You ask some interesting questions, some of which have been around in some form for a long time. I'll do the best I am able to answer, I don't think my answers will be conclusive, and can only hope they will be a bit helpful.

1. The Bible reveals God as being someone high above us, or to use come more common ways of putting it, God is not a material being, but spirit. As such, I suspect that things that would be impossible in a material sense are not so for God.

I think that when we read things about Him that seem to "teeter on the edge of nonsense", this is in some sense a question of faith—will we believe what God says about Himself even if we can't make sens of it, or will we fall back on our own understanding.

2. Could you tell us a bit more by what you mean by God being absent? I can see a few different meaning to that, but would rather get things a bit clearer.

3. I know that there are many different things being said by real Christians and those who aren't real. I suppose there are things that aren't worth getting worked up over, but some things are. The best direction I can point you towards is to the scriptures, and no that's not a cop-out answer either.

4. It isn't an apparent claim, but a real one, one that Jesus made and that is further claimed and supported in the Bible. It isn't cultural hubris, it's the truth.

5. To borrow an argument from C.S. Lewis, what size of universe would make you happy?

6. This is an old question—the question of pain and evil. Theologians and philosophers have thought about this for a long time, and I'd suppose finding their opinions would not be too difficult. For now, I'll only say these things…1—God is good, and He loves and wants what is best for us. 2—God allows us to do both good and horrible things to each other, He has given us some measure of say and lets our actions have real consequences. 3—There will be a judgment day, and may it be soon.

7. Being a Christian has never meant being perfect, and someone claiming to be Christian has not meant that person has been Christian. I also should ask what you mean by Christians being "a force of evil".

Danutz,

Point taken on my comment on Borg and Crossan. I think your point about narrative (NT Wright) versus individual stories (Borg and Crossan, if I read you rightly) is exactly right. It's this which I have picked up from the bits that I've read from both men (and from Wright and others), and basically what I was aiming at in my comment. A major question is, of course, how one defines artificial. The criteria for determining communities, as well as the criteria for assuming an interlocking narrative, can be equally subjective.

Fred Peatross

Anathema! hehe

It humours me to see so many immediately become defensive to your thoughts and then attempt to become an apologetic for God. Paul, you did your job—you made people think. That's what a good teacher does. This is a superb post. I quoted and gave credit to it on my blog […link]

Paul, I have a premonition that this is not going to be a small post, please bear with me.

First a little clarification, “in which case it is unreasonable to blame God for his non intervention”

Not quite, what I am suggesting is that in view of the process and the accumulation of human behaviours the questions of theodicy, of God’s responsibility, should not necessarily be seen as indicated only in crisis.

In other words the issue is not made extreme because of the extremity of the events. I don’t think the problem goes away because of this but it does gain some contextual qualification. Remember I have only responded on the issue of ‘social’ theodicy, on the situations where human beings, becoming more sub-human in a period of history, outwork their sub-humanity in appalling ways upon other humans.

I think the commonest problem with doing theodicy in the context of theology is ensuring that we work within appropriate categories. Auschwitz can also be seen, tragically, as a ghastly example of ‘the wages of sin is death’ or of ‘sin, full grown, leads to death’.

Culpability in other contexts needs other criteria of understanding. The two boys who died in the car - should adults not have foreseen the danger and taught the boys? Should the car’s designers not have been aware and ensured that an internal boot release was fitted. Perhaps they had, at some stage, and the manufacturers had withdrawn the specification for reasons of cost; seeing it as unwarranted in terms of risk-management. Who knows? More relevant for discussion of theodicy would be in what way and for what reasons do we expect there to be no accidents of behaviour or no bad consequences to ordinary actions (the design of cars, for example)?

But I come back to the question of categories, is culpability an appropriate way of coming at these issues?

Like all of us, Paul, I am a child of the twentieth century. As such, like you, I see the logic that if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and if power is the same as control so that God has all control, then God also and by definition has all responsibility. Case closed, let’s go off and cry together in the corner, or let us rage together and shake our fist, bring down this outrage and call for God to be accountable to we who suffer his absence. Then let us demand that he take his place in our day of judgement. Then let us exact recompense. Then let us find that in our execution of it we have also executed the one who ‘upholds all things by the word of his power’.

