Barmaid gets Jesus
The barmaid is starting to get to Jesus, it seems.
She was talking about the problem of suffering and the existence of an omnipotent and loving God. If God can’t stop the suffering, then he isn’t omnipotent. If he can but doesn’t, he isn’t very loving.
So Jesus gets on the Internet to look for some arguments. He finds Richard Swinburne. He has mixed feelings. He thinks Swinburne’s view is kind of disgusting. I know what he means!
A reader pointed out, giggling gently, that either the barmaid or Jesus has apparently been reading B&W again. Don’t I feel useful.
“Theodicy provides good explanations of why God sometimes — for some or all of the short period of our earthly lives — allows us to suffer pain and disability”
Good explanations being – the vindication of God’s goodness and justice – in the face of the existence of evil.
The evil/injustice I should add, being allowed at the hands of those who purportedly claim to be his followers.
So, is it God’s intention to create prophets out of the suffering, like the millions of children who are gone missing!! Like the two tiny mites that await the outcome of severe penalty. Like the honour killings in Syria! Like the honour killings in Kurdistan! Like the Save two Sudanese women from stoning! Like the – Stop FGM in Kurdistan! Like the – Save Fatima al-Timani from forced divorce! Like the – Protest for four ‘honour’ killings in Pakistan! Like the – Save Delara Darabi from execution! Like the – Stop Stoning Forever! Like the European Asylum for victims of ‘honour’ crime! Like the – No Sharia in Kurdistan! Like the – Tribal justice is no justice Justice for Banaz.
So God allowed thousands and thousands of children in the past to be incarcerated [for their whole childhoods’in most cases] in child prisons, namely industrials schools such as Goldenbridge, Inchicore, Dublin, to atone for the sins of others. Was that it? Where in Goldenbridge ‘swines’ [of ? sort] were considered to be of higher order?! Even a rhesus Monkey had more standing.
Theodicy, indeed!
I just went back through Jesus & Mo for a chortle. OB, I rather think the barmaid may be modelled on you; she certainly hits her mark.
“She leadeth men to tour upright, and stoops only to conquer ignorance.”
(Why yes, I DO say that to all the girls. But how did you know?)