"If God is all-powerful, and He's all-good, why is there evil and suffering in the world? If He could end suffering, he would."

This seems to be one of the most difficult things for a person to reconcile when and if they consider the existence of God. If God existed, and was all-powerful, and was good, then He must surely end evil and suffering, because that would be the right thing to do. But because evil and suffering exist, one of those 3 characteristics of God must not be true - either He doesn't exist, or isn't all-powerful, or is an inherently evil God.

I must say, sometimes this life doesn't give us the most evidence for the existence of a good God. Every time we see planes flown by terrorists crash into cherished national landmarks, killing thousands of people, we can't help but wonder why God didn't stop it. When we read accounts and hear stories of Nazis gassing tens of thousands of people, we recoil in horror at the mass graves and wonder why God didn't stop it. When we see people persecuting others simply because of their religious beliefs or the color of their skin, our minds have difficulty reconciling the hate which we see with the intent of man that is portrayed in the Bible - one who is lovingly and wonderfully created by an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God for the purpose of worship. It just doesn't make sense. When I was younger, I tended towards pessimism... and from what I could see, there wasn't a whole lot in humanity that could cause me to change my mind.

Doesn't seem to make sense, does it?

However, after taking a good, hard look at life on this little rock we call Earth... after seeing the beauty in Yosemite Valley... the complexity of a molecular biological reaction... the intricacy of a man or woman's thought processes... I couldn't, and can't, rationally deny the existence of an Artist behind every created thing. It would make less sense for this world, for me, to come into being by random chance, than for me to be put together by something or someone with intelligence.

So, the question for me then became, who was this God, and was He any good? Well, suffering exists, and evil undoubtedly exists. I don't know of any rational people who can possibly condone atrocities such as the 9/11 terrorist attack or the Holocaust as a good thing, or even as a "neutral" thing "because relative to the terrorists/Nazis, they were doing the right thing, so it's right." Does this then mean that there is no God, or that God is evil because He allows evil to exist?

I believe that God hurts when we hurt. I believe God grieves when men commit atrocities against one another. And I believe that God will end evil and suffering, just as doubters say He should - just not on the timetable we so arrogantly want to force upon Him. I believe that God is so in control that while we can't see why things happen, good or bad, He has a perspective on things that I can never have and can't appreciate unless and until I see things from the distance of some time - giving me the opportunity to marvel at the greatness of that plan. How can I possibly believe these things? "Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." - Romans 8:23-25.

Perhaps the most awesome consequence of the gift of forgiveness, grace, and mercy that God offers to every human through Jesus Christ, is the gift of hope. While there is evil and suffering in the world, I have the opportunity to live my life with the hope and the knowledge that this life is temporal, and that the heavens and the earth will pass away eventually. Without God, we die - everyone dies - and that's the end of things. But in the new life that is offered us through Christ, we then have the privilege of shifting our perspective from this life to the next. In the midst of trying times, of difficulties and tribulations that threaten to break us down, we can cling to this hope, and be motivated by it to live lives in serving others and extending God's love, grace, and hope to them.

In the movie Shawshank Redemption (one of my favorite movies of all time), the main character, Andy Dufresne, is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Instead of living out his days in prison disgruntled and bitter at the hand that life has dealt him, he throws himself into activities such as stone carving, reading, doing tax work, building a library, and tutoring other inmates. (spoiler) We find out late in the movie that he has been carving his way through his cell wall, and over the course of 20 years or so manages to carve a tunnel through to the outside. In hindsight we realize that the hope of seeing the outside world again likely provides him with the motivation to do all of these tasks and invest in friendships with other inmates. Andy knew that his suffering was temporary, that the evil he saw in some of the inmates (and even the staff) within the prison walls would one day be no more, and that he had a path to the outside world available to him - and this freed him to live a life within the prison walls that was by just about any account, remarkable.

I don't know why there is evil, and why people suffer. What I do know, and what I can spend my life sharing, is the knowledge that there is something beyond this life that is better. God has promised to eliminate evil and suffering one day, and I long and hope for that day. I pray that you, whether you know God or not, would be able to trust ever more in Him and take firm grasp of the hope that he offers to everyone.

