Rainn and SoulPancake Ask the Hard Questions

The last few days I’ve been spending time perusing SoulPancake. It’s a great site that focuses on asking and answering questions. Both contributors and members post questions to the site for the community to discuss. In addition to discussing and questioning the site also features regular columns and Creative Challenges. Basically everything about the site challenges the community to examine what they believe and why and look at the world from new perspectives.

SoulPancake is more of a mission than a Web site. It's a MOVEMENT to wrestle with and chew on LIFE'S BIG QUESTIONS. It's a way to EXPLORE why we believe the things that we believe. It's a place for you to TALK about your soul and the existence of God. It's a space to ENGAGE in art, philosophy, creativity, truth, and beauty. And ultimately, SoulPancake is a community of people who are digging DEEPER to figure out what it means to be human and to experience this rich, strange, difficult, and awesome journey called life.1

One of the founders of the site is Rainn Wilson (yes, The Office’s Dwight Schrute). He co-created SoulPancake with Joshua Homnick and Devon Gundry because “of their desire to create a space where people from all walks of life could discuss and question what it means to be human—a place to wrestle with the spiritual, philosophical, and creative journey that is life.” Here’s there summary of what SoulPancake is:

The post that I’ve been digging through lately is by Rainn (Mr. Wilson seems much too formal) himself about the earthquake in Haiti titled “How could God do this?” As of right now there are 211 comments that I’m about one third of the way through. I appreciate Rainn’s vulnerability, anger and uncertainty; he yells at God and demands answers:

But God dammit! How could this God, who lives mighty in my mind and heart, literally create, cause, place, know of, ALLOW an earthquake in one of the WORST possible places on this entire planet? There's nowhere least suited for an earthquake than the most poverty-ridden, fragile, helter-skelter city you can imagine.

God can take it. An infinite God can certainly bear the frustration, fear and anger of a humanity so finite that we still don’t understand the world around us or each other. But the value of Rainn’s post is not that he gets angry. The value is that he asks us to answer a question that most of us try to avoid. He asks, “Help me understand: How do YOU rectify God, suffering, and prayer?”

As people of faith we are called to answer this question and others like it. Faith ought to challenge our lives and change the way we view and encounter the world. Ignoring these questions only allows us to ignore the reality that we live in a suffering world and are broken ourselves.

So how do you answer Rainn’s question? I’ll post my response on SoulPancake and here on Friday, January 22 Sunday, January 24 and look forward to yours.

Update: I finished writing it out, but haven't gotten it typed up yet to post. I'm making the decision to be social this weekend and I also work. It'll be up by Sunday evening though. Thanks!