From Stand To Reason:

The following was copied from the blog of Stand To Reason.


Friday, July 8th

Looking Evil in the Eye
Melinda Penner on 07.08.05 @ 05:29 AM PST

...We all did yesterday - some, sadly, more than most of us. The events in London yesterday again bring to the fore the conflict of world views that have been obvious throughout the War on Terror. Some are incapable of calling acts evil, even in the face of horrific events. Though many have lost the category of "evil," everyone personally needs to make sense of suffering in their lives. I've been thinking about the many people directly and indirectly impacted by the terrorist attack in London who are personally grappling with making sense of what happened, and many don't have God to turn to, to make sense of it. Os Guinness has written an important book on the topic of evil and terrorism and was interviewed not long ago:

"Sadly, the terrorist strike found the United States as unprepared intellectually and morally as it was militarily. This is the country with the most radical and realistic view of evil at its core—expressed in the notion of the separation of powers in the Constitution because of human nature and the abuse of power. But various philosophies and ideas have undermined that view over the last 200 years, so that American views today are weak, confused, and divided. On one side, many progressive liberals still think that we humans are essentially good and getting better and better. On the other side, many postmoderns actually think it is worse to judge evil than to do evil. And in the middle, many ordinary folk plaster life with rainbows and smile buttons and wander through life on the basis of sentiment and clichés. All of these views and others are shown up as bankrupt by the savage reality of September 11—and Auschwitz and the other terrible atrocities right through to the ghastly spate of car bombings and beheadings in Iraq....

"Which other faith comes close to matching the biblical answer for its combination of realism, hope, and courage? Buddhism, for example, has been described as the most radical No to human aspirations ever formulated. And while I personally have sometimes admired the nobility of great atheists I have met such as Bertrand Russell, there is a bleakness to the nobility that is almost unendurable. 'Atheism,' in the words of Jean Paul Sartre, 'is a cruel long term business, and I have gone through it to the end.'

"In contrast to all such views, the gospel is truly the best news ever—with its prospect of a world in which evil and suffering are gone, justice and peace are restored, and the very last tear is wiped away....

"At the end of the day, it is challenging and sobering to look at human evil in the white of the eye. But from the very depths of my being, with no attempt at propaganda or special pleading, I would say after years of looking into the question, that there is no answer to human evil deeper and more adequate than the answer that is ours as followers of Jesus. But we need to speak it out, and act it out, with clarity, courage, and love today. The world is hungry for it, and so are many in the church."



There are many good articles at Stand To Reason. Here are three (somewhat unrelated to the above article) that I'd love to get your comments on:

1. Acts and the Voice of God
2. A Private Hotline to God?
3. Discernment: Head or Heart?