The View-Point

• Over the past few days, The View-Point has been getting a lot of hits from people searching for a connection between Christianity & the Virginia Tech massacre committed by Cho Seung-Hui. While I have no great argument to make at this point, I can only offer the following point:
  
  "Why does God allow this kind of evil thing to happen?"
  "How can He be a God of love and yet let such pain and suffering prevail?"
  
  These are questions that many people may be asking at such a difficult time as we are now in. The essential question is one of the role that God plays in the actions and choices of individuals.
  
  The Christian faith holds that God has created human beings with a 'free will' and as moral 'free agents'. Simply put, God allows us to choose to 'do our own thing,' whatever that may be. Indeed, the concept of sin essentially refers to actions and thoughts that are contrary to full communion with God and with His creatures and His creation (including our fellow human beings).
  
  This may not be very comforting in such a trying time as this, as it leaves us in a state of temporal vulnerability to such evil, malicious actors. But the point is that the actions of deranged individuals such as Cho Seung-Hui cannot properly be attributed to God, no more than the actions of a child are the direct responsibility of its parents.
  
  The perceptive reader, of course, will have noted that the key term in the previous paragraph is temporal vulnerability. It is through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, fully human and fully divine, through his suffering, death, burial, and resurrection that God has come into our temporal realm of free will and free choice to freely offer to us the gift of eternal life.

(Originally Posted: 4/18/2007 @ 8:25pm)

Labels: commentary

posted by Jason  # 8:30 PM