Dealing with Death

April 12th, 2010 by Karissa Craft

I would say death is one of the hardest things anyone will have to go through.

“Why does God let bad things happen in the world?” This is one of the most frequently asked questions when death is involved. According to explorefaith.com, one of the most important things we need to remember is “God allows ‘bad’ things to happen; God does not cause them to happen.” 

When I think of “bad things,” I think death. When death occurs I start questioning, as most of us do. We do not trust God or believe that He is the one who gave us life and allowed someone we love to die. So we start believing what Satan tells us; we start believing the lies.

How do we correct this problem? One thing I realized is the problem will not go away unless you want it to go away. This is hard for most of us to do after losing a loved one. Its hard for us to remember that God’s timing is always right, and we need to accept that.

When we have accepted the fact that we have a problem, then we need to seek God, seek His comfort. We may find His comfort in other people, or we may find it sitting alone in a room. I know I’ve found it both ways.

When we have found God’s comfort, we need to start learning to move on in God’s direction. I believe guidance is harder to find. We need to read the Bible and seek God’s will in our prayers and daily lives.

After we have accomplished these three things, we should be on our way to serving Christ with the memory of those we love.

 

Community, Church and Philosophy

February 2nd, 2010 by Dan Nichols

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.