Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina--Boneheads

When I got up this morning, I had a text message from a friend who had seen yesterday's blog post about the scumsucking Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina. She wrote:

Read bcbsnc article front pg n&o 2day. U r not the only 1 pissed!

So off I went to the website of the News and Observer:

BCBS plea to customers on reform hits a nerve - Local/State - News & Observer

I loved that one wag taped the postcard to Senator Kay Hagan to a brick! Since my mail from yesterday hadn't gone out yet, I went in search of something similar.

I couldn't find a brick---but I DID find a large and very heavy dog bone...which I thought was perfectly appropriate under the circumstances.

Jasper is not too thrilled with this, as you can see in the photo below. He thinks it's a waste of a perfectly good bone.



But I'll buy him another one, I promise.

(In case you can't read the "Writing on the Bone," it says "BCBSNC--A Boneheaded Company")

Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina--My Open Letter to My Scumsucking Insurance Company

When I collected my mail today, I had this piece from my friendly health insurance company, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina:





Here is my response:

Dear Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina:

Who wants Federal government intervention in the private health insurance market? I do!

I want a public option. In fact, I want more than a public option--I want single-payer healthcare. Want it more than a kid wants candy at Halloween and presents at Christmas. Want it even more than I wanted a pony when I was 8.

Why? Because I think healthcare is a human right, and I don't think it should be a profit-making venture. Because I think insurance is nothing more than legalized extortion-and I'm tired of having my pockets picked, only to be told that you won't cover X,Y, or Z. Oh, and by the way...you're raising my premiums by nearly 30%.

You bill yourself as "nonprofit," which may make some gullible people think you are looking out for their best interests. But I know better. I've done my homework, and I've found the numbers:

• In 2008, you paid your top 9 executives a total of $13, 369,133 in salaries, bonuses, and other compensation. That averages to $1,485,459 per person. You gave your top execs raises that ranged from 20%-32% that year.
• According to the same regulatory filing, in 2008, you paid the 13 members of your Board of Directors a total of $494,459--an average of $38,035. Just for comparison, according to the U.S. Census bureau's most recent data (2005), the average salary for a family of 4 in North Carolina was $59,481. That means that a BCBSNC director made 64% of a NC family's YEARLY income for attending 5 meetings a year.
• You reported profits of $186 million in 2008---and raised our premiums in the worst economy in living memory. (I'm still trying to figure out how a "nonprofit" has profits....)
• You have a 72.5% market share of individual and employer-provided health insurance in North Carolina. That means, for many North Carolinians, you are the only game in town---the 800 lb. gorilla no one can ignore.
  

I've got to hand it to you, BCBSNC. You've got chutzpah. You can corner the state health insurance market, make millions in "nonprofits," pay your executives whopping salaries, raise my premiums while cutting my benefits--and still find a way to spend my hard-earned money trying to get me to lobby against my own best interests!

But you forgot one thing...I'm not a mindless FOX News drone and I'm not easily manipulated. I had been feeling tired and worn out with the whole healthcare debate--but your little mailing gave me an energy boost!

You see, I have my Senator's and Representative's phone numbers programmed into my phone. They both got calls today about the mailing you sent me. I doubt you'll be happy about what I said.

And that postage-paid postcard you wanted me to send to Senator Kay Hagan? The one that asked her to "please oppose government-run health insurance" because it would allow the government to compete "unfairly" with the private sector? I crossed out your message and wrote her asking her to support a true public option.

It gave me great satisfaction to know that you'll be paying a few cents of the money you have extorted from me over the years to lobby against YOUR best interests. It also gave me great pleasure to discover that I'm not alone, and that others are taking action too.

We take our victories where we find them.

Sincerely,
Doxy

UPDATE: The story made the front page of our local newspaper today (October 28), and I"m not the only one who's pissed! You can read about it here. One wag taped the card to a brick! Since the mail hasn't gone out yet, I'm going to see if I can do something similar. ;-)

UPDATE #2: Check out my follow-up post.

