In this three part article I am looking at the response of Andrew Ollerton to Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch's loss of faith. Andrew Ollerton is the author of the Bible Society's successful Bible and Romans courses, courses we have run at our church. Andrew's answer to Kemi Badenoch can be found on the Premier Christianity website here. The Premier article is divided into three parts: Viz:
Part 1: What Andrew refers to as his Logical Response. I looked at this in Part I of the series
Part 2: This is about Andrew's Biblical Response. I looked at this in Part II of this series
Part 3: This
concerns Andrew's Pastoral Response,
Below I interleave Andrew's Pastoral Response with my own comments.
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Andrew's pastoral response
Andrew: Finally, a pastoral response is found at the foot of the cross where God himself entered our world of pain. From the agony of the cross Jesus expressed feelings of abandonment that no doubt resonate with many victims: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Christianity doesn’t sidestep suffering; it centres on it. God’s plan may play out more slowly than we would like. But planted in the centre of it is the cross, where God himself bore the weight of our sin and made it his own.
MY COMMENT: I think I can agree with that: God in Christ has closely identified himself with our painful predicament. Christianity, therefore, does hit the problem of suffering square on. But can it face-off and ultimately out-stare that problem? True, if the very express image of God (Heb 1:3), the Creative Logos (John 1:1ff), and the one who can say "if you have seen me you have seen the Father" (John 14:8ff) suffers with his Creation, then it feels very plausible that in the deep theology of soteriology an answer to the question of suffering and evil is lurking in there somewhere. But if we are going to accept the existence of God wouldn't PZ Myers "solution" be an easier and more likely solution? i.e.
PZ Myers: No one uses the problem of evil to disprove a god, but only the idea of a benevolent god, or more specifically, the perfectly good being most Christians promote. When I see it deployed in an argument, it’s usually to make the narrower point that I don’t believe in your god..........But OK, sure, (if) the problem of evil says you should be anything but a traditional Christian, I’ll take it.
See the link at the end of this post for my response to this challenge.
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Andrew: This doesn’t resolve all the mysteries. We still don’t know the answer to why God allows certain things to happen. But we know what it can’t be. It can’t be that God doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he doesn’t care. What difference does this make to our experience of suffering? A friend recently posted on social media as she neared the end of her battle with cancer: “As we walk through this dark valley, Jesus knows what we’re facing; he has the scars to prove it. And his presence gives us peace.”
MY COMMENT: Too right it doesn't resolve all the mysteries! Andrew is still insisting, nevertheless, that in spite of all the suffering and evil, God is good, loves us, understands our suffering and He will bring us to green pastures in the end; we are asked to have the faith to take consolation in that. But isn't it easier to draw the conclusion that either there is no God, or if He does exist he is a baddie?*
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Andrew: In her interview, Kemi Badenoch said she rejected the idea of God but still believed in cultural Christianity. However, the Bible does not offer us a set of moral values or a logical argument for God. Neither will suffice when pain and suffering hit. Instead, the Bible invites us to personally trust in Jesus Christ, the sovereign and suffering God, who is with us in the darkness and promises hope beyond it.
MY COMMENT: Personally I'm glad that Kemi Badenoch is at least a "cultural Christian" (along with Richard Dawkins) because the Bible does offer us a set of moral values we can at least aspire to and hopefully be challenged by: Viz: Compassion, concern for the downtrodden, justice, equality in diversity, selfless service, and humility, values which emerge out of the Spirit of the Law (James 2:8, Rom 13:8). It is these values against which we measure ourselves but find we are wanting; For, above all the crucial Biblical lesson is that whatever our aspirations, our morally flawed & epistemically challenged human nature means that we are never going to be very good at implementing those Biblical moral values - far from it, in fact. This calls for Salvation from our predicament.
Rendering Andrew's pastoral advice in my own words he seems to be saying this: "Trust in Jesus, have faith, set your sights on the future hope and stay calm and carry on". That may or may not be good pastoral advice given the circumstances....I don't know; I'm not a pastor. Pastoring is a tough call. My response to Myer's challenge can be seen here....
Views, News and Pews: Theology According to PZ Myers
....but it's no pastoral response.
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Footnote:
* The idea of a bad God may entail internal contradictions; evil and selfishness may promote such internal chaos that it causes eventual complete self-cancellation in a way not unlike the unstable wave solutions in a cavity resonator, solutions which decay away to a whisper.
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