In my circle of friends and family there is a friendly battle, endlessly going on over creation, evolution, God, faith and unbelief. For me the battlefield is Facebook, and both sides have their cheerleaders, and mostly I just sit in the stands and watch, horrified beyond anything I could comfortably add to a post that could quickly escalate into something very dark. And it often does.

One question that comes up quite a bit is as old as the bible itself.

How can God allow so much suffering?

This question has even been asked in the bible and I could give you an answer right out of scripture but if you are ridiculing everything else in scripture, I don’t see the point. My question to you is simple.

Does the fact that there is suffering mean that there is no God?

The right to choose only exists if we are allowed to make wrong choices. Free will is not free of consequences however and some of those consequences are very unfair and ugly. Now I will freely admit that there are many things that I don’t understand. Many questions are hard to ask, but my faith is strong. My faith rests in a Creator. There are many who worship at the feet of Darwin, but whatever our beliefs, faith is our anchor. Make no mistake, faith is our anchor.

I believe in intelligent design. If I walked up on a cake with a candle on it out in the middle of the woods, and if that cake said HAPPY BIRTHDAY on it, I would immediately look around for whoever was responsible for placing that cake there. You would too, and the reason is obvious… if there is a cake, there is a cake maker. You know that that even though a cake only has a few ingredients, time will never produce a birthday cake with a candle on it. Not now, not in a million years, and not ever. Adding time does not change the equation. I am currently looking out my sun room window… and I see a squirrel eating off of a feeder shaped like a tractor, and it is easy to know that something as simple as a squirrel feeder needed an intelligence behind its creation, but is so hard to understand that something as intricately complexed as a squirrel also needed an intelligence behind its creation. I do not have the faith required to believe in the evolution many of you preach.

Another thing that comes up pretty often is old testament law and whatever the concern, it starts out with “What kind of God”… ( add your complaint here). Once again most of the answers are right there in the same books you are unhappy with but you don’t want honest discussion.

Now every time I have ever gone down the discussion road with anyone and they ran out of arguments, it always came down to these few points.

• It’s all a fairy tail, written by men.
• It’s full of contradictions.
• I grew up in the church and it’s full of …
• Think of how much good could be done with the money put in those buildings.
• I’m better than most of the people in church.

Alright, I’m going to be kind here and just say that…

• I sincerely hope that you are better than me.
• The same folks that are putting money in those buildings are also putting money into many of the things to help people that you never or seldom do.
• No matter where you look, you are going to find humans and humans do bad things but I would rather be around the humans that are trying and sometimes failing to follow Christ, partly because they make great casseroles.
• No, it isn’t.
• No, it’s not.

I’m never going to beat anyone over the head with my religion, but if you are here, it’s of your own free will, and you’re welcome here. It is my prayer that the Creator of the Universe reveals Himself to you in a personal way.

ws