The first error comes when we attribute all suffering to God, seeing it as his punishment for human mistakes; the second error does just the opposite, assuming that life with God will never include suffering.

I’m glad the author of Job took such care to record the rambling conversations of Job’s friends: that book serves as a permanent reminder to me that I have no right to stand beside a suffering person and pronounce, “This is the will of God,” no matter how I cloak that sentiment in pious phrases.

For, if we accept that suffering comes from God as a lesson to us (as, for example Islam does), the next logical step would be a resigned fatalism. Polio, AIDS, malaria, bubonic plague, cancer, yellow fever--why should a person fight any of these if they are God’s agents sent to teach us a lesson?

In the providence of God, who does not always show his servants the true point of the books he stirs them to write, the theme of Fear No Evil is the conquest of death--not by looking away from it, nor by being shielded from it, but by facing it squarely and going down into it knowing that for a believer it is the vestibule of glory.

Health and life are not what we die out of, but what we die into.

-i love this guy. mystery email dude. you're so cool

  by vck @ 23:32