I was very heartened to read Paul's last post, as I have had so many of the same thoughts. Similar to the example of the woman in the interview Paul mentioned, we've all seen a nightly news clip, say, with an image of a burning train wreck in the background juxtaposed with the one surviving passenger being interviewed and thanking God for saving her while the fire directly behind her continues to burn. Maddening, as you want to yell, "TURN AROUND, there are other people who apparently God didn't save." Of course, this is a very understandable reaction on the part of a survivor but, nonetheless, it's still piss poor theology, as Paul highlighted in his post.

My particularly pet peeve is the expression, "Everything happens for a reason," which seems to apply a level of omniscience on the part of the speaker that I am only comfortable applying to God. But, then again, I don't think the future is completely knowable, even to God. I think God values freedom that much to let the future be that open.

Don't get me wrong. I do think some things happen for a reason. I think Jesus came into the world for a reason. But saying everything happens for a reason is about as meaningful and useful as saying, "nothing happens for a reason."

And the reason why I get so heated about this is because I think there are actually meaningless events, which are no-thing, literally. Evil for me has that parasitic quality of feeding off the good. And I think Christians should be in a position to see and witness to this. We should be able to say, "I don't know why this or that happened, but it does not have the last word." Why? Because the last word is also the first word, which is also the same Word that dwelt among us.