O Magnum Mysterium

Much time has passed since I started this discussion, but the subject never leaves my mind for long. I suppose that’s because the subject of “mystery” keeps flowing in and out of my life and my conversations. Coincidence? Or just chaos theory in action?

And today is the fifth anniversary of my blog--I guess that deserves some sort of effort on my part.

*************************************

Mystical Seeker (MS) asked some wonderful questions in the comments to my previous post on this topic, and I have spent a lot of time pondering them.

I’ve questioned the best way to engage in dialogue here. To do point/counter-point has the advantage of forcing me to confront the questions MS and others raised, and I think it’s important to do that. I don’t want to look as if I’m ducking the hard issues.

The downside to my responding in that way, however, is that it can look as if I am trying to argue people into agreeing with me (or at least to “prove” that I am somehow correct in my approach or interpretations). I assure you that is not my project. Like anyone else, I prefer to be “right,” but I long ago accepted that—if we are honest—in matters of faith, there ARE no right answers.

For me, the whole point of this exercise is that I am still trying to figure out for myself what *I* believe---why I feel this need to hold “truth” and “mystery” in tension with one another and let the baby splash in the bathwater without throwing either of them out.

As I have noted, in some parts of my life, being a confessing Christian seems very...exotic. It’s like saying you believe in fairies or the boogeyman. In those parts of my life, people cut me some slack because they know I’m not one of “those” Christians. I don’t proselytize and I don’t speak about my faith unless invited to do so.

But the question is always there, though usually unspoken: How can you believe “that stuff?!”

Even in church, I get that feeling sometimes. Last Sunday morning I attended a discussion on Jesus for the Nonreligious in my home parish. The class was well-attended and quite lively and interesting. Several people made comments about how they had reached a point in their journeys of faith where they could no longer have remained in the Christian fold if they had to believe that “nonsense” about virgin births and miracles.

And I thought to myself, “Am I the ONLY one who thinks I can believe in quantum physics and miracles at the same time?”

And so, I type to MS and the others who commented—but I am really talking to myself...

**********************************

The fact that we exist at all--that's a mystery. The fact that there is love--that's a mystery. I don't have to believe in the literal truth of fantastical tales in order to believe in a mystery.

But what IS “mystery?” Is it simply a word that means “what I/we cannot (yet) know or understand?” Or is it more than that?

And, in the immortal words of Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?” It seems to me that this is the unasked question in +Spong’s work—he assumes he knows exactly what “truth” is, and that you will agree with him about the definition.

I suppose I am too postmodern in my approach to truth. While I believe that there *is* Absolute Truth, I’m also pretty sure we can’t know it in this life. So, in that sense, all truth is relative. “Truth” changes because our understanding about the world expands and changes over time.

Having said that, I wonder sometimes if that is why we have lost the capacity to appreciate miracles—and why so many people no longer believe in them. We put our faith in science, as our modern version of “truth,” and think that we are so much more advanced than our first-century cousins in Palestine.

But are we really so different than they were? Many people--me, among them—accept the “truth” of the Big Bang theory. (Please note the quotation marks—I am well aware that scientists do not use the word “truth” about theories, but, in practice, we all do it.) But it seems to me that the notion of a singularity that is infinitely dense and hot and then—BAM!—expands to create the universe in less than a picosecond is at least as fantastical as the stories of miracles in the Bible!

What constitutes a mystery in your world? Tell me that and I will know something about your version of the truth.

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The universe is for me such an amazing source of awe, I don't have to revert to a five-year-old mentality and believe in Santa Clause in order to feel this awe.

I, too, am awed by the universe. But I guess I’m with Mary Sue on this. What’s wrong with being a 5-year-old when it comes to stories? Who enjoys Christmas more? The grown-ups who “know” there is no Santa Claus, or the little kids who can hardly sleep for quivering with excitement?

I know the objection to this, of course--Santa Claus isn’t “real.” But, for me, that’s where the mystery comes in. As crazy as it sounds, I DO believe in Santa Claus. Because the “reality” of Santa Claus is that there is love and generosity in the universe, and, when I “play” Santa Claus for my children, I am acting on behalf of that for them. From my perspective, I am merely channeling what already exists--and giving them some fun and lovely memories while I’m doing it.

