What Is Good Is Difficult, And What

If God Seems To Be In No Hurry To Make The Problem Of Evil Go Away, Maybe We Shouldn't Be, Either. Maybe Our Compulsion To Wash God's Hands For Him Is A Service He Doesn't Appreciate. Maybe - All Theodicies And Nearly All Theologians To The Contrary - Evil Is Where We Meet God. Maybe He Isn't Bothered By Showing Up Dirty For His Dates With Creation. Maybe - Just Maybe - If We Ever Solved The Problem, We'd Have Talked Ourselves Out Of A Lover.

The Reason For Not Going Out And Sinning All You Like Is The Same As The Reason For Not Going Out And Putting Your Nose In A Slicing Machine: Its Dumb, Stupid, And No Fun. Some Individual Sins May Have Pleasure Still Attached To Them Because Of The Residual Goodness Of The Realities They Are Abusing: Adultery Can Indeed Be Pleasant And Tying One On Can Amuse. But Betrayal, Jealousy, Love Grown Cold, And The Gray Dawn Of The Morning After Are Nobody's Idea Of A Good Time.

Christianity Is Not A Religion; It Is The Announcement Of The End Of Religion.

Preachers Are Stewards Whom The Lord Has ‘set Over His Household Servants To Provide Them With Food At The Proper Time.’ After All The Years The Church Has Suffered Under Forceful Preachers And Winning Orators, Under Compelling Pulpiteers And Clerical Bigmouths With Egos To Match, How Nice To Hear That Jesus Expects Preachers In Their Congregations To Be Nothing More Than Faithful Household Cooks.

The Church, By And Large, Has Had A Poor Record Of Encouraging Freedom. She Has Spent So Much Time Inculcating In Us The Fear Of Making Mistakes, That She Has Made Us Like Ill-taught Piano Students: We Play Our Songs, But We Never Really Hear Them Because Our Main Concern Is Not To Make Music To Avoid Some Flub That Will Get Us In Dutch.