Horror and hope

The worst evil should make us tremble but not doubt | John Piper

As the world reeled from the horrific death in Beslan, Russia, some Christians struggled with the correct response. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, told a BBC interviewer that the catastrophe had caused his faith to tremble. That is good. We should tremble indeed in a world so ripe for judgment, where we know our own sins keenly. But then he went further: "When you see the depth of energy that people can put into such evil, then . . . there is a flicker, there is a doubt. It would be inhuman, I think, not to react in that way."

The Archbishop implied that to be humane in the face of great suffering one must at least have a flicker of doubt toward God! His statement was symptomatic not of deep compassion, but of deep confusion—or worse, unbelief.