Saturday, June 01, 2013

All the time

My student Michael volunteered in tornado-ravaged Moore, OK recently, and sent me this picture. "Reminds me of the Book of Job," he writes.

[Interesting debate in response to neo-Calvinist theologian John Piper's tweeting from Job at news of Moore: “Your sons and daughters were eating and a great wind struck the house, and it fell upon them, and they are dead.” Job 1:19 . “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped.” Job 1:20. Some people condemned this as abusive theology of "deserved tragedy" but Piper evidently intended to be consoling. A subsequent tweet explained: My hope and prayer for Oklahoma is that the raw realism of Job’s losses will point us all to his God ‘compassionate and merciful.’ Can one not sound like one of Job's friends, even if one is trying to short-circuit the kind of explaining they were condemned for?

[Philip Yancey said: God endorses the confusion and even outrage that we feel when mysterious things happen. When suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do.

[Rick Warren tweeted: In deep pain, people don’t need logic, advice, encouragement, or even Scripture. They just need you to show up and shut up.#Love.]