The point of the caricature is simply this. If we are seriously going to fight for understanding, the struggle cannot be framed in forms of thinking that lead to the ultimate farce.

In sympathy with your original questions again I would extend them, hoping to make things better not worse. I feel these questions as deeply as anyone, but I also have to hold them in the context of other questions about the nature and the place of scripture and hold all these questions under the bigger question about the meaning of the word God.

In this journey I have not found the apparent contrasts between first and second Testaments to be very useful. Step an inch to the side the OT narratives and all the problems of theodicy come back. So, God, through Joseph saves the Egypt from a famine that swept across the middle East, what of the tribes and even nations who did not have access to the prophecy, and starved?

There are stories of intervention where God acts within the constraints of purpose, to further God’s project with God’s people, the stories of the entry into the promised land and subsequent conflicts would be a case in point, and produce some shocking stories of violent intervention, and some fascinating stories of interventions that miraculously involve less violence than anyone would expect. But there were natural disasters, local tragedies, personal pain that continued all through the period and across the world where we have no stories of intervention or a lack of it.

The problem between the Old and New Testament images of God only exists conceptually within the confines of Biblical narrative. Adjacent to the biblical narrative the problems have always existed, and remain.

Let me make a very tentative offering upon the altar of “who-screwed-up?”. (And this is where I will try to do what you asked me to do at the end of your previous post – yup, that’s right, I had not forgotten!)

One of the common fundamentals in this sort of ethical enquiry, and common to most debates on theodicy, is that theodicy is the problem of the victim (in most secular and some religious thought) or the culprit (in some religious thought). I am wondering if there is not a way of doing theodicy without victim-hood or culpability, seeing as neither of these has yielded good results so far.

In Genesis 1-3 we have a story that tells us that the genesis of everything is a God whose very mode of being is creative (that’s such an inadequate way of putting it, it is almost ugly, I will try to improve on it another time). We see a process so astonishing in its beauty, so coherent in its design, so elegant in its process and harmonious in its outcome that even the God who enacts it stands back and exclaims its perfection. It is as if God is surprised at what he has done. Eden stands as the expression of divine perfection, the dream of God come true, and somewhere within us remain the echoes of its song, the sense of its loveliness, the eternity of its living, breathing wonder. And we lament the daily betrayal of that memory, in Auschwitz, in Tehran, in Indonesia, in our own impoverished ways of being human. But here is the conundrum. (My apologies to any who have endured my eulogies on this point elsewhere, but I still don’t find this theme exhausted, or even tired)

The very first thing that this astonishing God does in that perfect setting is to sow the seed of its potential destruction. He planted, or chose, two trees, symbolic of alternative possibilities, of an open history, of a story not yet told. God created the possibility of failure where it did not exist before. And it is in the context of that garden, and in the shade of those trees, that God tells his Adam to rule, to work and to civilise the earth.

There have been times, when hearing the accusation that it is the Judeo/Christian ethic in Genesis that has released the pillage of the environment we see today, that I have wanted to soften the Hebrew ‘radah’ translated ‘rule’ to something that has more of the popular stewardship in it. Thirty-four biblical examples of translation, however, make this difficult to do. It is a tough word and it does, in context, carry more than a hint of a deep transfer of responsibility, not in the event of Adam’s creation but in the intent of it, especially in the syntax of ‘let us make… in order to’.

I do believe the mode of rule is stewardship, but not in the sense that it removes executive responsibility, and this for theological rather than exegetical reasons. In a review of Middleton’s 2005 book ‘The Liberating Image’ I found this comment, “The syntax… points to ‘rule’ as the purpose, not simply the consequence or result, of the imago Dei” ( p. 53). Such an understanding opens a way to see the human creature as the one delegated by God to take over the task of mediating and representing the divine presence on earth and, for that matter, continuing the work of creation and rule even after God retires from the action on the open-ended and unfinished seventh day (p. 291).” I have ordered the book and look forward to exploring its implications.

So, if we take this charge seriously, and realise that there is a delegation in Genesis that affects every manifestation of the human presence on earth, how might this contribute to our experience of a hostile reality?

The loss of harmony is directly represented in Gen3, the toil, strife, labour and pain are all indicated strongly. They are also, I think, in some way as ‘curses’ also represented as the effects of the drama that has just played out. So the curses are also, tragically, almost promises of the absence of God, or something very much like it. In other words there is a fundamentally relational aspect to the drama, the creation is glorious as God’s dream come true, with Adam where they should be. But later, with God not where he should be, as a consequence of the risk taken with Adam, the whole of creation is not as it should be. (A theme so fundamental to scripture).

