THEODICY the problem of evil in the world
THEODICY: This is the theological term for the study of the problem of evil. Recent question: How can a loving God allow a disaster that can kill so many innocent children and families in the recent East Indian Tsanami on December 26. Some Christians were heard to say that was God's punishment for not being Christian.
By the way, visit a theological library of any size, and you will scarcely find a half shelf of books on "Evil," but many shelves on "Sin."
The question of the justification (dike) of God Himself (theos) is raised as a response to the problem of actual human experience within a world in which fulfillment is qualified or shattered by premature death, mental or physical retardation, destructive social conditions including war, the accidents of natural or man-made catastrophe, or the terror of history itself.
How can a benevolent, loving God create a world of such good and evil: e.g. when bad things happen to good people, how does a person of faith understand and explain this, e.g. the Holocaust, etc., or personal loss. Thus Job’s questioning of God in the Old Testament would be a study, as I understand it, in Theodicy.
The term appears first in the title of a work published by G.W. Leibnitz in 1710, and the ensuing discussion is shaped by the spirit of the so-called Enlightenment; but the problem is ancient, as illustrated 'by reference to the religio-secular wisdom literature of the Near East; Babylonian, Egyptian, and biblical. Presumably the problem rests ultimately in the effort to do justice to finite freedom in relation to divine creativity.
From The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, J.D.Douglas, Zondervan, 1974.
Question: Does the human shadow emerge in our attempts to use faith or religion to explain evil? Does religion have anything to say at all about the problem of evil? Job was "stuck" --a good man to whom bad things kept happening. His friends kept saying: "Admit your sins, brother!"
1 Comments:
My Comment:
The human shadow is not being able to recognize things that are right in front of us, or simply not wanting to. My response and beliefs is this: People refuse to believe the truth because it points to a less pleasant scenario. This is why people believe what they want to believe instead of what they should believe. This is true and it will always be true. There is good and evil in every single person. Instead of people denying that they have evil in them, I think that they should admit it exists. Why? It prevents the evil from slowly overtaking the good. To be able to recognize the evil keeps the evil in ‘check’ so to speak. That is what I think. I definitely believe that people use religion to take up the slack where that they are refusing to grow up and be responsible for their actions. As far as Job is concerned, this is what I have to say. Good things happen to everybody, but evil occurs against us just as we have both within ourselves. I think it is necessary to confront our ‘demons’ inside ourselves because we all have inner turmoil that exists. No one, absolutely no one, is exempt from that. Life places that upon us from birth until realization. Once we confront our ‘demons,’ then we can find peace within ourselves. For persons who cannot see that when terrible things happen, that there is a lesson in everything in life, is not learning. Tragedy is horrendous. That is a sad fact. It is reality. We have to try and attempt to come to grips with whatever life throws our way.
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