say: ‘I’ll put it in this boy’s eye?’ To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see.

(Metro interview with David Attenborough, 29 January 2013)

This is what I wanted to say to David Attenborough on my commute this morning:

1. I don't know how God can be both loving and sovereign over that African boy's plight*.

2. This is how I know that he must be:

• God the Father has always loved God the Son. From eternity past and without change he has been pouring his love out on his Son and he always will. That is who God is and if he ceased to do that he would cease to be who he is - God the Father.
• God the Father sent his Son to die in agony, abandoned by his friends and abandoned (but still loved) by the Father he had spent eternity with.
• God the Father did not do that because he loved someone or something more than his Son. He did it to glorify (John 17:1) and bring joy (Heb 12:2) to his Son who loved his world and his church.

So God's love and God's bringing humans to places of suffering are not incompatible. We've seen that in Jesus of Nazerth, the Son of God. Therefore, it is rational (in the same way that empircal science is rational) to believe God when he promises us that:

• He has always loved us;
• He has planned for us all to suffer and die; and
• He does that because he wants to bring us joy and glory.

* can someone help me remember where I read a quote somewhere recently? It said something like: "we can argue whether God permitted, allowed, purposed, or caused something, but the fact is 'God...'". Dorothy Sayers maybe?

Two presuppositions about baptism

Contemporary evangelicalism:

• Our word to others
• about our death/resurrection

Bible (I think):

• God's word to us
• about Jesus' death/resurrection for us

A few tweaks could be made for the different understanding of preaching.

1 Corinthians 11:1-16

Imitation:

• Paul imitates Christ
• We imitate Paul

Glory:

• Man is the glory of God.
• Woman is the glory of man.
• The woman's symbol of authority is the glory of woman.

Image:

• Man is in the image of God.
• Woman is not the image of Man (implicitly: she is also in the image of God).

Head:

• God is the head of Christ.
• Christ is the head of Man.
• Man is the head of woman.

Dependancy:

• Men and women are dependant on God.
• Men are dependant on women.
• Women are dependant on Men.

REFLECTIONS

• 1 Corinthians => giving
• Patriarchy => taking
• Our culture => keeping

Also worthy of note that the passage is bracketed by an appeal to the tradition/practice of the historic and worldwide church.

Clippings from Kierkegaard

On modern times:

In contrast to the age of revolution, which took action, the present age is an age of publicity, the age of miscellaneous announcements: nothing happens but still there is instant publicity. An insurrection in this day and age is utterly unimaginable, such a manifestation of power would seem ridiculous to the calculating sensibleness of the age.

(Two ages: The age of revolution and the present age: A literary review, 1846!!)

On loving your neighbour as yourself:

When it is said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," this contains what is presupposed, that every person loves himself. Thus, Christianity, which by no means begins, as do those high-flying thinkers, without presuppositions, nor with a flattering presupposition, presupposes this...Is it possible for anyone to misunderstand this, as if it were Christianity's intention to proclaim self-love as a prescriptive right? Indeed, on the contrary, it is Christianity's intention to wrest self-love away from human beings.

(Works of Love)

On finding your identity (as we say now):

the lowly Christian does not fall into the snare of this optical illusion. He sees with the eyes of faith; with the speed of faith that seeks God, he is at the beginning, is himself before God, is contented with being himself...From ‘the others’ a person of course actually finds out only what the others are — it is in this way that the world wants to deceive a person out of becoming himself. ‘The others’ in turn do not know what they themselves are either but continually know only what ‘the others’ are. There is only one who completely knows himself, who in himself knows what he himself is — that is God. And he also knows what each human being is in himself, because he is that only by being before God. The person who is not before God is not himself either, which one can be only by being in the one who is in himself.”

(Christian Discourses)

Three random observations from my recent reading of Kierkegaard:

1. He sees how radical Jesus is and the radical nature of the call to follow him. He understands people and sees through rubbish Philosophy. However, he suffers from his Pietism which means he massively underplays the objective gift of Jesus and his righteousness. He is a bit legalistic at the end of the day.
2. In passages like the last one I've quoted I have seen very clearly that a lot of the epistemology of Karl Barth is heavily influenced by Kierkegaard...for good and bad.
3. Kierkegaard and Barth are some of the few pure geniuses I have read and both continue to teach me a lot. Karl Barth is much better person and theologian than Kierkegaard, but in a way I trust him less because the blind alleys he leads you on are much more difficult to spot than Mr K's which shine like neon lights.