Just in case you are wondering, Indiana Senate candidate, Richard Mourdock’s comments
about rape are NOT something you will ever hear from Jacob’s Well Minneapolis. Mourdock said in a October 23 debate, “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
Would God love the child from a situation like this? Of course.
Would God be with the woman so deeply wounded by rape? Of course, and hopefully in powerful ways by the community of God’s people.
But did God intend that life and therefore the rape that caused it? No, of course not. This kind of thinking sees God as the cosmic chess player making all the moves. Wrong. God doesn’t run our lives. God is with us in our lives. God promises to bring life from even the greatest tragedies, but God is hurt and sheds tears over the inhumanity of our world and does not use violence and brutality to bring blessings to us.
There seems to be an idea among some people that because a pregnancy happened, and therefore a life begun, that the life had to happen. ‘Life can’t be an accident,’ such thinking says. This is a great example of asking a wrong question and when one does, one never gets a useful answer. The right question isn’t ‘Since a life was begun, doesn’t it have to be God who began it?” but “In the face of all the brokenness in our world, how can we act with the most compassion and transformative love that God has given us to deal with it and heal it.”
Keep God BIG. Don’t turn God into a simple game piece shuffler.
Precarious Pastor 