SIMON PHIPPS

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga called the problem of suffering “the only good objection to God”. The often quoted argument goes:  “if God is all good (all benevolent) then God has the desire to end suffering, and if God is all-powerful (omnipotent) then God has the ability to end suffering. Therefore if God does not end suffering, then God is either not all good, or is not all-powerful, and is therefore not God”. As Christians, we need to be able to answer this objection to God, to enable us to “give a reason for the faith that we have in Christ Jesus” (1 Peter 3:15). To this end, I want to try and answer this question to help anybody who finds the problem of suffering to be a sticking point or an obstacle in their faith (an argument to explain the problem of suffering is called a “theodicy”). To begin with, I want to go back to the beginning of it all and look at God. Who is God and what is God like? It is worth noting here that this argument takes as given the f...

Last month I started a new section on my blog called ' What I Learnt This Month '.  It is a great place for me to catalogue what I have learnt. I hope that it is also a great place for you to find great new resources to aid in your learning . This post covers what I learnt in December 2017. *Please note that the book link in this post is an affiliate link. This means that I receive a small percentage of the book cost if you buy it through the link* Course - Ancient Philosophy: Aristotle and His Successors This course was created by Pennsylvania University and I completed it through Coursera. The type of course is called a MOOC (Massive Online Open Course). This means three things:       1.  A lot of people are taking it at any one time. 2. It is entirely online. 3. It is entirely free. If you have never heard of a MOOC or never taken one then I highly recommend it. The main three MOOC providers are Coursera , Edx and Udemy . ...

I read a brilliant article recently talking about why organisations don't learn.  In the article the authors discuss several biases that affect a companies ability to learn. One of these was a bias towards success . The authors spoke about how a bias towards success leads to a fear of failure .  Success is good.  Failure is bad. For most of us this just seems like common sense. Who wants to fail? But what the authors speak of, is that when we are afraid of failure, innovation dies. When we are afraid of failure we will no longer take risks , when we are afraid of failure, we will not try anything new . Our entire growth as human beings is about doing things differently, about experimenting in our environments, about trying new things.  Essentially this is what children do, and this is why they learn so much. They are constantly probing and trying. Their imaginations act as virtual worlds where they can experiment with cause and ...

"Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best." - Henry Van Dyke I read this quote recently and found it so profound. In my latest blog post i spoke about our need to create .  I think that one of the main reasons that we do not pursue our creative inclinations is due to fear. Fear of inadequacy , fear of failure , fear of criticism . I recently heard an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert , author of Eat, Pray, Love. In the interview she asked a series of questions: when did you stop dancing? When did you stop drawing? When did you stop [ insert whatever you once enjoyed here ]? Chances are it was when you were no longer a child, when you started to care what people think. We often don't want to add to the great noise of information and creation on the internet; we are afraid to share what we create. But nobody would say of the forest that too many birds sing, that the c...

Recently I was listening to the Speaker Rob Bell . He mentioned the concept that God, in some sense left the creation of the world unfinished, and that through our acts of creation we are continuing the creation of the world. Regardless of the truth of this idea, I think that each of us has an innate need to be involved in the creative process. That each of us has a desire to create things that have a level of permanence. Whether this be art, or music, dance, or courses, clothing, or crafts, marketing campaigns, or food. Hannah Arendt the political theorist in her book 'the human condition' divides human activity into 3 categories: labor, work, and action . Labor being our biological processes, our respiratory system, things that are used and consumed , things that have no permanence . Work being those things that we do that extend beyond our selves. They have a beginning and end , and have a permanence in our world, i.e. things that we create . ...