But if Middleton is right, and if am making any sense at all, how does this affect theodicy?

In the theodicy done by the victims we have to see Auschwitz as a terminal tragedy and, possibly, an indictment of the God who we expected to be in control. With this model, however, something changes. Auschwitz is not the end of a story but an episode in a more epic narrative. The lessons we as God’s image bearers refused to learn in the decades or centuries that led to the camps have not gone away. God still speaks to us of those things. The agonies of the camps can either slip dimly into the shadows of our repeated forgetfulness, or we can be reminded, when we look suspiciously at Arab nations today in fear of terrorism, that recent wars are being prosecuted with the same sort of racial stereotyping. As they were in Vietnam, as they were in Korea.

And don’t let us forget that the Jews were not the only, or the first, to feel the impact of that particular boot. The gypsies were an earlier target, and in many communities remain so. Homosexuals were victims too, as were those with learning disabilities or mental health problems.

Is this a wild and whimsical notion, then? That the problem of evil might remain as it is because the purpose of our creation as God’s image bearers has been neglected? That would be, to say the least, rather ironic. But if it is an irony, what is it that St Paul means when he says that creation is subject to futility in its agonised wait for the (implied) delayed revelation of the sons of God?

What I am trying to get at, increasingly clumsily, is what happens to theodicy when we approach it as an unfinished issue of mission, and mission done in the light of, as Middleton put it, the Liberating Image?

I don’t know what it would take to stop a tsunami, but if the tragedies go together in the way that common theodicy makes them go together, perhaps the answers go together too.

Chris

PS I'm not really able to respond on Weil. I struggled thirty years ago with, and have since neglected that particular genius. I recall it as being like chewing cast-iron candy-floss!

To Paul,

I have thought about the points you’ve made here and have my own take on them. My own problems with “traditional christianity” began when I tried to think about what happened to those people who never had a chance to hear the story about Jesus who was supposed to save them. There was also, seemingly, a problem for those people who were told said story by not-so-great sources, their slave-holders, conquerers, murderers and thieves, and so forth. The message seemed to be corrupted by the messenger.

You started out saying there were seven or so many reasons you found it difficult to believe in “traditional christianity.” But, too, at the end, you said there were also reasons that made it possible for you to forget all of the difficulties.

I have found it impossible to sweep under the rug the problems I’ve found with the traditional story.

In thinking about the problems and your solutions, I’ve had to come up with some account of exactly how to understand “traditional christianity.” I’ve thought I’ve needed to have some understanding in order to know what I was accepting or rejecting.

The one I’ve come up with is, admittedly, peculiar. I haven’t heard anyone put it exactly as I want to. But, despite it’s peculiarity, I think it explains the problems you’ve brought up in your list of seven.

Briefly, the traditional understanding of Jesus is what you get if you take seriously the business in Plato’s Republic, where Socrates says our lives are like the lives of his cave dweller’s, and you take Jesus to be the guy who comes into the cave having understood the problems the cave dweller’s have with their lives being illususory.

Given this way of understanding Jesus, the seven points can be explained.

So, point one is about the problem we have trying to understand how a person can be both a human being and divine at the same time. You said the idea is so mind-wrenching, it’s almost nonsense. The distinction between the cave dwellers and those on the outside of the cave is significant and huge. The cave dweller’s lives are based on the experience of false information, in that they only see shadows of real things, for example. Whoever is outside the cave not only understands how the objects in front of the fires make the shadows, but it is suggested they are in a position to have set up the cave and chained up the people in the first place.

I suggest this is the basis for the way traditional christians understand the distinction between mortals and God. As such, no wonder there would be a problem understanding just how one could be someone who knew the truth of everything, and was powerful enough to have created our lives, as such, and yet, at some point also exist in the same way that we do, putting their pants on one leg at a time, so to speak.

The second point is explained by the fact the the fires that cast the shadows of our existence are behind us where we cannot see them, and standing beside them is God. God is absent in the world only to the extent that we do not understand the exact way in which our experience is put together for us.

