This morning at the old ecclesiarium, the paid guy's talk was on Luke 13, among other things.
It was all OK as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough with a massive missed opportunity.
The passage that caught my thoughts was vss. 1-5, about the WHS disaster at Siloam where a tower collapsed killing 18 men.
The issue of the importance of repentance was picked up (oddly, as the congregation does have a Calvinistic tinge, alas) but the opportunity for a bit if apologetic training was missed. And every opportunity should be taken to at least give people the means of fruitful discussion with others.
One of the most difficult (for most) questions non-believers put to Christians is the 'problem' of suffering in a world with a loving God. Of course most people here conceive god as a sort of fairy-godfather who should be nice to us then just get out of the way.
Yeshua puts his finger on the point: repent.
Our experience of a world where we have betrayed our imageness and turned our backs to God is a world in a spiral of death makes a point. It is not 'natural'. It is discordant with what we hope and how it should be. So 'evil' (or for the godless 'inconvenience') is the great alarm bell that there is a cosmic fire in our world and we'd better act fast.
This is not 'condition normal' it is 'condition red -- emergency' and the only way out is to re-engage with the Creator by repentance to him (and for we post resurrection folks) belief in Christ.
Belief here means entire commitment!
God has acted and offered us the way out of this mess in the world he made for us to reflect his love in, but don't. Yet it remains our world which will be replaced by the New Creation populated by those who want out (or 'in') and are 'in Christ'.
Nothing else matters (apart from caring for the sick, the poor and the damaged, being kind and humble).
So, Yeshua is the solution of the massive and terminal 'problem' we experience. If we didn't experience it, how would we know there was a problem?
After explaining this in a kind discussion, with lots of questions. it might be apposite to ask the nonbeliever if their non-belief offers a better solution. Probably not.
