The post below was written on November 18, 2005. Oh, to be 21 again! Typing that up here makes me realize that I've lost something in the past ten years. I've lost an innocence, a naïve world in which everything was black and white. If I had written that now as a more mature individual, with a little more schooling and personal experience I would hope to be shred to smithereens. But, life was different for me at in 2005. The world still existed as black and white and nuance was only a word I couldn't pronounce. That said, I stand behind the conclusion of my little essay, even if that essay sounds and was pompous. To hold the notion that 'God created sin' is logically indefensible.
Ten years on I can look at that essay and see the flaws in my thinking. Ten years from now I'll probably see the same in this little rereading (hopefully I'll still be using this platform so I don't have to go through the arduous process of bringing the diaspora of my thoughts into another single volume again). But, it does mark a point in my growth where I started to think about things that still pick at my mind today.
First, Original Sin and the Problem of Evil are things that are still very relevant to my thinking today. They interest me on a number of levels. But, at 21 I thought I could tell the rational girl Penny that she was irrational and because of that inherent irrationality she would have to accept my rational argument. In that way, I would win her over back to God. That's obviously not how this works. That's not how any of this works...
Second, because those interests were just at their formative stages back then, I see that ten years on I don't have the answers still perfectly before me. That leads me to believe that either I am not capable of having all the answers or that no one in particular is capable of possessing them. Some of the naïve nature of my research and thinking is gone, which is a good thing. Some of my innocence has been lost through life, which is a bad thing.
Third, at this point in 2005 I hadn't quite figured the entrenchment of ideas thing yet. I assumed that as I was moldable so was everyone else. I still like to think that the only thing that has crystalized in me is my music taste. Every once and a while a new song will come out, or a band that I liked that existed 10-20 years ago will come out with a new album that will capture my attention, but for the most part I return to certain songs and groups from years ago. I like to think that I am ever learning and ever open to having my mind blown and my thoughts on things blown up with the explosion to begin anew. But I know that ideas are entrenched in others and to disagree with them is a personal affront. That's when the exchange of ideas ends and the personal attacks begin. My essay may have been pedantic in nature ten years ago, but it was not an attack. Though, after I wrote that last sentence I realize that telling somebody they don't always think rationally, especially somebody who prides themselves on their rationality, probably came across an attack.
But, here is the point of my interrupting the 31 year old version of me digitizing the 21 year old version of me at this point - the essay I wrote ten years ago, as naïve as it was, it came to a correct conclusion. It came to the conclusion that to blame God for the evils of this world is logically indefensible. That said, I hope that as a slightly more mature human being, I don't offer a logical argument to someone who is searching through hard stuff as an approach to evangelizing.
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