This is why I think Jesus made such a point of talking about having faith like a child. They haven’t lost their capacity for wonder. They aren’t bound by “rationality” and science. They still know how to thrill to something. They aren’t cynical and jaded like the adults in their lives.

I really do aspire to be more child-like in that sense. It’s not about accepting falsehoods. It’s about being open to things that are not always rational. And if that doesn’t define God and faith, I don’t know what does...

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One of the problems that I see in religious credulity is that it often boils down to "my fairy tale is true; your fairy tale is false." So Christians can believe that Jesus literally walked around after being resuscitated, but they will refuse to believe the fantastical claims of Muhammad or Joseph Smith. Incredulity with other religions, credulity with my own.

Fair point. But I don’t believe that. I’m fully aware of just how crazy the Christian story is, and willing to grant that Muslims or Mormons ALSO have the “right” story—or at least another facet of it.

My “problem” is that I’m a Christian who doesn’t believe that Christianity is the only way to God--but I’m lumped in with all the fundagelicals.

I started this conversation by asking why people who can’t accept the idea that Jesus was anything other than a good teacher would want to hold on to him--but I guess I should ask myself why I want to hold on to him when I don’t think I “have to” in order to be saved (whatever that means) and it puts me in the same group with people whose theology and worldview I find repugnant?

That conversation, I suspect, will be a lifelong one...

*****************************************************

The difference between Cinderella and Jesus' resurrection is that adults don't take Cinderella literally, but lots of adults do take the fanciful tales in Matthew, Luke and John about his resurrection literally.

I will beg to differ with you on this. They may not take it “literally” in the way that you mean it, but women in our culture have internalized the story of Cinderella and I think the damage is incalculable. From the time they are infants, girls hear almost nothing but stories about beautiful princesses who are rescued by handsome princes—and then go on to live “happily ever after.” Those stories shape the way girls feel about themselves and the way they look at their relationships with men. I’m trying hard to figure out how believing that Jesus turned water into wine can have that same type of negative cultural impact...

***************************************************

I discovered a lot of churches where people read Borg or Spong in reading groups, but when push comes to shove, as this discussion bears out, most Christians, even progressive or non-fundamentalist ones, seem to prefer to treat these stories as if they are true.

That’s because they MEAN something to us.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it difficult to live in a completely “rational” world all the time. That’s where poetry and music and stories come in for me. If you read those biblical stories as “poems,” what’s wrong with accepting that miraculous things happen? You can’t “prove” that they didn’t, anymore than I can prove that they did--but my life would be much poorer without those stories.

For instance, I think many people fail to see the beauty and power of the story of the virgin birth. Think about it for a moment--God comes to earth in human form, and there is no man involved! Do you grasp how radical and life-affirming that could be from a feminist standpoint?

I’m not willing to stake my faith on that story being “true” in a literal sense, because I know all about the history of virgin birth stories--and I don’t demand that anyone else believe it. But I love it, and I’m not willing to give it up because some people declare it to be impossible. If I can believe in a God that created the universe (and I do, however that has worked itself out over the last 14 billion years), believing in the virgin birth is really not much of a stretch. For the God who could create this:


a virgin birth—or turning water into wine—would be little more than a parlor trick.

********************************************************

There is more--much more--but this is already too long and I want to post something tonight. So I will close with this...

When I was in high school, I sang in the school choir (known as the A Cappella). Our choir director was a man of great talent who held high expectations of us, and, one year, he entered us in a regional choral contest. Here is what we performed:




It was ambitious for a bunch of fundamentalist kids who had never seen Latin before the day he handed us the music. I don’t remember that we did particularly well at the contest, but I have never forgotten the beauty of that piece. In some sense, it is the story of my faith:

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum.
Alleluia.

