Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 September 2007 23:13:03
Day 29
Two books left to read.
I think I'm missing something here. So much of the later book are harping on about God's love. This is the God who sending massive plagues of death and destruction and killing most of the population, allowing an evil bastard - infact Satan himself - to rule the planet and raise from the dead. To be honest God is being a bit of a bastard. But according to Tsion Ben Judah it's all because he loves us.
Interestingly iTunes on shuffle chose to play "Losing my religion" the second I finished that line. And I've not made that up.
A quote from the book 'Apollyon' is a perfect example of this thinking - "I beg of you not to look upon God as mean or capricious when we see the intense suffering of the bite vitims. This is all part of his master design to turn people to him so he can demonstrate his love." So I have two problems interlinked with this. The first is that as far as I am concerned that quote is a slight on the character of God. I do not - will not - worship a God that could end the suffering of the world but chooses not to. The second is less of a problem, but is related to the people in the book who are shown to have converted. From reading the books, as long as you invite Jesus into your life, even if it's just because you are scared shitless of all the devestation that he has wrought on the world, you have a 'get-out-of-hell-free' card.
I was temping today and reading a Doctor Who tie in novel. Now, call me shallow, but I don't read Doctor Who novels for deep reflection, but this novel not only mentioned Dostoyevsky, but quoted from the books and Ace knew about him. This made me very happy, but also got me thinking about the responses to the problem of evil. As far as I understand it, traditionally there are three choices - Hume, an eighteenth century philosipher simply states the problem as "Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" The third choice is that God is both willing and able, but does not know about the evil in the world - which thinking about it is nonsence because then God is impotent. The traditional answer to the problem of evil is human free will - which is all well and good - but where is God?
As far as I am concerned, God is in the suffering. There is a story told about an execution in a Concentration Camp during world war 2 - three people were hung, two men and a child. The two men died instantly as their necks broke, but the child was slowly killed. Somebody asked "Where is God?" and was answered "He is there, dying."
As far as Left Behind is concerned - God is in the people fighting to survive. He is as much in the group of Muslims who 'died for Allah' (and in the eyes of the authors died in vain) as in the GC forces who were shot running away from a raid as in the heroic Christians who weren't afraid to die because of their assured place in heaven.
Unfortunatly the authors of LB would disagree with me.
Day 32
My friend is threatening to send me left behind slash fiction. Apparently most of the slash is better written than the books themselves. I'm resisiting the urge to Google.