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. - Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption

Comments? Questions? Thoughts? Leave me a message on my message board.

Yesterday during Sunday afternoon ball, I drove baseline and slipped - probably on some of the pine needles that are sometimes scattered across the court - and landed hard on my left side. Banged up my elbow and scraped off maybe a 3-inch diameter circle of top-level skin on my hip. It matches the other scrape-scar I have from slamming into a wall when playing ball with elementary school kids in NYC.

That's not too hard to play through. However, taking a shower later and having all the salt from the sweat that's covering the rest of my body pour down into the scrape... yeowch!

One thing that has been something of a running joke with me over the past year has been asking the question, "How old do I look?" to people that I just meet.

One high-school-age friend of a youth in my youth group thought I was 29. She then guessed that George was 23. Swap those numbers and you've got us pegged (well, at the time at least).

Until fairly recently, most of the youth group thought I was older than Luwen, our youth group director, who's been married for a few years. Apparently, I look 27 and she looks 26 or 25. She's actually 28 (I believe) and I'm 24.

At Drew and Vicky's wedding 3 months ago, George introduced me to a friend of his who then guessed I was 32 years old. That one has to take the cake so far. I've told that story enough that people now call me "32" as a nickname.

I think driving a Volvo 850 wagon adds 10 years to my life...

Just as a tidbit for this particular "age" question. When someone (particularly a girl) asks that question, you're immediately treading on thin ice... guess too young and they're offended that they look like a high schooler, guess too old and they're offended that they look like a parent. My current working theory is that you should always guess that a person is 25 years of age. You really can't go wrong. If someone looks awfully young, you guess that they're 25, and you'll usually either be right, or they'll be a high schooler who wants to look older... because it seems that most high schoolers want to leave the "kiddie" stage behind. If they look older, then they'll typically be pretty happy that they look like a mid-twenties person. You can't go wrong with 25!

"Q: How do you prepare to model worship?

A: I remain a student of worship. I don't want to become an expert on it. I want to be learning, so I'm listening. I listen to worship songs. I have an ongoing dialogue with God.

Worship is a conversation in progress. Worship is not just a gathering of people at a certain time around a certain idea. Worship is the joining of our spirits with anyone in the universe who is worshiping. It's like plugging into a current that's always on.

Worship enables me to gaze at the unseen, at the eternal. And in that, something happens in my heart that doesn't happen when I'm not worshiping.

So when I come to the platform to lead worship, the experience is a continuation of what's happening every other day of the week.

If I worship only on Sunday, I won't recognize the moment of God's presence when it comes."

- Joseph Garlington, "Finding the Grace Gates"

Good principle for me and other lead worshippers to remember.

Ramblings about current events...

Fat tied to heart woes unsafe at any level

Well, there goes yet another food group that's generally unsafe to eat. Any time you eat any kind of processed snack food... chips, crackers, even some breakfast cereals and breads (!) you run the risk of taking more of these "trans fats" into your system, which can have an adverse effect on the "bad" cholesterol level. Incidentally, I still get a kick out of those diagrams of the organic structure of the different kinds of fats... reminds me of all those days in ochem in college. My mom's done a pretty good job of training my family to eat in a generally healthy fashion - lots of vegetables, fruits, water, as little deep fried stuff as possible... she even bakes her own bread and roasts her own peanuts!

Basically seems like... if you have a craving for something salty, the only snack that's somewhat healthy with this new revelation is nuts. And those have a fairly high amount of fat in them too... but at least it's primarily "good fat." According to the article, one of the dietary ideals to strive for is the Mediterranean diet, which has a high amount of fish and nuts, and a low amount of red meat... well, guess that's not so bad.

Sesame Street to Introduce HIV-Positive Muppet


According to the article, this is so that kids can begin learning early on that there are many different types of lifestyles in the world, and having an HIV-positive muppet would teach them that it was okay to interact with them and treat them like normal human beings on an everyday basis, rather than like lepers. Hm, if that's the case, maybe the show can be expanded to include a wider variety of characters from different walks of life, different ethnic groups, different religions, and so on so forth. I think it'd be a good way to encourage parents to educate their kids about the world at large and not just keep them in some kind of sheltered bubble.

