Sometimes people are lone survivors amidst a field of death and suffering, as I put it in a recent post, and this status can create a problem for one’s faith in God. How could an all good God allow such suffering? That is essentially the problem of evil, as theologians have labeled it.

After leaving the church for the second time but still knowing that I would be lost without faith, I found myself probing for answers to a question that I didn’t know how to ask. I grew up in a modern-minded church in a suburban family, but early on I realized that I simply thought differently than others in my community. I didn’t understand. But something screamed from inside for as long as I could remember. Life, however, is a strange instructor. After all, as the emergent church our goal is to connect our life expereinces with God in a way that is authentic, meaningful, and powerful.