There are other ways of putting the Allegory, one of them being the way the parable of the absent landlord talks about sending his son as a messenger.

The conflicting claims about Christianity can be explained simply as what naturally happens when people find things to question when they find certain ideas or commitments being pressed on them. The spread of Socratic philosophy, I believe, does not come without cost.

The cave dweller’s problem, according to Socrates, is that they have only opinions and prejudices, and never knowledge or values as their lives are about illusion. The guy who comes into the cave is in a position to save the cave dweller’s because he has knowledge and values. The importance of what he has is shown by the fact that if one wants to finds one’s way home, for example, one will be saved from starvation or the elements by knowing the way home, and not if one relies on rumors or false information.

I take it the traditional christians believed that whereas the Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, and so forth, were not relying on the knowledge and values that Jesus provided, they were then relying on the false information they were getting from the shadows and echoes of existence. Yes, I would say it’s something like cultural hubris, but it’s also the same thing when they would go to anyone saying they were unable to find their way about unless they believed in their “traditional christianity.”

Number five becomes a problem because part of the Allegory’s story is about this guy who comes back into the cave. In order to make the story have greater credibility, you would expect there to be some guy who you could say brought messages from God, and himself would be divine like God. The Jewish Messianic environment provided a great place to develop such a story.

For six, one of the inducements given to believe in the Allegory, I suspect, in addition to providing for philosophers a way to understand how knowledge and morality would be possible, would be that it also told people that if it were true, there would be a powerful being who was interested in them and who could give them another life after this one. And, if so inclined, that God would intervene in the lives of one’s loved ones. He might help them out. He provided an argument for it based on it’s having really good consequences.

We are told God can do these things but not that he will always make things better than they otherwise might. This, is an argument to persuade us to adopt the Socratic way of looking at reality. But, it also doesn’t promise that he will prevent every stubbed toe or holocaust.

And, then you ask why Christians have been too often a force for evil in the world. Some people, I suspect, will say that it has never been the Christianity that has made the evil in the world, that people always forget about the Christianity when they decide to murder and steal things.

I’m persuaded that something about “traditional christianity” is corrupt. It isn’t a teflon religion at all. People who believe in “traditional christianity” - understood as an implication of the Socratic Allegory - are like those people who have built their house on sand. That is, it is more important to them that they consider the consequences of the Socratic account of reality, that, for example, it explains what we’re talking about when we say “Jesus saves,” or God is absent, or Jesus is both man and God, than for them to pay attention to the basis of what they believe in the Socratic Allegory.

My point here is that people who build their homes on sand understand Jesus quite differently than people who build their homes on some other basis like rock. The basis of the Allegory is that Socrates claims that in order to survive in this violent world we have to be thugs, relying on violence, sneakiness, and lies, and if we don’t do the dirty work ourselves, we shouldn’t interfere with those who will. When people are so committed to being saved be Jesus, understood as the guy who brings us knowledge and morality, they will resist questioning the commitments they must make to thuggery that makes such salvation necessary.

I can understand that people want to believe the story of “traditional christianity” because it involves “beauty and power.”

However, my point is that any mansion built on sand having all kinds of beauty and power is still built on a fragile and in this case corrupt foundation.

I don’t think one should hope that it’s true.

(I’m sorry for taking so much space.)

Paul,

I’m both new and late to this discussion thread but identify with your concerns/doubts regarding traditional Christianity even though I consider myself to be a Christian. Let me just begin by saying I believe that just because the majority of current Christians ascribe to “traditional Christian” theology, we must not assume this particularity to be God’s sole and absolute truth.

I am reminded of Isaiah 29:13, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”

If the Jews (God’s "chosen" people) could have gotten it so wrong that God had to pay mankind a visit in the flesh, I submit Christianity could and has likewise gone down wrong paths as well – e.g. the Crusades, Inquisition, slavery, etc. This presents the distinct possibility that traditional Christianity may not have it quite right today.

I believe traditional Christianity as passed down from the takeover of the faith by the Roman church is based upon a couple of flawed premises which have resulted in a doctrine that is both intuitively and intellectually difficult to totally accept due to its conflict with the image of God within each of us. However, I believe the Reformation was the beginning of a journey to get back in touch with the true purpose of God and message of Jesus.

