not coddlers<\/a>. In addition to providing for their children (see fish, loaves of bread, in today\u2019s Gospel) and disciplining their children, fathers give their children a measure of freedom.\u00a0\u00a0 Sure, go ahead, climb that tree.\u00a0 There\u2019s a balance, and a good father will try to lead his child into adulthood with as few broken bones as possible. But there reaches a point where you have to let the kid do his thing and learn the hard way.<\/p>\nGod gives us radical freedom.\u00a0 A freedom so radical that our actions have consequences, even to the point of being able to hurt others.\u00a0 A freedom so radical that Adam\u2019s & Eve\u2019s actions were capable of breaking the whole world.<\/p>\n
The Spoiled Child Paradox<\/h2>\n
Our tendency is to not want that freedom.\u00a0 That is, we want the freedom to do whatever we please, but not the freedom for our actions to be able to hurt ourselves and others.\u00a0 We want the freedom to conform the universe to our demands, but not the freedom that caused the universe to in fact conform itself to the demands of our first mother and father. We want the freedom to pursue happiness, but not the freedom of actually doing the work the pursuit of ultimate happiness requires.<\/p>\n
Is the world broken? Yes it is.\u00a0 Did God break it? No He did not.\u00a0 We did.\u00a0 He gave us the keys and we totaled it.<\/p>\n
This is not what you wanted to hear.<\/h2>\n
In our rich fantasy lives, we\u2019d be able to stomp our feet and get a better god.\u00a0 One who existed, who was all-powerful, all-good, and somehow managed to not give us quite so much freedom.\u00a0 One who gave us a nice neat pleasant world at no cost, with no risks, no danger.\u00a0 A cross-free universe.\u00a0 The problem with the \u201cproblem of evil\u201d is that no amount of understanding the problem makes the evil go away.<\/p>\n
Understanding lets us be sane.\u00a0 It lets us know that there is meaning to our suffering. But it doesn\u2019t make the suffering go away.<\/p>\n
Hence, up above, the reminder that when someone is suffering, it\u2019s rarely helpful to hand them an essay when they\u2019ve asked for a loaf of bread<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 What is the Christian response to suffering? This is the second in a series, and the first post is here. People often ask, \u201cHow can a good God allow evil?\u201d\u00a0 We can approach the question from a number of directions, and before I continue, let me observe: Sometimes people who ask that question are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-qa","category-suffering"],"yoast_head":"\n
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