letters to surfers

If a movie was produced that approved the abuse of children, the terrible sufferings of cancer and other diseases, torture, and the meaningless of human life, I would not want to make the producer my friend. And that is exactly the movie your God has produced.

Response by Robert Brow (www.brow.on.ca)

My faith is in Jesus, whom you also respect as a good man. He knew as much as we do about injustice, slavery, sickness, and painful death. He also knew that children were being cruelly abused. "It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble" (Luke 17:2). In spite of all the obvious horror and suffering of the world of his day, he loved and he cared, and believed his Father was a loving God. I can't prove he was right, but I would rather be wrong in following him than logically right in calling God a monster. And as Pascal said in his wager, if I am wrong I lose nothing, but if I am right I can enjoy living Jesus' life of the Spirit and look forward to heaven too.

This comment came in to add to the above response:

From my point of view a loving Creator Artist is fashioning (present tense) a "near" perfect world. It's still under construction. One of the products of any ongoing work of art is a state where the final result is not readily recognizable. It appears at first glance to be a shambles. Humanity is in that stage. A complex artistic creation which includes humans that are given free choice over the environment which they can poison, relationships they can destroy and laws they can violate takes time to shape to perfection. The molding process in a "free will" creation must allow mistakes in order to ultimately point out the proper way to live.

In our lifetime I can see a significant improvement in human relationships. Slavery is now taboo in the civilized world. There are fewer rouge nations now that mistreat their citizens. Women have equal say in most nations and this freedom is spreading. Nations are talking to each other more rather than fighting. We haven't arrived yet but our grandchildren may see that day.

Every move to eliminate disease, reduce violence and build caring loving relationships between peoples is moving in the direction wanted by a loving Creator Artist. In the history of this world we are closer now than we have ever been to that goal. I look forward to 1 Cor. 15:26, "the last enemy to be destroyed is death".