"Faith is walking with God. The biggest problem with life is that it's just daily. You can never get so healthy that you don't have to continue to eat right... Spiritually, we're in much the same place... It's not what you did, and not what you say you're going to do, it's what you do today." - Rich Mullins

This seems to be the crux of all the spiritual themes in my life right now. In college as a young believer, I found that I tended to grow and mature spiritually in spurts - have a week or two of great times with God, followed by a period where I'd shut Him out in order to study or whatnot, then go to a praise night or some other event, and so on so forth. Now that it's been a few years, I've graduated from college, and my lifestyle has changed from the hectic, intense, "event-driven" ("event" referring to midterm, project, etc.) where each week would have something "significant" happening, to the lifestyle fondly referred to by many as the "daily grind" or "rat race." I know that one fear of mine when getting ready for work was falling into a rut where I'd wake up, go to work, do something, come home, eat, watch TV, and go to sleep to begin the cycle again the next day. Then weeks would flash by, months, and all of a sudden I'd be over 30 years old and wondering where my youth had gone.

While I can't argue the fact that it seems time is going by more quickly during this stage of my life than almost any other stage of my life because of the similarity of the daily routine of working, I can say that it has made the challenge of daily spiritual growth much more apparent and relevant. This has now grown into a habit and an integral part of my life... I can now honestly say, where I couldn't before, that my days don't feel complete without some focused and concentrated time in God's presence and Word. I'm now beginning to understand what Jesus was talking about when he refers to the Scriptures as the "Bread of Life" - as in the quote above, you never get so healthy that you can stop eating, and you can never have so much faith that you don't need to exercise it by being in God's presence regularly - we're called to persevere to the end (Hebrews 3:14)

This theme seems to be showing up in several areas of my life. Since joining worship team at Canaan, I've been considering what it means to live a daily life in worship... been reading "Celebration of Discipline" by Richard Foster, which has provided a lot of good, practical, Biblical guidelines on meditation, prayer, and study... several sermons, retreat topics, quiet times, and the Bible study from my men's group have all reinforced the fact that while God's grace is extended freely and without reservation to all men, and that there is nothing we can do to attain salvation on our own, this grace is still costly because taking grasp of that grace requires that we let go of our lives. I get the image of a rock climber who needs to make a traversal from one rock face to another behind his back - he literally needs to let go of one in order to grab and start climbing on the other. If you have one hand on each face, you're certainly not going to climb, and you can most certainly fall. If you keep both hands on the first rock face (the world), that wall will eventually crumble and fall. But once I've made the decision to die to my previous self, let go of that wall and start climbing towards Christ, I'll have the opportunity to learn, to grow in faith, to stand on God's promises - and even when I slip up and fall, the grace of God is there to catch me.

It's remarkably freeing to wake up each day and dedicate that day to God. When I look at the world and my place in it through God's eyes, a lot of other things fade into the background. One example in particular... last year during a time of reflection, I asked myself the question, whether I would be disappointed and sad at unrealized dreams if I was to say, perish tomorrow, or if Christ were to come back this very moment. At the time, I had to admit that one of the dreams and challenges that I looked forward to was leading a family - I wanted the challenge of being a good husband and father, and shepherding my kids into grown people the way my parents did for me, and that I would feel that disappointment if those dreams weren't realized. As I've grown and learned since then, however, I think that I've begun to be able to change my dreams and goals into a longing for heaven and God's presence. I am less fearful of death than I used to be, because I'm learning to look beyond death as the cessation of worldly dreams and possibilities - such as leading a family and achieving success - and looking ahead to an eternity of 100% of the presence of God that I get just a taste of on a daily basis. What this frees me up to do, then, is to set many and varied goals for myself to strive for - but, I won't be crushed if they don't come to pass. As my pastor is fond of saying, "I don't know what the future holds, but I know the One who holds the future." I believe that this freedom - of knowing that God has my back, thus I can attempt big challenges in order to glorify God and to draw nearer to Him - has helped to refresh me on a nearly daily basis over these past few months. It's particularly freeing when I remember that because He has my back, stumbling doesn't have to be nearly as despairing as it used to be.

