Practicing Christian Leadership, Mentor's Guide, MG11

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P R A C T I C I N G C H R I S T I A N L E A D E R S H I P

interfered with his date night with his wife, or family night with the children. It became so difficult to work around his schedule that he attended meetings only infrequently, and finally resigned, without even letting the other elders know of his decision. What was right or wrong in the judgment of this dear brother?

Nothing Me and God Can’t Handle

In a time where it is quite fashionable to consult psychologists and psychiatrists as the true physicians of the soul, there are many Christians who reject any kind of therapeutic strategies as limited and ineffective. Many Christians today discredit the over-medicated approaches and responses that many therapists have to much of the depression of our time. Others, having been helped by the counsel and chemical treatment they have received from the psychiatric community, believe that there is nothing wrong with strategies where the truth is told, and real physical problems are addressed and dealt with. What is your opinion about the usefulness and validity of much of the psychiatric therapies today? Is it possible for growing disciples to be helped through difficult times with trained therapists, or should we learn to use in a more effective way the resources available to us in the Church? In the wake of the terrible tragedy that recently hit New Orleans, flooding the city and battering the entire Gulf Coast, theologians, ethicists, and religious scholars are seeking to make sense of it all in light of the notion of a good and loving God. On a recent broadcast, a distinguished panel of priests, professors, and rabbis discussed the origin of the hurricane and its destructive power. One rabbi stated boldly without equivocation that God did not and would not cause this hurricane, that it had nothing to do with him in any way. He said that the hurricane should be understood purely in the sense of the warm gulf waters and the environmental conditions which made such a storm possible. The rabbi gave no sense of any kind that God might have had any part in the hurricane and its force. What is right, wrong, or neutral in the rabbi’s interpretation of the destructive force of Hurricane Katrina? How do we distinguish what events can be legitimately called “acts of God” from those which, as the rabbi said, have nothing to do with the sovereign will of Almighty God? Theodicy Questions Loom Large

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