A Facebook friend wrote

Rowland, have had a lengthy conversation with a friend this afternoon about the places of tension and conflict between God is Love belief and the problem of suffering. How would you approach this one?

Response:

Hi

No one has a definitive ‘answer’.

I suggested eight responses here (and one is better than the others): http://jmm.org.au/articles/4810.htm

C S Lewis (before the death of his wife) makes a little bit of sense – http://jmm.org.au/articles/1174.htm (but The Problem of Pain has to be read with A Grief Observed – head and heart etc.).

More – see under ‘suffering’ – http://jmm.org.au/catalog/keyword/s-23.htm et seq

And see if you can make sense of Karl Barth’s notion of ‘nothingness’ (Church Dogmatics), where he suggests that the ultimate answer is in God’s revelation in Jesus Christ.

Have fun with it (if that’s the right expression)

Shalom!

Rowland

http://jmm.org.au/

Justice for Dawn Rowan – http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/