McChurch and the Problem With -Evil-_6366

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McChurch and the Problem With "Evil"
“…a tale told by an idiot”   
  Stan Moody  September 25, 2007   
  To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day  To the last syllable of recorded time,  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login!  Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage  And then is heard no more: it is a tale  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,  Signifying nothing.   Macbeth,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, 5. 5   
  MacBeth had it wrong.  It is not life that is “but a walking shadow.”  It is rather we players in the drama of life.  In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Life is real! Life is earnest!/ And the grave is not its goal;/  Dust thou art to dust returnest,/ Was not spoken of the soul.”  More profoundly, he adds, “Not enjoyment, and not sorrow/ Is our destined end or way;/ But to act that each tomorrow/ Find us farther than to-day.”   
  Logic, mathematics and, I suppose, sociology are sciences of the interaction between fixed and variable elements.  If we view ourselves as fixed elements in a variable world spinning out of control, we justify any action to restore order.  That is the stuff of which wars and lawsuits are made.     
  MacBeth desperately condemns life as the variable element in his contorted, murderous existence.  In fact, he himself has spun out of control in an objective, stable world that requires that the cumulative acts of the players be moving in a positive, contributing direction.  The variable element � the human spirit � becomes the fixed reference point for the self-absorbed.   
  The difference between MacBeth and Longfellow is that Longfellow sees life as the unfolding of objective truth, demanding that our acts be measured by their impact on that truth.  To “…act that each tomorrow find us farther than to-day” is to see ourselves, not as islands, but as bound together in a common mission � the pursuit of and defenders of life.   
  Lately, with the explosion of blogging on the Internet, my sense is that the Internet is fast becoming a forum for those who, like MacBeth, are standing on quicksand, lashing out at a world that fails to welcome their self-styled advances.  The blogs are replete with the simplistic rants of the unstable but strangely confident � truly a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, signifying nothing.”   
  C.S. Lewis, in his struggle over the compatibility of Hell with God’s justice and mercy (The Great Divorce), came to the conclusion that Hell, rather than being a punishment, is the act of a benevolent God who allows human beings to control their own destinies.  God, as the fixed,You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, objective element, says finally to those insisting on their own will, “Thy will be done.”
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