"All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds"

If you've been following this blog for some time (thanks Mom!) you'll know that I grew up in Indonesia and had some shameful interactions with children who had Kwashiorkor, a disease of malnutrition where it is estimated that two thirds of its victims don't live to see adulthood.  That story is here feel free to read it, it doesn't make me look very good.  In it I admitted to feeling great shame and asking God for forgiveness for my callousness.  But while I wasn't too hard on myself, I think I let some other people off of the hook far to easily.

Like my Church. I went to a rock ribbed Southern Baptist missionary church:  Kebayoran Baptist, sang in the choir, did the youth group, you name it, I did it.  My best friends were M-Ks, missionary kids.  Yet I do not recall one sermon or statement talking about the KK kids that all of us saw outside our own gates.  Yes there were missionary appeals for the poor, yadda, yadda.  But no one dealt with the poor dying ones in front of our nose.  I've defended myself by reminding everyone that I was just a teen, but I know that's a crock.  And if it's a crock  for me, how much more for my Parents? and if for my Parents, how much more for the Pastors and Elders of the church?  And if for them, then how much more for a supposedly 'merciful' God?

The world we have is the world God made and allows to exist. He could change it at any time. God is not required to 'tolerate' anything. He doesn't need to 'take the good with the bad' or the 'roughs to get the smooths'. He can have any outcome he chooses and any outcome that happens he's seen in advance and therefore has willed. That's because the notion that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God can just 'let' something 'happen' is logical baloney (or perhaps even liverwurst than that). So the outcome that exists with starving street children and thuggish rich kids must be the one he likes most. As Voltaire's Pangloss would say of God's creation: "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds" God must really dig our pain.

So how 'bout it God?  I've apologized.  Don't you have something to say?  C'mon, at least be a man about it.


Horrified by all of my libertarian polemics?  Here's a compilation of my non political, non economic pieces for those nights when you have insomnia.