The Loud Silence

I went to my twin brother's graduation on Saturday. Joe graduated with a degree in theology and will be ordained in July. I am very proud of him and he studied hard for five years to achieve it. What struck me though, was something one of his former lecturers said during the ceremony.

John Colwell was speaking and I have a lot of respect for him. I find his life story fascinating and he challenges very narrow minded opinions and conceptions that Christians may have. One thing stuck with me though and it was how he said God will do more than our wildest dreams. I frankly find this wishful thinking. I see nothing in the world we live in or from my own experiences as a Christian to see why Christians believe this. God is very much a god of disappointment with seemingly very little interaction with the children he supposedly created.

I don't have anything new to say in objection to faith in god, but things that make me unable to subscribe to a belief, is god's rather loud silence. If god is all powerful (omnipotent) then he chooses not to intervene in events which surely, surely he should have stepped in on and said, “Enough!”. The Bible accounts of him doing this: he showed miracles and powerful direct actions to free the Israelites from slavery and potential genocide. Jesus calmed storms and rose the dead. So why, why does god not stop the extermination of millions of Jews or intervene in the awful genocide in Rwanda when the international community chose to ignore it? If god exists then he either couldn't get involved, meaning he's not all powerful, or he chose not to get involved which makes me question the theology that he is all loving. It seems a strange way to show you are an all loving being.

I feel so much more comfortable with god not existing and understanding that he can't help because he's not there. It means we don't have to explain away why god seems rather absent in so many things. Complex theologies are not needed and false hope of Jesus returning to eradicate evil is dispensed with. Of course I have many questions and see things which cannot be explained, but I see more to make me feel god isn't there than to think that he is.

To sum, it takes more faith for me to believe in god than not.