Did you know that Christmas is a pagan holiday? It’s one of those “facts” that gets passed around during the Christmas season every year. Most people simply take it at face value. But this fact is a creation of the 19th century. It arose at the same time the myth that Easter was inspired by…
Millennia before I sat down to try to tackle the question of why bad things happen to good people, another had set out to do the same thing. Taking traditional wisdom, and using it as a framework for his own argument, the author of the Book of Job created a foundation that I, and a…
Why do we suffer? I’m not sure that question can ever be fully answered. The ways in which we suffer are exceptionally diverse, and the factors that lead to suffering are infinitely varied. But in order to even begin to understand how suffering could coexist with an all-loving God, we need to at least scratch…
When faced with the reality of suffering, the classical view of God becomes exceptionally difficult to defend. The idea that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving is challenged by the existence of evil. It brings up the age-old question of theodicy: how do we reconcile our notion of a loving God, a God who has…
