The Great Physician.....

Is the "great physician" really the great SURGEON....using evil and suffering, trials and challenges, difficulties and testing as a scalpel to rid us of our adamic/old man/carnal/nature? Does it seem so crude and barbaric and needlessly brutal because we do not understand the process and that it is meant ultimately to heal and not to hurt? We know surgery is careful and delicate but to someone who does not understand the concept, it still looks like mutilation. A surgeon holds a beating heart in his hands...a heart that he cut out of the chest of the patient who is bound to the table and unconscious. To someone who does not understand surgery, it looks like mutilation. Put that same scalpel in the hands of the onlooker and tell him to cut and it would be mutilation. It is only in knowing how much to cut, where to cut, if he should cut, when to stop cutting.....and WHY he is cutting in the first place that the difference is found.

We do not have all the facts of evil....we are not all knowing, all present...perhaps there are key elements we are missing and thus we can not make a fair unbiased assessment of the situation any more than someone who does not understand the concept of surgery could not make a fair unbiased assessment of the surgeon or the procedure. I experience a great deal of angst when I ponder evil and suffering and the no rhyme or reason (to my way of thinking) way it is doled out. The Great Physician....and theodicy.....now that's truly the great contrarianism.