If God knows all, and can do anything, then can God learn? If God can learn, that means that God didn’t know something. So then, do we have to give up on one or the other of these descriptions of God? It would seem that we can’t have it both ways. (We can go further into this but I’m going to stop here before it gets out of hand.)I subscribe to the notion that language is inadequate to describe absolutes, and that the human mind has severe limitations in grasping the whole of a picture. Then, when we ask the question, “How can a loving God allow (here fill in the blank) to happen to good people?” we are asking a question that has some baggage behind it. Is a loving God a God who only gives me security, pleasure, satisfaction, stability in my life? Does a loving God always let me have my way? Upon what part of a tragedy do I focus, the pain or loss of it over and over again, or the ultimate outcome? In my case, the answer to this last question will be different as time passes. I will experience shock, disbelief, denial, anger, resolution, or perhaps some other kind of closure and perhaps not. I will blame God, question God, vent on God, and perhaps finally trust God and hope for myself and the world. Or I may get stuck somewhere in all that. I may walk into a spiritual dead-end, unable to move. Whatever happens, there is an element of the Gospel that says God is present in all this. If something has to be infallible, this is it, whether in my pain or despair I believe it or not. God walks with me, whether I see it or not, and God walks with those who I love.
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