This journey will be a long one and is significantly impeded by the traditional Christian view of the Bible as the complete and inerrant word of God. While I revere the Bible and believe much of it to be both historically true and inspired by God, I believe the incontestable contradictions in both the character of God and various Biblical accounts force us to reexamine the nature and role of the Bible in man’s evolutionary understanding of God and God’s purpose.

I believe it is more helpful to view the Bible narrative and saga of the Jews, Jesus Christ and the early Christians as describing the starting point for God’s working out of his ultimate will for his creation. The Reformation advanced this movement but I believe Christianity, as your 7 points indicate, is a journey to a destination still as yet far removed from our current human condition.

I believe viewing the Bible as the evolutionary account of early historical man’s struggle to comprehend God, God’s will and the meaning of life through the cultural lens of his superstitious times is more helpful than viewing it as God’s sole and complete communication with man regarding his will and plan for salvation. After all, what is the purpose of the Holy Spirit if not to guide us in our quest to understand God’s purpose and will? And if we give the Bible equal authority with the Holy Spirit, do we not make the Bible an idol?

Given this understanding of the Bible, I have come to the view that all scripture must be weighed as to its truthfulness by determining whether or not it is in accord with what we believe about the nature and moral character of God. I realize this presents somewhat of a referential loop between what the Bible says about God’s nature and character and what the Holy Spirit is telling us. However, I believe this is the essence of faith … to trust what the Holy Spirit is telling us over scriptures that were written by imperfect men who I believe were, like us, struggling to comprehend God’s purpose and will.

In the Bible authors’ case, they were struggling with understanding a monotheistic deity in the midst of a superstitious, polytheistic culture of capricious, vindictive gods. It’s not hard to see how some of these attributes may have transplanted themselves into the OT, and even NT, scriptures.

This view then opens the door for us to better understand the confounding scriptures in which God allegedly commands Joshua to kill innocent women and children (Joshua 10:40), or in which God himself allegedly strikes down an innocent Uzzah for the seemingly well-intentioned act of trying to keep the ark of God from falling onto the ground after the donkey upset its cart (2 Samuel 6:5-7). This clearly is not the loving, merciful and forgiving God who commands us to have mercy toward and forgive our enemies as testified in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

With this view of God and the Bible, let me now respond to your questions/concerns.

Here are 7 things that make it hard for me to believe in traditional Christianity.

1. How can Christ be both God and man - the idea teeters on the edge of nonsense.

If you believe in an omnipotent, transcendent God why would it not be possible for him to become flesh in the form of Jesus? I admit our modern, rational mind rebels against this notion. But, if we believe in an all powerful God that created the universe, we must admit that it could be possible. (I’m not saying I believe the creation story to be literally true but I do believe the universe to be created even if evolution may have been the instrument used by God in doing so.)

To me the strongest evidence that this might be the case is the dramatic change in the behavior of Jesus’ disciples following his alleged resurrection. How a group of men who previously were dull to Jesus’ teachings could so radically transform themselves and risk persecution and death for the sake of a logically preposterous message/event is nothing short of miraculous … or insane. I believe the fact that all of them did this shifts the verdict, in my opinion, toward a miracle as opposed to insanity. However, I also believe this too to be purely an article of faith.

2. Why is God so absent?

Is God absent … or does he simply choose to allow his will to be worked out through mankind and his creation? Your notion of God’s absence is tied to the existence of injustice and tragedy in this life. I too mourn and abhor the evil that exists in this world. However, I believe this is inherently tied back to the deep mystery of God’s purpose for his creation.

Though none of us will ever know the mysteries of God in this life, I have come to the view that God created man in his image so that we might commune with and worship (i.e. love) him. Why? Perhaps being God without man was a lonely existence, though that doesn’t sound very God-like. Or, perhaps he did it purely out of love and wanting to create beings that could experience and appreciate his love. I personally ascribe to this view. However, in either case none of it would have meant anything if man did not have the free will to reject God’s gift of love.

It is my view that it is man’s rejection of God’s love that is the genesis of evil and injustice in this life. However, if we believe there is an existence beyond this world, then perhaps what happens in this life isn’t the end of the story. And perhaps our horror at and repudiation of the evil inflicted by man is part of the mechanism by which all mankind will ultimately turn back toward God, his purpose to begin with. If this life is all that there is, then I would agree with your view of God’s apparent absence in the face of great evil. However, traditional Christianity and most other religions expressly believe in an existence after this life.

