What's happening?

1. Had a really good time with 3 young under-graduates at my college yesterday, over lunch. The meeting was initiated by one of the young one's concern about a friend, a 'second generation believer', and how this friend had steadily become an atheist. The other two were invited by me to tag along, and that perhaps that time over lunch would be good fellowship as we learned together to work through this and other difficult issues.

2. So it seemed that the main difficulty this second-generation believer - who was now an atheist - had was about the problem of evil, or in theological terms, the problem of 'theodicy'. You can get a simple summary of what theodicy means, as well as access to other apologetics materials here ... http://www.apologetics315.com/2012/10/terminology-tuesday-theodicy.html

3. Our discussion led us to several conclusions; that we must always 'track' with the enquirer/sufferer. Tracking means to recognize and realize that perhaps the enquirer/sufferer is not so much looking for an intellectually satisfying response, but, perhaps a heart or existentially connected one. Tracking means to go back and forth from existentially connecting with the enquirer/sufferer, to attempting to provide intellectually satisfying responses. It helps that one is trained in psychology and counseling!

4. Other questions worth raising up and working through here is 'Is is alright to have doubts, and to raise them up?' And indeed, even at an intuitive level, the young ones felt an affirmative response to this question. God is greater than the content of our doubts, and the emotion connected with our doubts. Remember Thomas after Jesus' resurrection? Remember some of the psalms? The key learning point here for all of us was that it is better to have doubts, and raise them up, than to pretend they are not there, and not do anything about it. God is truly greater than all of our doubts put together, and can handle us with our doubts. More than that, He has the answers, and in fact, He IS the answer.

I look forward to more sessions with these young ones. They are so enquiring, and eager to learn and to share their thoughts.