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I just read the new Internet Monk’s (Chaplain Mike’s) review of Rachel Held Evans’ Evolving in Monkey Town: see IM Book Review: Evolving in Monkey Town. The following stood out to me:
The second part of the book describes the cracks and fissures that developed in Rachel Evans’ [conservative Christian] worldview. An experience of watching the execution of an Afghan woman began a prolonged process of deep questioning and reexamination of the foundations of her faith. In a key conversation with her father, she expressed the exasperation that was growing within her:
["]It’s like God runs some kind of universal sweepstakes with humanity in which all of our names get thrown into a big hat at the beginning of time….Some of us are randomly selected for famine, war, disease, and paganism, while others end up with fifteen-thousand-square-foot houses, expensive Christian educations, and Double Stuf Oreos. It’s a cosmic lottery, luck of the draw” (p. 99).
The rest of the review gives a rough outline of how Rachel’s faith developed in response to this question.
The reason that this stood out to me was that, a few weeks ago at church, the priest giving the homily made a similar statement. His point was that we Americans have been fortunate in the lottery of life, and so we should give to those in the world who are less fortunate. Fine. I agree with that. But why is there a lottery of life in the first place, if God is in control?
BTW, I’ll be blogging through Rachel’s book at some point. I’m waiting on two things: (1.) To finish Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True, which I’m currently blogging through, and which may take a while, since I only read it on Saturdays, and (2.) for the price of Rachel’s book to fall on Amazon. I’m all for Rachel making lots of money off of her book, and I’m sure it will be successful. But I’m on a budget!
