The Prehistoric Question
*Footnote to the Previous Haystack Reflection of July 10
After my blog reflection on the Baptist Diet of bugs in which I spoke of Americans great disdain for eating bugs, I accidentally came upon the following: “The average American eats one to two pounds of dead insects and insect parts a year that are contained in such foods as pasta, spinach, broccoli, cereal, rice and beer. The Food and Drug Administration has allowable levels of insects for various foods; beer, for example, can contain up to 2,500 aphids per 10 grams of hops.” This quote is from ScientificAmerican.com that I found in the June 21, 2013 issue of the magazine The Week.
After my blog reflection on the Baptist Diet of bugs in which I spoke of Americans great disdain for eating bugs, I accidentally came upon the following: “The average American eats one to two pounds of dead insects and insect parts a year that are contained in such foods as pasta, spinach, broccoli, cereal, rice and beer. The Food and Drug Administration has allowable levels of insects for various foods; beer, for example, can contain up to 2,500 aphids per 10 grams of hops.” This quote is from ScientificAmerican.com that I found in the June 21, 2013 issue of the magazine The Week.
"Sinking" by Melissa Rubin Dear old and new friends,
Melissa Rubin’s painting Sinking visually captures our helplessness world under attack from both sky and ocean. Symbolic of the human-made world is her lone house being inundated by the dark evil of storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and other disasters. Humanity’s perpetual question is who is to blame for such evils?
Those who believe in God usually see God as sole ruler of the world. Do the lightning bolts striking the house in the painting and the belief God is the sole ruler of the world mean that both good and evil must be from God? That verdict was affirmed when God took ownership (Gen. 6:3-7) of the catastrophic global flood of Noah’s time as a divine punishment for the sinfulness of the world. Likewise, it is God who rains down an apocalyptic firestorm (Gen.19) totally incinerating the sin-soaked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Bible-clutching preachers used these scriptures (considered infallible by some) when claiming hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on New Orleans for the sinfulness of its Gay population! Yet, when the recent terribly destructive tornado leveled so much of Moore, Oklahoma, those same Bible belt preachers didn’t point their finger up to the sky! Lawyers affirmed preachers with their “Act of God” legal clause that made God culpable for a variety of evils as it denied victim’s legal compensation for a variety of destructive disasters since the Almighty had caused them.
Despite biblical or legalistic culpability, do you personally think God is liable for our increasing natural disasters? And if not God, then what malicious superpower is to blame? Consider that God, not wanting to be a divine puppeteer, gave humans the gift of Free Will so without outside manipulation we could freely choose how to act. Consider also that the Creator gave the natural world the same freedom to act according to its own unique laws and by so going made all natural disasters neutral—neither good nor evil!
Human history and today’s world is saturated with Evil. We can’t blame it on some supernatural diabolic power since we know we humans alone are the source of deliberate, malicious evil! That knowledge is the source of the old anonymous truth, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing!”
Melissa Rubin’s painting Sinking visually captures our helplessness world under attack from both sky and ocean. Symbolic of the human-made world is her lone house being inundated by the dark evil of storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and other disasters. Humanity’s perpetual question is who is to blame for such evils?
Those who believe in God usually see God as sole ruler of the world. Do the lightning bolts striking the house in the painting and the belief God is the sole ruler of the world mean that both good and evil must be from God? That verdict was affirmed when God took ownership (Gen. 6:3-7) of the catastrophic global flood of Noah’s time as a divine punishment for the sinfulness of the world. Likewise, it is God who rains down an apocalyptic firestorm (Gen.19) totally incinerating the sin-soaked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Bible-clutching preachers used these scriptures (considered infallible by some) when claiming hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on New Orleans for the sinfulness of its Gay population! Yet, when the recent terribly destructive tornado leveled so much of Moore, Oklahoma, those same Bible belt preachers didn’t point their finger up to the sky! Lawyers affirmed preachers with their “Act of God” legal clause that made God culpable for a variety of evils as it denied victim’s legal compensation for a variety of destructive disasters since the Almighty had caused them.
Despite biblical or legalistic culpability, do you personally think God is liable for our increasing natural disasters? And if not God, then what malicious superpower is to blame? Consider that God, not wanting to be a divine puppeteer, gave humans the gift of Free Will so without outside manipulation we could freely choose how to act. Consider also that the Creator gave the natural world the same freedom to act according to its own unique laws and by so going made all natural disasters neutral—neither good nor evil!
Human history and today’s world is saturated with Evil. We can’t blame it on some supernatural diabolic power since we know we humans alone are the source of deliberate, malicious evil! That knowledge is the source of the old anonymous truth, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing!”
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