Big Questions: The Theodicy Odyssey, Part 2

It's been said that making sense of evil in the world while believing in the God of the Bible is like trying to hold three oranges in your hand at the same time.  Christians have classically tried to say three things about God and the nature of suffering at the same time, and sometimes it seems impossible to hold all three at any one time.  For one, Christians have classically said that God is all-powerful, and at the same time, they have said that God is all-good.  And at the very same time, we can't ignore or deny that suffering in the world is real, and not just an illusion or a figment of our imaginations, or just "good for us" like spinach for the soul.  In today's episode, pastoral colleagues Erica and Steve return to the can of worms they opened up last time by poking at the boundaries of these questions.  On the one hand, they look at what happens if all we say is that God "makes" everything happen in a direct sense, and on the other hand, they look at what happens to our faith if we say that God passes the buck when bad things happen and leaves us to fend for ourselves.  And along the way, they listen to the voices of perspectives from throughout the last two thousand years of Christian thinking.  Join in the conversation as we look deeper into the problem of theodicy--how Christians say God is good and just and almighty in a world that is so full of suffering.