Porterbrook: Unit 2 Apologetics and Our Response to Suffering

Dan and I recently started a theology training program with our church called Porterbrook. We are so excited to have been paired with our great friends, Tyler and Megan. Our group or "cohort," as it's called officially, meets once a week to study and review the four courses we have been assigned for this semester. We are studying, "Gospel Living," "Understanding God's Story," "Missional Community Life," and, "Apologetics." It's awesome. It's intense. It's a lot of reading...but so far it has been very rich.

This week, we covered the second unit of each course, and I came up with a genius exercise as I was finishing up one of our studies last night, in preparation for our cohort today. One of the reflections we were asked to do, was to answer the question (in less than 60 seconds, mind you), "Why does God allow suffering?"

No pressure.

HA!

So last night, spur of the moment, I decided that I was going to record my response as if I had just been asked this question, and take 60 seconds to flesh it out. I knew it was going to be awkward (it was), but I thought this would be a great exercise and hoped I could talk everyone else into following suit.

I had some technical difficulties, so rather than being able to imbed my video here on the blog, just click here to see my video. And be amazed. (HA!)

I presented this idea to Dan, Tyler and Meghan tonight, on the fly, and they all excitedly but nervously agreed to let me video them (or video themselves) giving a response. Everyone took turns going outside so that no one could hear each other's thoughts. And since the response was only 60 seconds worth, no one really had an unfair advantage of getting to sit around and formulate a long, complete, and super coherent answer. BAM!

Click here for Tyler's response.

Click here for Meghan's response.

Click here for Dan's response.

Enjoy!


Thanks for reading (and watching!!).