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Monday, September 19, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Balance Returns from Hiatus
Sunday, September 18, 2011 5pm
Young couples, families, students, and professionals will gather for a potluck meal and fellowship this Sunday at 5pm. Discussion following the meal will revolve around what the group will study this semester.
Service Project: Preparation for Wesley Evening Food Pantry
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 (Gathering at 8:15pm)
Tuesday we will be creating number cards in preparation for Wesley Evening Food Pantry's food distribution on Thursday.
A proposal for an upcoming service project will also be presented.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
A Suffering Cosmos, A Suffering God
The Observation
Real suffering exists in the world. Professor Bob Mesle often asks his students, "is there an act, event or reality that you would prevent from existing if you could?" The answer to that question is can be named as a source of suffering.
The Question and Presuppositions
How can a person of faith reconcile the following two statements?
- Real suffering exists in the cosmos;
- God is (1) omnibenevolent, (2) omnipotent, (3) omniscient (of past and future events), and (4) omnipresent.
To solve this question, many will give more emphasis to a quality of the divine. Typically this is born out of one's experience of God or tradition.
Causes of Suffering
- Suffering caused by natural events
- Suffering caused by moral evil
Terence Fretheim's 10 Theological Claims (based on the flood story in The Book of Genesis)
- Creation is interrelated and God has chosen to be caught up in this web of relationships.
- God chooses to use agents capable of violence. God does not perfect agents before working in and through them. a) God works through agents of storm and flood; b) creaturely violence has disastrous natural consequences; c) a fundamental goodness continues in a post-sin creation.
- Affectability of God: God is deeply and personally moved by what happens in the flood story.
- God regrets that God created humankind in the first place. (Also, God has temporality--a past, present, future.)
- God did not know that humans would take this turn. There is a future that cannot be known, because it does not yet exist.
- The post-flood regretful response by God witnesses to divine vulnerability and human resistance.
- Judgmental direction changes. God changes God's mind. It does not change the character, being, or purposes of God.
- God grieves over what happens in the world. God's heart is filled with pain. Grief is the God-ward side of judgment and wrath looks like. Judgment accompanied by weeping is not the same as judgment without tears.
- Pain will be an ongoing reality for God. God decides to continue to live with resisting creatures. Suffering is God's chief way of being powerful in the world.
- Divine self-limitation. God limits the divine options for dealing with morally and naturally caused suffering in the world. Self-limitation is guaranteed because God's faithfulness is a certainty. God gives up control, opening the world to all sorts of violence? How might we articulate God's association with painful natural events in a post-flood world?
Terence Fretheim on Natural Sources of Suffering
Luther Seminary 2009 Convocation: Part 1 (flv format) and Part 2 (flv format).
Questions
- Professor Bob Mesle states that suffering exists with or outside of love, but one is not the same as the other. How can you reach out to love others?
- Some suffering is preventable. How can you work to prevent suffering?
- Suffering can be met with a threefold process of identification, being in community with victims (partly by listening to their stories), and loving people through the suffering. How might do this for the people in your community?
- What is missing from this hurried initial consideration of theodicy?
An Introductory Bibliography
- Cobb, John, Jr. "Theodicy"
- Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy. Stephen T. Davis, editor. Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
- Fretheim, Terence E. God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation. Abingdon Press, 2005.
- Griffin, David Ray. God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy. NY: UP of America, 1991.
- Hall, Douglas John. God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986.
- Hartshorne, Charles. Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. State University of New York Press, 1984.
- “Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes”. Living the Questions.
- Kushner, Rabbi Harold. Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. Anchor, 2004.
- Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. God, Christ, Church. The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992.
- Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhVXFiHe4LQ
- Williams, Daniel Day. "Suffering and Being in Empirical Theology," The Future of Empirical Theology. ed. Bernard Meland. University of Chicago Press, 1969.
- ”Quarks and Creation”. Being.
- “Out of Tragedy, Questions about God”, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.
- “Suffering and Meaning with Professor Bob Mesle (Part I and Part II)”. Homebrewed Christianity.
- “Theodicy”. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (Comic).
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Funds Needed to Help Rebuild Joplin Schools
Heather Gills, former Wesley member who now lives in Joplin, MO, is requesting gifts to rebuild schools in the aftermath of the tornado earlier this year. Checks may be made out to "Joplin Schools Tornado Fund". Wesley will pass along your gifts marked for the Joplin schools fund or you may pick up a pre-paid envelope in Wesley's Center Office.
Conversation on Faith and Suffering
Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 8:30 (begin gathering at 8:15pm)
Wesley Movie Theater (2nd Floor above Etc Coffeehouse)
Theodicy is a compelling question for philosophers, pastors, and laypeople alike. Any person of faith who has experienced suffering in her or his life qualifies as a participant in the conversation. And so, let us ask, "What is the nature of God's existence and presence in a cosmos rife with real evil and real suffering?"
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Film Screening: Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Illinois Public Media kicks off the 2011-2012 season of its monthly Community Cinema series this month with Pray the Devil Back to Hell, chronicling the remarkable story of the courageous Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country.
Thousands of women--both Christian and Muslim--came together to pray for peace and then staged a silent protest outside of the Presidential Palace. Their actions were a critical element in bringing about an agreement during the stalled peace talks. Inspiring, uplifting and motivating, it is a compelling testimony of how grassroots activism can alter the history of nations.
A free screening of the film and discussion of the issues it raises will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday, September 6th, in Robeson Rooms A & B of the Champaign Public Library, which is partnering with Illinois Public Media to present the 10-film Community Cinema Series. WILL-TV will also air the film in October.
Did you know... The Illinois Great Rivers Conference, of which Wesley is a part, has a continuing relationship and commitment to the country of Liberia? Wesley’s District, the Iroquois River District, partners with the Kakata/Farmington and Kokoya districts. There are four major initiatives: scholarships, pastor’s salaries, church reconstruction and bed nets to combat malaria.
You may donate directly to support our sister districts through the United Methodist Advance:
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