The community found in the local church is foundational to Christianity. If you follow Christ, you will love His church – both universal and local. Within the local branch of Christ’s church, there is a community that you will eventually discover, totally unique from anything else in the world.

My local church utilizes small group ministry in order to foster community within a large group of disciples of Christ. Last semester I began to work with co-leader Drew Whipple (an Admissions Counselor for BBC) to launch a small group for 18-25 year olds. We started out by studying different portions of the Bible, but eventually our small group discussion led into philosophy. College students can tend to lean in that direction, after all. Here are some of the questions we worked through one night – see how you would respond to these questions. My argument would be that the community found in the local church is an awesome way to wrestle through tough philosophical questions that relate to God – questions like…

“If there is a loving God in control of the world, how do you make sense out of the kind of evil and suffering that the world saw on September 11, 2001?”

“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to; or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, and does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come there is evil in the world?” – Epicurus

“Did God create evil? Did God create sin?”

Wrestling through philosophical questions about God becomes an extremely positive spiritual experience within the realm of local church community. This is not the only way to have a positive spiritual experience when dealing with philosophy, but it is definitely one of the best. You should try it.