Title: God's Insistent Love
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Blog Entry: Today's Gospel, the healing of the entire man - body, heart and soul - connects the Jesus who is preaching and the Jesus who is concerned with the sufferings and distress of people. For many, it is the appalling depth and extent of human suffering that makes the idea of a loving Creator seem implausible. There have been many traditional Christian responses to the problem of evil and suffering but we continue to search restlessly for explanations and answers. The whole point of the book of Job is precisely that there are no satisfactory arguments as to why people suffer. Job's friends seek to argue but are rebuked in the end. Job only seeks to speak to God. "Restlessly I fret till twilight falls", explains Job in one of his frequent gasps as a man in search of meaning and understanding. Job poignantly addresses the nagging question of God's apparent indifference. When God finally speaks, the answer is that the rich mystery of life continues, stubbornly separate from all Job's anxious longings. Besides, the Christian understanding of human nature is that we are damaged by sin and that ultimately we've been redeemed by Christ not to succomb definitively to evil or to suffering. In our distress, we may very often lose our focus on God. But the liberation of the true self comes only by ignoring the false self constantly concerned with personal moods and feelings. God's indifference at times reveals itself to be another form of His insistent love.
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