Christ Bearer

            For Christians, these bad things do not cause an incoherent narrative, and while they may be scary, we have a place to turn in our fear.  We know why bad things happen.  God tells us in His Word, where He gives us our ultimate truth and meaning.   Bad things happen because creation itself, this whole existence wherein we exist, has become corrupted or broken on account of human sin.  Sin in my life does not just have an effect upon me and those whom I offend.  It also has as a consequence a disrupted order between man and man and between man and world.  Moreover, this is true not just of my own sins, but the sins of all humanity.  When an awful thing occurs, it need not cause me to view existence as incoherent.  On the contrary, I can expect such things to occur.  I need not go looking for someone to blame.  Jesus Himself points out that bad things happen without there necessarily being an...

            When a bad thing like this happens, it is necessary for an individual to be able to explain it.  To make sense of the incident.  This is a necessary part of maintaining a coherent narrative.  So, in our society, we quickly look for someone to blame.  That parent is negligent.  This zoo is careless.  Those Christians are creating a hostile environment that encourages people to shoot homosexuals.  Blame is cast in all sorts of different directions, because once we’ve cast the blame, we’ve made sense of the incident.  Our own personal narrative has become coherent once again.              The alternative is simply unacceptable.  The alternative is that there are horrible things happening out there, and neither I nor anyone else really has any control over them.  It could be me or my family that suffers the next awful tragedy.  I cou...

            The root cause of this is that, in many ways, our culture has lost any sense of ultimate meaning or objective truth.  Things matter insofar as we decide to believe they matter.  Things are true insofar as we allow ourselves to believe them true.  Reality is what an individual elects to make of it.  This is a somewhat attractive position.  First off, it allows me as an individual to never be wrong unless I decide I am wrong.  Who wants to be wrong?  Moreover, if I change my mind to now be “right,” I can feel as though I’ve made a great accomplishment.  This approach also allows me to get along just fine with other people without having to confront in any way the vast disparity between our worldviews and understanding of reality.  You have your truth, I have mine, and we’re just fine with that.  This has been known to keep the peace between family, among friends, and even in the church.  ...

(The following several posts are an article I wrote up last year, that I then broke into 4 parts to be published in the local newspaper.  This is part one)             Late on June 14, 2016, a two-year-old boy from Nebraska vacationing in Florida with his family was tragically killed by an alligator.  The boy, Lane Graves, was walking along the edge of the water near a resort when the alligator snatched him away and drowned him.  His father, standing nearby, tried to rescue Lane from the alligator, but he was unsuccessful.              On May 28, 2016, a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo named Harambe was shot and killed by zoo employees.  A four-year-old boy had managed to enter the gorilla enclosure and was being carried around by the gorilla.  The zoo employees assessed the situation and considered it a life threatening situation for the young boy.  After determini...