Letters - 06 November 2015
From bad things and good people to legalised theft
Bad things: good people
G Gordon Steel (16 October) poses an eternal question: why does God allow suffering? Or, put another way: Why do bad things happen to good people? This is the title of a very helpful book by Harold Kushner [an American rabbi aligned with the progressive wing of Conservative Judaism].
His thesis is that if we think of God as omnipotent then it is impossible to explain why He answers some prayers and not others, why He allows catastrophic natural disasters. Harold Kushner says that God created our world and set it all in motion but we cannot expect Him to change the natural laws for our benefit. He also gave us free will and much of the world’s suffering is the result of our wilfulness. But, if we accept that God is not omnipotent, we can still be beneficiaries of His love.
What a belief in God does is to offer a source of support and strength to help us when we are overwhelmed by tragedy and suffering. ‘Because the tragedy is not God’s will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed – He is as outraged as we are and we can turn to Him for help in overcoming it.’
Judith Taylor
Charismatic Christianity?
Stuart Masters wrote: ‘It might be argued that, based on their quaking, signs and wonders, the early Quaker movement was a precursor of contemporary charismatic Christianity’ (30 October). Indeed. ‘While waiting upon the Lord in silence, as often we did for many hours together… we received often the pouring down of the spirit upon us, and our hearts were made glad and our tongues loosened, and our mouths opened, and we spake with new tongues, as the Lord gave us utterance, and his spirit led us…’ (Edward Burrough – 1632-63, Quaker faith & practice, 19:20).
Laurie Andrews
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