Good and evil........

      Climbing into his pickup, slamming the door, he drove off without fasting his seat belt. When I encouraged him to belt in he said "I trust God."  To which I replied "Don't tempt God by asking God to do what God's not promised. Thank God for seat belts." His behavior didn't change and fortunately he was never in a serious accident.
      "In an interview the author  said 'I wanted readers to look philosophically at the idea that you can be seduced by the notion that God is leading you and that your actions have his approval.'"
"We seem to believe that if we act in accordance with God's will, we ought to be rewarded. But in doing so we're making a deal God didn't sign on to." So speaks author Mary Doria Russell about her book The Sparrow.
      This book is from Lisa's library and when she handed it to me she said "it's in my top ten." With that endorsement I began reading and was into it before I realized it was sci-fi. Normally that's not something I choose. The genre carried the freight for big questions of the relationship between God and evil and, much more.
      While it's well written, the author's academic background (B.A., Cultural Anthropology, U of IL, Urbana; M.A. Social Anthropology, Northwestern; PhD, Biological Anthropology, U of Mich., Ann Arbor.) shines through, the payoff is in the final chapters.  I remember when every month a group of developmentally delayed adults had a social at church. Each time they met 'Charles' had the same question "Why did God make mosquitoes?" A wag might answer "To prove we're not in heaven." But, this simple question asks the profound "why" of evil. What is the relationship between evil and God?  The Sparrow doesn't answer that question but poses it in a profound and remarkable way.
        Copyrighted in 1996, I'm glad I read it.
 
Takk for alt.

Al

PS I just finished writing this and when I opened the Washington Post I saw this headline:

A preacher believed ‘God can heal anything.’ Then coronavirus killed him.

"The Spradlins were also counting on a power greater than a Z-Pak or an albuterol canister. Their fervent brand of charismatic Christianity held that God regularly intervened in the world to alter the course of believers’ physical ailments."