I hope that some of that made sense... if not, email me or leave a message on the guestbook/message board to the right. But I'll finish off this very long blog with some song lyrics from the guy who uttered the quote I opened it with:

If I stand, let me stand on the promise that You will pull me through
But if I can't, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to You
If I sing, let me sing for the joy that has borne in me these songs
And if I weep, let it be as a man who is longing for his home

- "If I Stand", Rich Mullins

I'm currently losing vacation time because I'm at my max amount of accrued (3 weeks) and I actually have been for a few months now. Taking just single days off won't count against my PTO because those would come out of comp time, so I'm looking to take more of an extended period (at least a week) sometime, maybe in August or September. If you have suggestions for what to do, leave a message on the board or shoot me an email.

Oh, some updates to this page... added links to a few more of my friends' webpages/blogs, as well as a link to a Yahoo! Photos page I just started (learning to use my new digital camera... thanks Dave!) and a link to a free message board/guestbook page. So if you have any comments about what I write or just want to say that you visited, click on the link to the board and leave a message!

4th of July weekend recap

- Thursday, went to Carmel with a group of folks from the young adult fellowship at Canaan. Line of the day... "This is such a chick town!" - Andrew Wu, after looking around at all the "quaint" stores and "cute" restaurants with nary an auto shop, electronics outlet, or sporting goods store in sight. Hilarious.

- in the afternoon we went to Monterey, 'bout 20 mins away from Carmel, to stake out a spot on the beach for that evening's fireworks show. By the time we got there (around 5 pm) the beach was already literally packed from one end to the other with beach umbrellas, beach towels, bbq grills, lawn chairs, and lots and lots of people. The only spot we were able to find to sit down was about 20 yards from the row of port-a-potties... but we got used to the smell pretty quickly. Or maybe the wind just changed.

- the fireworks display was very impressive... much better than I had anticipated. My faves tend to be the ones that explode outward slowly and then drift down before fizzing out, rather than the common ones that explode and disappear. However, the neatest one we saw were fireworks that exploded into happy faces... a circle with 2 eyes and a smiley mouth. Kinda like the AOL IM smiley. Afterwards, while we were waiting for the crush of cars in line to get onto the freeway to dissipate, we hung out at a bar/restaurant near the beach, where Mark got an impromptu lesson in darts throwing.

- Friday, after staying the night in Carmel, we hit the beach and played Revolution... 2 decks for 8 people... Walter somehow ended up with 2 revolutions in the same hand. I took the time to just lie on the fine white sand, and attempted to wax poetic about it by trying to come up with my own Proverb (or fortune cookie?) about sand... noticing that every other Proverb seems to be about a quarrelsome wife, tried to make some up like that... "A quarrelsome wife is like sand in the hand... you just can't get a grip on it." Anyway... after eating lunch, we headed back to the South Bay, where I dropped off my carload of people and headed straight to Pam and Andy's wedding rehearsal. I was an usher, so I was somewhat confused as to why they wanted me at the rehearsal... well, turned out that when I got there I found out I was one of the ushers who was supposed to escort the grandparents to their seats during the processional. Man, one more thing to concentrate on besides "bride's guests - left side" and "groom's guests - right side" - I had to worry about tripping and knocking over some nice Chinese grandmas and grandpas.

- Stayed overnight from Friday to Saturday at Danny/Cal/JLau's place in Richmond. After staying up late to watch "Rat Race", woke up late and spent the morning watching vintage Transformers episodes on DVD... wow, it brought back memories to see Optimus, Bumblebee, Megatron, Soundwave, Rumble, and the rest of them... that show used to be so much fun. Now every kid's show is just Japanese anime with real bad dubbing.

- The wedding was very cool. Felt much more confident ushering people in than when I was a "rookie" at Drew and Vicky's wedding... didn't seat anyone on the wrong side like I did at D&V's... plus I didn't trip while walking the grandma and grandpa down the aisle. Hm, I've walked down the center aisle at a wedding. Weird... anyway, Andy and Pam have basically been "married" for most of the years I've known them, but it was a beautiful wedding and there's already a pretty solid foundation for the marriage to start with.