"The Mystery of Evil."

A few weeks ago I started the first half of a two lecture series called "The Mystery of Evil, The Sovereignty of Good" by Os Guinness and Ravi Zacharias. Today I finished it and thought it was so good that it deserved a post. Both Ravi and Os are excellent speakers and their insight into this subject was deep but understandable. Evil is ever present in our world today and every person is affected by it. Because evil leads to suffering, people often question why it has to exist or why God, who is loving and merciful, would allow it. It is a difficult question to discuss because it highlights an apparent contradiction in the very character of God, and it is asked by people who don't just want knowledge but understanding. They want to understand why they have to suffer [a place that I have been before].
I've decided to blog my notes on these lectures because of how relevant the question is and because of how coherent these men's answers were.

The first lecture entitled "The Mystery of Evil" was done by Os Guinness. He started out generally talking about evil and it's existence saying:

We're all human beings: any of us may suffer, all of us will die. We live in a world where evil is tangibly real. 

He went on to discuss how we can identify evil and gave four steps:

1. Identify the source. 
All evil has one source, the Devil, but on earth it can be manifested in different ways. Os specified three sources of suffering: our own bodies, nature, and other human beings. Our own bodies in physical and mental diseases, etc, nature through natural disasters, and other humans in terrorism, war, and crime.

2. Listen to the questions. 
He encouraged us to treat people differently in their suffering and to listen to what they were really asking and saying. The most common question a person asks themselves when enduring suffering is "Why me?". We as humans want to know why we have to endure pain. [which is interesting because many deny there's an answer to this question but there is] Secondly people will as "Where is God?". Os mentioned 9/11 here and pointed out that people will blame God when they can't blame anyone else. 9/11 was such an act of violence and killed so many people that many said that God couldn't exist because He would have stopped it from occurring [the same is true of the Holocaust].
Lastly, he said that people will ask "How can I stand it?". He observed that if there is an answer to the 'why?' question, this question is more easily answered... knowing why we're going through something and that there will be benefits at the end will equal an ability to hold on through pain; there's something to hope for.

3. Appreciate the modern transformations of Evil.
I found this point especially interesting because he began by saying that the world is not 'more evil' than it used to be, it's just more modern. Modern technology has made it so easy for evil to be spread because, as Os said, today we minimize pain [through drugs like Advil, etc], we magnify destruction because ordinary people can do tremendous wrong [think about the shootings in schools and public places], and we marginalize traditional ways to hand evil and suffering through video games and entertainment.

4. Assess different interpretations of evil. 
He pointed out that we try to answer this question in the wrong way; that we rely so much on modern technology, science and philosophy that we're frustrated because they cannot answer the question of suffering and evil. They can't tell us why we endure pain, they can only answer a bit about how to handle it.

Lastly he described a challenge that we face today: how we can believe in God when evil exists. He called it a Trilema because there are three core beliefs that we must have in order to deal with evil. I won't go into detail about them because of how long this post is already! (;

-Can evil be all evil?
-Is God all good?
-Can we trust in God as 'all-powerful'?

All of our answers to these questions must be yes. Os Guinness pointed out that Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died. His weeping showed that things were not the way they were supposed to be, that they were not the way they were created to be. Would he have wept if his friend's death and the suffering of his family was all good? No.
In this question it's especially important to remember that God is still in control. It takes faith to trust that He has a plan in a world with so much wrong and so much suffering. We will not always understand the pain that we endure, but we can understand that we can trust in God because He is sovereign.

To finish his session, Os Guinness presented a quote from Victor Frankl that illustrates one way God uses suffering. I mentioned before that people question God's existence in the midst suffering because they don't know why God wouldn't have stopped evil from occurring. Perhaps the biggest blights on world history were the events of the Holocaust. Millions of people were murdered by a dictatorship and regime that couldn't be stopped. One of the most infamous concentration camps where these murders took place is Auschwitz. The horrors people endured there are unspeakable. When people look back on the events of the Holocaust they question how there could be a God. Frankl's answer was this, "The people who say this weren't there. Many found Christ in Auschwitz."
His words do not in any way excuse what the Nazis and Hitler did to the Jews, but it illustrates that God is still sovereign and that He can use evil for good.  It is the same for us.

If you get the chance to watch this video, I strongly recommend it. [this post just cannot do it justice] I'll write a post up on the second video by Ravi Zacharias called "The Sovereignty of Good" later this week.

-Meaghan

September and A Passion for Jesus

Remember when I said I would start blogging again? Seeing as it's been a month since I've blogged, I obviously haven't been too successful in that. Part of the problem may be that I'm really good at making plans but terrible at carrying them out.
Here's a little update on my life though! For the month of September I've also had the privilege to be traveling the A Passion for Jesus, a ministry dedicated to reaching girls through conferences and retreats.
 Going into this three week tour, I know that every staff member's prayer was that God would be working through us and that we would not be speaking, acting, counselling, working, or living apart from His power and grace. Now we all praise God for the things that HE has done, because without Him, we cannot have done anything.

The first conference and retreat took place in Tampa, the hometown for most of the staff. We did a camp at the Sputo's house from Monday to Thursday followed by a conference on Saturday. It was the first time that I had shared my testimony of how God has worked in my life in the area of forgiveness. It was challenging and exciting;  the perfect way to kick-start the tour.

After a couple days of rest, our staff of twenty-three girls, one guy, and three moms left for Georgia and Alabama. We did a conference and retreat in Georgia and a conference in Alabama. Ester Dales [one of my new Aussie friends!] led a team together at the retreat. During the retreat, we kept praying that God would be leading us in the direction He wanted for the team. I love our team and praise God for the things He's done! God's grace carried us through all of the events and once again we saw His power and love displayed.

I wish that I could tell every testimony of what God did in the past couple weeks. I wish that I could describe to you all what it's like to be able to see girls have freedom in Christ after being in bondage for so long. I walk away with this APJ tour with a deeper understand of who God is because of what He has done. The tour was truly a Spiritual journey for all of us staff members and we've all grown closer to God and each other because of it. It unceasingly amazing to me how God takes broken things for His good. The fact is that all of us who are on staff with APJ have past struggles and experiences that have been hard or bad, but to God that's okay! He delights in using broken and scarred people. It's unthinkable but true.

Oh and the memories... oh the memories. Travelling with that many girls is pretty exciting and lends to some fun times. There were long talks, car rides, pranks, encouragement, and MANY giggle 'sessions'. I can't even begin to describe how many times we were left with tired stomach muscles and tears streaming down our cheeks from laughing so much.

But now it's finished. I'm sitting at the Jalbert's house listening to Carrie and Jacinda play the piano together while Ruthann and Laurie go over finances. Shanna and Caitlin are laughing over facebook statuses, Hannah and Hollie are playing in the yard, and everyone else is getting ready to head to the beach for a final goodbye and celebration. I am so blessed by the friendships that have been made and strengthened this month. Looking forward to what God has in the future for all of us and especially A Passion for Jesus!