Kings, Lords and the Unrevealed

There is a trailer is located in an used industrial equipment sales yard on the way to my girlfriend’s house. A vinyl sign on the trailer says "Jesus Christ is Lord". I guess I was being reflective at the moment and I had a "ah-ha" moment. I started thinking why we, as a people who are governed by a democracy, desire to have a Lord (aka King) over us. A friend of mine had told me, " Western thought is based on the idea that people need to become something greater than what they are." The thought I had was that people instinctively know that something is "wrong" in the world. The Christian world calls it original sin. The outcome of sin is people being mean to each other. We can’t have an ultimate human leader to lead us, because all human leaders have feet of clay. So, a perfect being is the answer, and only a perfect being has the right to rule over us.

I told this to my girlfriend, and she asked why a perfect being who was our Lord (ruler) allowed such pain and suffering amongst his charges. Though this question can lead into a dozen-dozen discussions, one new one came to my mind. I recently heard on the radio somebody ask, “why does God ask for X if it leads to sufferings Y and Z?” The answer was "X is part of God’s revealed word". The idea seems to be that the God is only showing some of his cards. This would be the X part of the equation. The rest of the explanation is hidden from us, and hence we have the mysteries of why is there pain and suffering. Why does the Christian God, or any God/Goddess of organized religions, keep secrets from their followers?

For more on the nebulous nature of God, check out this blog entry of my very insightful friend Ocean.