Grief, Pragmatism, and Warnings: My letter to the President

Although I've been promising to do a follow-up post to my post on Spong (and I will!), my dear friend Jane at Acts of Hope has challenged us all to DO SOMETHING about healthcare reform. Today she challenged us to write to President Obama.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am still grieving the death of my friend, Terri-Lynn. Her death has turned me into a stark, raving maniac on the subject of healthcare reform. I always supported a single-payer system, as far back as President Clinton's push for healthcare reform. I have said many times that I thought Clinton made a major mistake by not starting out demanding a single-payer plan---by starting in the mushy middle, he gave away the store before the debate even got started. And that meant he--and more important, WE--got nothing.

President Obama, it seems, did not learn from that debacle. He keeps telling everyone he is a pragmatist---and I believe he thinks he is. But a REAL pragmatist would know that you start out asking for pie-in-the-sky, with the hope of getting something in the middle. A REAL pragmatist would have figured out by now that Republicans are not interested in creating a bigger safety net---and that the raving lunatics at these "town-hall meetings" will never be won over by a centrist Black man who they believe is not even an American.

It is not pragmatic to argue with crazy people. It is not pragmatic to give those who are deeply in the pockets of the insurance companies and Big Pharma the ability to control the debate or veto your proposals.

It is not pragmatic to abandon your base.

So I used this link to write to the President, and here is what I said:

Dear Mr. President:

On May 25, 2009, my friend, Terri-Lynn, died of cancer. TL was 50--a self-employed, single mother of a 10-year-old son with a chronic health condition. When TL started having symptoms 5 years ago, she didn't go to the doctor because she didn't have health insurance and didn't think she could afford to see a physician. By the time they found her colon cancer, it was too far gone. She spent the last couple of years of her life not only dealing with cancer but worried about how to pay the rent and feed her son. It was sickening, and totally unacceptable in a country that bills itself as the "leader of the free world."

TL died because we privilege profits over people's lives. If we had had a REAL public option for healthcare 5 years ago, I have no doubt she would still be alive. Her son would not be motherless and those of us who loved her would not be grieving.

But we are grieving not only her death---but your failure to lead on this issue. I knocked on doors for your campaign--as did my 12-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. We believed you when you said you would support a single-payer healthcare system. We believed you when you said you would be a leader for change.

But now every time I read the news, I hear that you have dropped even a public option---never mind a single-payer plan. Every time I read that, it's like hearing the news that TL died all over again.

Your desire for bipartisanship is admirable--but it should be clear to you by now that it will never happen. It is time you listened to those of us who are begging you for help and LEAD. How many more Terri-Lynns have to die before you find the courage to do what you promised us you would do when we worked to get you elected?

I want a single-payer system like the one my mother, who married a British citizen 6 years ago, has under the National Health Service in the UK. But barring that, I want a REAL public option for healthcare in this country. Anything less will be no reform at all. Anything less will continue to leave the power in the hands of insurance companies and Big Pharma---and that will mean more Terri-Lynns. That is not acceptable, Mr. President. We believed you. Please don't let us down.

******************************************************

Maybe you don't support a single-payer plan, or even a public option. You think the government can't do anything right, and--anyway--you don't want your "hard-earned dollars" going to pay for healthcare for "deadbeats" who can't afford health insurance.

You go right ahead believing that you are somehow different from the Terri-Lynns of the world. You go right on believing that your hard work and your job-related insurance will protect you from what happened to her. You go right on believing that she just didn't work as hard as you, or "live right" the way you have. You go right on believing that your insurance company will take better care of you than "government bureaucrats," even though the former has a financial incentive to deny you coverage while the latter doesn't.

But please, when it all comes crashing down---when your little girl gets a brain tumor or your spouse has kidney failure or you develop a life-threatening illness and your insurance company refuses to pay for the treatment you or your loved one needs--please don't tell me "But I didn't KNOW!!!!!"

When your health insurance premiums rise 50% next year after the defeat of healthcare reform, because the health insurance companies know they own Congress--or all of a sudden you lose your job because your spouse has cancer and your company can't afford to carry you anymore because the insurance company has slapped a $1M premium on them because of that---please don't tell me "But I didn't know they could do that!!!"

