I just got back to Nashville after a week of travel. My wife and I celebrated my homecoming on Friday night by going out to eat for dinner with another couple. We checked out a new restaurant, played cards, and finished the evening with some fresh Krispy Kreme donuts and theological conversation over coffee.

One friend brought up the recent Larry King interview with Stephen Curtis Chapman and his family, regarding the death of their daughter Maria. King asked about their faith in God and why they think that he allowed such a tragedy to occur. According to my friend, they answered honestly, sharing both their human struggles and hope in the Lord's redemptive work.

While they are trusting in the goodness of God, they admitted that explanations from others about why God allowed such a tragedy have seemed trivial under the weight of the circumstances and have brought little comfort. "I just want her back," Mrs. Chapman said, still ovewhelmed with despair. Right now, it doesn't matter how many people are touched by this story; all that matters to her is that little Maria is gone.

It has always been a debate of philosophers and a struggle of the faithful as to why a loving God would permit evil. It seems that you either sit on the side that says there is no God, or you try to put him and the problem of suffering in a box, somehow.

I took a course in college called "God, Suffering, and Evil," and in it we examined all the different solutions to the problem of evil: the free-will defense (meaning that God doesn't create evil, but has given humans free-will, which they abuse), the greater good argument (meaning that God allows little evils to take place so that greater good may result), the argument that evil doesn't really exist (apparently for contenders of this argument, the Holocaust was just a subjective "illusion"), and many more. To be honest, none of them really convinced me.

Recently, I posted a blog about William Young's The Shack, telling Christians that it's a good book for them to read, because of the book's treatment of the problem of evil. Apparently, not everyone liked that idea. The book calls the reader to re-approach what many would consider time-honored, Christian orthodox views. For instance, it breaks down the Trinity into two females and an ugly Jew; together, they give some unconventional answers for theological stumbling blocks in the 21st Century, including why God allows sick and twisted perverts to rape and kill little girls.

While some people are raving about The Shack and others are ranting about it (calling it heretical), I'm wondering if there is any middle ground we can come to, without throwing stones  at or shaming people. It seems that at its core, The Shack is a book about God and humanity's struggle with the problem of evil. Whether or not you believe everything Young wrote, I think it's fair to say that these are issues that we as the Church should be discussing more. However, on the other hand, we may need to embrace a deeper faith and trust in God and not feel entitled to question the Creator so liberally.

In the next blog in this series, I'll talk about the other side of the issue of evil - that is, while it's good to feel free to express questions, it's not entirely up to us to question God (see: Christian Cliches and the Problem of Evil, Pt. 2).