CORRESPONDENCE
COLBURN, STAN AND DONNA DEVORE, LAURIE PRICE, JEROME
Ben's Words We won't pretend to read or understand every word in each issue of TheAmericanSpectator,butBen Stein's Diary in the DecemberJanuary issue entitled "Trouble...
...Obviously,hiswillandplansareoften not carried out: This is why Christ toldustopray"thykingdomcome, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven...
...Mac Donald accuses God of injustice in permitting undeserved suffering and death, as if these weretheultimateevil.Atfirstthat premise sounds plausible...
...One could argue that, in such andsuchstruggle,thisside'smoralsensewasrightandthatside'swas wrong...
...STAN AND DONNA DEVORE Saratoga, Wyoming God and Man I avidly read Heather Mac Donald and Michael Novak on "God and Man and Human Suffering" (TAS, December 2006/January 2007) andIespeciallyagreedwithNovak whenhebroughtoutthe"problem of good" for the atheists in the world and how "longings for the good...
...His will is only for healing, for life, for beauty,etc.--for every good thing...
...LAURIE PRICE Corrales, New Mexico Heather Mac Donald disparages as"wishfulthinking"theideathat "our moral sense and our passion for justice" are "faint echoes of a far more perfect morality and justice above...
...Removing God from the equation does not eliminate the need for paradox...
...that's why we have been instructed by Christ to pray that we always advance God's will and his kingdom and never obstruct or thwart either...
...Lewis, John Wesley, Plato, Boethius, Rodney Stark, Michel Borg, BibleReviewmagazine,theretired pastors at the Methodist church I attend, etc...
...God has apparently "limited" himself in this creation just enough to allow free will to exist, so God has also limited his omnipotence in this world...
...Rather than hope for justice in the empirical world, bound by the laws of thermodynamics--(1) if I gain, you must lose, and (2) in the long run, everyone loses--I find I mustseekitinamoraluniversethat transcends the empirical...
...God's will is always for the good, for salvation and redemption for all...
...are signals for the divine...
...Please pass our compliments to Mr...
...However,IwasleftwishingNovak would have more directly addressed Mac Donald's attributing evil in the world to God's will and therefore concluding that God must be evil or not exist or that Christians should at least alter theirimageofGod...
...But that would be exactly toinvokea"moreperfectmorality and justice" by which to judge the others...
...one that includes a reward so great that it is worth attaining at the price of all the suffering in the world, and a penalty so great that no benefit in theworldcouldjustifyitasacostof doingbusiness.AgoodandjustGod can create such a universe, and Christianitysayshedid...
...Thank you...
...However, God's infinite creative power can redeem the most evil situations (evendeathonacross)andheacts through emissaries (us) in this sphere...
...Yet they are certainly faint echoes of something...
...Mac Donald's faith in these as human traitsisquaint,especiallyafterthe 20th century...
...In that case the Golden Rule turns into pyrite in a universe described by a combination of Karl Marx and Ayn Rand...
...If undeserved suffering and death were the greatest evil, his first duty would be to protect himself, anditwouldbeimmoralforhimto risk suffering and death for the sake of anyone more deserving of them than he...
...Ben's Words We won't pretend to read or understand every word in each issue of TheAmericanSpectator,butBen Stein's Diary in the DecemberJanuary issue entitled "Trouble in Americaland"isthebestarticleyet in your monthly review by any author on any subject, at least to our thinking...
...Stein for finally callingaspadeaspade...
...Our moral sense so often proves conveniently adjustable...
...Yet the moreafiremanexposeshimselfto suffering and death, the less he deserves to undergo them...
...Inmythinking(notjustmine,of course, but influenced by C.S...
...So, our free will can interfere with God's will...
...JEROME COLBURN Champaign, IllinoisC O R R E S P O N D E N C E 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7...
...Our passion for justice burns so much hotter when we feel that justice is on our side than when we don't...
...If everything that happened were part of God's will, there would be no need to pray in that manner...
...The alternative is that there is no justice...
Vol. 40 • March 2007 • No. 2