Because you have been told. You have been warned. Terri-Lynn, and those like her, are simply the canaries in the coal mine. If you can't be moved to support healthcare reform from simple human decency, you should be moved to support it from pragmatism.

Because you're next--and the President, "pragmatist" that he is, needs to know it and be a leader.

Murder(ing) Mystery

Last night, Dear Friend and I attended a discussion of John Shelby Spong's book, Jesus for the Nonreligious. The discussion was sponsored by a group which bills itself as a cross-denominational, ecumenical gathering of "progressive Christians." There were about 25 people there, and the discussion was lively and interesting.

It was also something of a watershed moment for me. I can't even tell you the last time I was the most theologically conservative person in a room--but I'm pretty sure I was last night!

(I know, I know--you can pick your jaw up off the floor now... ;-)

Before I go on, I need to say a word about +Spong. As some of you know, it was +Spong's books Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and Living in Sin? that brought the Episcopal Church to my attention. For better or worse, Jack Spong is responsible for my being an Episcopalian.

But these days, I tend to find +Spong annoying. It's as if he can never stop reacting to the fundamentalism in which he was reared. He's like a reformed smoker/drinker/gambler, who now has to lecture everyone on the evils of whatever it was he used to do. Everything is black or white--no grey allowed. It gets tiring after a while.

I grew up as a fundamentalist, too---and, to a certain degree, my current approach to the Christian faith will always be a reaction to the bad things about that experience. But, after well over a decade of wrestling with very serious theological questions, I have somehow gotten past the need to define myself in opposition to the literalists.

+Spong hasn't. In his own way, he is as dogmatic as any biblical literalist. He states categorically "This could not have happened," and we are expected to exchange our unthinking obedience to one set of fundamentalist beliefs for another, arguably more "progressive," one.

Worse, he blithely states that, if you don't agree with him, you are child-like and refuse to live in the modern world.

Alrighty then....

The discussion last night moved along those lines. My first uncomfortable moment came when the discussion leader used the word "brainwash." He was talking about telling children stories about the miracles of Jesus, and asked the group how we could tell those stories without brainwashing our kids into believing things that clearly were not true.

I asked him if he was uncomfortable telling children fairy tales? After all, those aren't true either---but most of us don't have a debrief with our kids after their nightly story time to explain that frogs really can't talk and they won't turn into princes if you kiss them!

In addition, I dare say that stories like "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast" are at least as deeply embedded in our culture as any biblical story---and as the mother of a daughter, I would contend that they do infinitely more psychological damage to our children than stories of Jesus turning water into wine or healing lepers.

(On second thought...maybe we SHOULD debrief our kids after those stories! I know that the myth of the Prince and "happily ever after" harmed me in ways that have been much more painful and long-lasting than anything I learned in church...)

My next uncomfortable moment came when the discussion leader and a couple of others started putting clergy "in the dock." There were numerous assertions that clergy don't preach what they really know to be the truth because they fear offending parishioners--and a call for them to "tell the truth" to those people who still believe in things like the virgin birth and the miracle stories.

All eyes whipped immediately to Dear Friend...who had chosen to attend "in collar," and was, I suppose, "fair game." ;-)

At that point, I had to comment. I told them I was struck by the irony of a group of people who are unhappy because ministers tell people what to think....demanding that ministers tell people what NOT to think!

After 35 years in the ministry, Dear Friend has a much tougher skin than I do. I was really proud of him for the way he responded. He said that he didn't see sermons in the same way they did. He is a great lover of poetry, and he asked them:

"Do you 'believe' a poem?"

In his view, the Bible is a poem--not a scientific or historical treatise. The stories about Jesus are "poems" about God's love for us and God's way of interacting with us on a human level. To illustrate, Dear Friend recited this poem from Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

As he pointed out, if you read that poem "literally," you would have to say "An eagle is really a member of the Accipitridae family. It doesn't have 'hands,' it has CLAWS. And it is not close to the sun, which is between 91-94.5 million miles (depending on where we are in the orbit). And the sea is not 'wrinkled,' nor does it 'crawl."'

