CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

It’s the stuff of cross-stitch samplers and sunny sermons: “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

It’s meant to console, to inspire confidence, to help us “claim victory” over illness or heartache or the wiles of the devil. For all the earnestness with which it is exhorted and embraced, it is also patently untrue.

Some people, lots of people, millions of people have more than they can handle.

They are overwhelmed, undone by sudden catastrophe; buried under crushing burdens related to debt, disease, death; drowning in a sea of unstoppable pain or white-hot grief. Some, miraculously, find a way out of the staggering misery (more on that in a minute). Others don’t.... READ MORE.

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

Today would have been my sister’s 46th birthday. She died in a car accident in 1987. She was 23 years old and a newly-minted 6th grade teacher. Her name was Kim.

In the fog of grief that November my parents and I listened to the well-meaning words of family, friends, and neighbors who tried to offer comfort, whose own heads were spinning with disbelief at the loss of this beautiful girl whom they too knew and loved. We were all groping, in vain, for meaning.

We rarely seem to ponder questions of theodicy (why a good God permits evil and suffering) when things are going well, when we have our wits about us and the issue is more theoretical than personal. Unfortunately, theodicy usually kicks us in the stomach through a tragedy or loss that leaves us stunned, emotionally spent, and choking with rage and grief.

What has struck me most about God-talk and the recent earthquake in Haiti is this: Whether God’s (inscrutable) ways are being defended or God’s very existence is being denied, the kind of God under consideration seems to be something on the order of a comic-book superhero.... READ MORE.

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

“The Christian religion is one of those subjects about which it is cool to be ignorant.”

Rowan Williams

It’s a kind of unspoken truism of the academic world: Religion departments are the only faculties in a college or university forbidden to be committed to their subject matter. Professors of religion should study religion, the reasoning goes, but not actually practice it. Religion scholars can admire particular traditions or doctrines but they can’t really take them seriously. (Not if they want to be taken seriously).

So it’s common to hear: “We don’t teach religion; we teach about religion.” But, as John Dixon has pointed out, “does anyone ever say, ‘We don’t teach chemistry. We teach about chemistry.’” .... READ MORE.