The real question I think boils down to our view of the traditional Christian doctrine of eternal punishment or destruction for those who do not profess Christ in this life. I will address this in your question 4 below.

3. The babble of voices - the myriad conflicting claims of Christianity.

Yes, Christianity is significantly divided with more than 38,000 worldwide denominations at last count. Most of these divisions arise from disagreements over what each group believes the Bible says and man’s seemingly irresistible urge to define God in our own image (it must be that pride thing). However, I believe there is a core truth underlying Christianity about God that is absent from many other religions … that God is a god of unconditional love, mercy, forgiveness and grace.

Though the breadth and inclusiveness of this view of God’s scandalous grace is restricted by much of traditional Christianity today, I believe the current state to be a temporary condition on the path of God’s working out his ultimate plan to redeem all of his creation solely through the power of his infinite and transforming love. I believe the view of God’s unlimited grace will ultimately prevail within Christianity and throughout the world, thus establishing the full reign of God’s kingdom on earth. However, this could take a very long time.

4. The (apparent) claim that we can only find God (salvation) through Jesus. This dismissal of the beliefs of Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus etc etc seems like massive cultural hubris - which found brutal expression during the period of European colonisation.

There is a growing movement (though small today) within Christianity (even some evangelical circles) that God is actively at work in the world in all people, which must by definition include all faiths. Christian Universalism theology is gaining significant momentum and is reestablishing the historicity and biblical warrant for the view that it has always been God’s plan and Jesus’ message that all men will ultimately be restored to the original perfection in which God made his creation. This will be done solely through the power of God’s unlimited transforming love as manifested in Christ. Clearly, it will not occur in this life for most people.

However, given an eternal existence beyond this one, is it too hard to believe that an all powerful and loving God will continue to work to redeem those he loves and created, and ultimately save them from the inevitable pain and suffering caused by our rejection of him? Or that his infinite and eternal love could not ultimately overcome our rejection of him? I think not, and there are numerous passages in the Bible that support this view, and many (perhaps most) early Christian fathers and believers (through the 4^th century AD) embraced this view.

I have created an extensive collection of research in the form of a Powerpoint presentation in support of this view if you or anyone else has an interest.

5. The fact that our planet is an infinitesimally tiny speck in a universe of unimaginable vastness; and the claim that everything in the universe revolves around what happened in a small place on this earth during an eye-blink of time.

I agree with your view. I think this focus of traditional Christianity is a testimony to the pride and vanity of man, and the failure to truly grasp the cosmic, timeless and infinite nature of God. It is too hard to believe that what we profess to believe in the short life each of us has on this earth will determine our eternal destiny, particularly when most of mankind will never have been given the chance to hear what I believe to be the true message of Jesus Christ. In addition, if God is infinite and omnipotent, could he not also be evidencing his presence in other parts of the universe?

6. That (according to the scriptures) God can intervene on earth to punish and reward, and to pursue his own plans and projects, but can sit idly by while the Holocaust occurs.

See my answer to 2 above. However, to summarize, if God continues to work out his plan to redeem all men beyond this life then what happens here is not the end of the story or an eternally unanswered evil, even though it may be perceived as evil and unjust solely relative to this world by those temporarily left behind. To me, the Christian Universalist view of God’s plan for the ultimate restoration of all his creation is the only theology that adequately answers these most troubling questions about the meaning of life and the evil that exists in the world. Fortunately, it can be found throughout scripture and, I believe, is more in tune with the image and innate understanding of God that is within us.

7. The fact that Christians have so often been a force for evil in the world.

We must delineate between Christians who profess Christ but do not have him in their hearts, and a true Christian who understands and lives out Christ’s message of love, mercy, forgiveness and grace. In my humble opinion, relatively few Christians, or any people for that matter, have truly grasped the true significance of this message yet. And yes, I believe many “non-Christians” can be better “Christians” than many traditional Christians since it is a condition of our hearts, not our minds.

I am hopefully optimistic and believe we are making progress (e.g. civil rights, equal rights for women, increased tolerance, etc.). Though it will be a long road with many setbacks, some of them major (radical Islamic terrorism … and the war against it?).

Why then do I believe?

1. The beauty and power of the story.

Ditto.

2. The hope that it is true.

Ditto.

By grace,

TomH