And if you did that, you would have ruined it. A poem and a scientific paper on eagles are two totally different things. Both have their uses, but it is a mistake to confuse the two.

Dear Friend observed that most people seem to yearn for transcendence, and that a sermon should speak to that yearning, rather than be an academic lecture on textual or historical biblical criticism. He does talk about scholarship in Christian Education classes, small groups, or one-on-one discussions with people--but he believes that to do so in a sermon is to exercise an abusive form of clerical power by telling people what to believe. And he talked about transcendence being largely a "right-brain" thing--one of elusive experience, rather than left-brained, factual knowledge.

(As an aside, I have never, in all the years I've known him, heard Dear Friend tell anyone what to believe. In fact, his sermons are almost always a series of questions, without any answers. This unnerves some people, but it appeals mightily to people who are seriously engaged in theological reflection.)

I don't know what the other participants made of that. My reaction was to spend the rest of the evening wondering why people want to murder mystery.

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I run with a pretty well-educated group of people. I was trained in the social sciences, so I have a nose for methodology and I can read statistics and ask the right questions to see if they represent any shade of reality. I work with lots of people who have M.D.s or PhD.s in the hard sciences, and--even though I don't have a degree in science--I'm something of a science geek. I've got no problem with the prevailing paradigm for scientific research, which demands testable hypotheses and replicable results.

And I've also got no problem believing that Jesus actually turned water into wine or literally healed people. I can say the Nicene Creed without crossing my fingers. I absolutely believe in the Real Presence in the bread and wine during Eucharist.

I suspect the people in the group last night would be flummoxed by my ability to reconcile all these things in my head. And a few years ago, I probably would have been too. I used to struggle, HARD, with the insane things that Christianity asks you to accept--a fully divine/fully human, sinless incarnation of God who was put to death, rose again, and ascended into heaven.

What kind of crazy stuff is THAT?!?!?

But for a variety of reasons (some of which I have shared here and some of which I haven't), I have come to feel the "truth" of those things. I have learned to open my hands, shrug, and say "It's a mystery."

For many people, that's a cop-out. I can understand that. But I have found that there is a role for mystery in my faith. I have discovered that mystery and Truth are not strangers, or enemies, but are engaged in an intimate--even erotic--dance. I have learned that leaving room for that mystery brings me much closer to that transcendence for which I long.

Every Sunday, I drink from the cup of Mystery, and am transformed.

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The more I think about +Spong's title, Jesus for the Nonreligious, the more puzzled I become. Why would the "nonreligious" even be interested in Jesus? With only one or two exceptions last night, everyone in the group gave a religious affiliation. They weren't nonreligious--just not happy with traditional Christianity. THAT, I understand!

But if you take +Spong's view of Jesus and you remain in the Christian fold, I'd really be interested to know why. I confess that I am mystified by the lengths to which people will go to hang on to a Jesus who is really just another "good teacher." What is it about that Jesus that makes you want to hold on to him?

If you choose to look at Jesus in a way that strips away all of the mystery, you won't get any argument from me. I won't tell you that you are going to a Hell I don't believe in. I won't think you are evil or disobedient to God if you don't accept that Jesus was divine in some way (whatever that means).

But I will wonder why you bother. I'd really love to know.

I want to remember...

I want to remember
the birthday when
the cake needed no candles
because there was nothing left
to wish for...
Except to freeze the joy
of this day
And this life
Forever in time.

The Purple Haze of Theodicy--A Response to John Marks

If you don’t know who John Marks is, I hope you will check out his blog, The Purple State of John. John and his old college roommate, Craig Detwiler, made a wonderful film called A Purple State of Mind. In that film, John, who is an avowed atheist, and Craig, who is an evangelical Christian (although a fairly progressive one), have a series of open, honest--and occasionally painful--conversations about faith and its implications for public life and individual action. They call the film "an 80-minute effort to bridge the cultural gap, to push past politics, and wade into the middle ground where most people live."

The "purple," of course, refers to a blending of the so-called "red state"/"blue state" divide promulgated so heavily by television news. I highly recommend the film to you.

When Dear Friend and I went to the premiere of A Purple State of Mind at Davidson College (where Marks and Detwiler met), we both felt more affinity for John, with his doubts and questions, than we did with Craig. Since that time, I have read John’s blog regularly (he does some really interesting posts on film and other cultural issues) and I comment semi-regularly on his faith-related posts. The following is my response to his post entitled The Perfect Christian Daughter Murders Her Perfect Christian Family: A Case Study In The Problem Of Evil. I got started writing, and couldn’t stop, so rather than clog up his comment box, I decided to respond here.

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John--I ask in advance for your forgiveness if this sounds snarky. If we were discussing it over coffee or a beer, I assure you, I would sound more questioning than snide. (I also apologize for the length, but it’s hard to discuss this without laying out some important context.)

I have no easy answers for theodicy--and no thinking person of faith does. Stories like the one you highlight are quite effective for your purpose. You dare Christians to answer the unanswerable and show us to be ignorant fools when we try. It’s an easy “victory” for you---like shooting fish in a barrel.

But here is my question for you: What do YOU have to say about Erin Caffey and the evil she has done? Can you address the problem of evil without God and find any satisfactory answers?

I am a person of faith (in part) because, without "God," (however you define that), there can be no redemption for the evil or suffering in the world. All that pain just *is*. It will never be rectified. There will never be justice for the oppressed. There will never be any recompense for suffering. Life, to borrow from Thomas Hobbes, is "nasty, brutish, and short"--and we should probably all just kill ourselves and save ourselves the trouble. What's the point, anyway?

Maybe you can live in that nihilistic world, but I can't. Maybe you are made of stronger stuff than I--and most of the rest of humanity. I would venture to say that most people who claim a faith do so because we need to believe that the pain and suffering we DO experience (regardless of its cause) will ultimately be redeemed. That even if what we suffer is pointless, something good will come from it and our pain will not have been completely in vain.

If that makes me foolish or gullible in your eyes, I readily plead “Guilty as charged.”

I will not be glib about theodicy--but I will also state, as strongly as I am able, that I do not believe God causes or allows suffering for our "good." IMO, that God would be a monster and not worthy of worship.

I believe that God is with us *in* our suffering and works with us and others to bring good out of bad situations. I have experienced that presence myself in my own times of trouble. (Of course, it could just be some autonomic, evolution-inspired response in my brain—but that’s why we call it “faith.” ;-) I have also sensed the presence of the “holy” (for lack of a better term) in the faces and actions of those who have loved me.

I should probably note at this point that I am a process theologian. (I claim the title of "theologian" by virtue of my baptism, not because I went to seminary.) I don't believe that God is "omnipotent" (at least, in the sense most people mean it). I agree with Charles Hartshorne's view about that--he wrote a book titled Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. My theology differs from most of those whom you profiled in your book Reasons to Believe--but I still count myself as a “Nicene Creed” Christian, and there are probably a lot more like me in Christian circles than you might think.

I am also a universalist, so I do not believe that God is going to send all but the chosen few to Hell. I don’t even believe in heaven or hell, in the sense that so many people mean them (as physical places where “good” or “bad” people go). But I do believe that, somehow, what is broken will be repaired and love will reign.

At the end of the day, my belief in God gives me "a very present help in times of trouble." That belief may be a delusion on my part, but it gives my life meaning and purpose.

My "brand" of Christianity is not the one against which you contend, of course. I will never try to impose my faith on you or anyone else--and I do my fair share of fighting my co-religionists in the political/legal sphere.

But I get tired of otherwise intelligent people acting as if the existence of evil is THE argument that disproves my belief in a loving God. (Bart Ehrman is another one who comes to mind...) I can make a case for agnosticism (though not for atheism) from a scientific point of view, but to use theodicy to dismiss the existence of God still leaves atheists with the problem of evil. Only in that case, as I see it, *you* have no answer at all--and no comfort to offer to those who suffer. I would love to know how you see it.

Pax,
Doxy