When I was in seminary many years ago, one day at the end of a two hour class in systematic theology I approached Canon Forbes with a heavy heart, "How", I asked him, "could a good God, the Creator of the universe, the Ground of Being, permit evil to exist and not merely exist, but often to thrive in this world?". Given the often wretched heartbreaks to which humanity is heir, whether one is Job, or merely witnesses Job’s sad lot, mine was not a novel question, to be sure. But it was, and always is, a question needful of an answer for all of that. But the answer I received owed much to the matrix in which it was fashioned and person of William Forbes.

Forbes methodology as a teacher cured his students of the notion that there were any easy answers to complex questions. He avoided the standard lecture system, preferring to assign readings from often turgid theologians whose dense vocabulary did little to clarify the course’s text. When we arrived in class, we discovered that nothing we had read ( or ought to have read) prepared us for what Forbes’ had in store for us. Our sessions were skull throbbing events in which we participated in Forbes’ version of a Socratic discussion of the assigned topic. In the course of any given day we became fully cognizant of our manifold weaknesses, our intellectual shortcomings and our unhappy state of incomprehension regarding the meaning of subject assigned. Instead of the standard lecture system what Forbes added to the Socratic method was silence. The class could just as well have been labeled a course in systematic theological counseling.

Forbes would pose a question allegedly related to the assigned readings, but always quite at variance with the general drift of what the author of our text had to say It was not until the end of the year that I discovered why. Forbes questions seemed peculiarly unaligned to the textbook. The book had been chosen by another member of the faculty who had thereafter moved on to a more rewarding benefice, thus creating a vacancy which Forbes had obligingly filled. But Forbes had not read the text, did not read the text as he subsequently admitted, and he innocently assumed that there was not much room for innovation in presenting classic Christian theology so that one text was pretty much like any other. In this he was mistaken. Our text was one of those profoundly post modern treatments of theology in which innovation combined with convoluted sentence structure and an arcane vocabulary offered ample opportunity for any student to come to some remarkably un-classical conclusions. Forbes handled remarkable conclusions diplomatically. He ignored them. And he pressed past them because his was the theology of Richard Hooker and the Caroline Divines.

In any case Forbes would direct his initial query to one chosen at random and then wait patiently for an answer. The unlucky seminarian would then begin to blather about, trying to say appropriate things, hopefully tying them together, praying to God that they might actually make sense. When the hapless student had emptied his threadbare bag of ideas Forbes would then contemplate the student’s answer. A long period of deadly silence ensued. For a few seconds the remainder of the class could take that odd pleasure derived from witnessing the discomfort of other students, particularly those who fancied that they were exceptionally gifted. But watching the silent Forbes inwardly digest our classmate’s response quickly unnerved us all.

We who had been spared being the honor of being the first chosen to respond, we all reviewed our fellow student’s answer. Each of us recognized the anguish of the individual whose recent answer hung over the classroom like a wispy ill smelling odor, its inadequacies and omissions, contradictions and fallacies, now clearly recognized. One by one we attempted to rescue our classmate as each in turn added to and amplified, revised and edited our hapless colleague’s answer - and each of his classmate’s sequentially feebly offered amendment in the vain hope of finally resolving the tension in the room. But each response merited only Forbe’s consecutive contemplative silences until every member of the class had weighed in. Then he synthesized what we had tried to articulate and we realized that we had, much to our astonishment, come to a general understanding of the original question. Without further ado he then dropped the next question on some poor soul and our anxiety level returned to its previous level of near panic.

It was some years later that I came to realize that my after class inquiry was truly Forbesian in its own way. Why would a good God allow evil to exist? My question provoked a symmetrical silence during which Forbes contemplated his answer. After what seemed to be a minute or two, he offered the following.

"The problem of good and evil is essentially insolvable. I can only tell you that those people who are essentially good, even though they may often do things which are not good, all have a problem with the existence of evil in the world. And I can also tell you that people who are essentially evil, even though they may accidentally do some things that are good, are just as perplexed by the existence of good in the world. They are as astonished that people would expect God to allow good things to happen as good people are upset that God chooses to allow evil things to happen.

"If we could only do that which is good, or only do that which is evil, neither term would have any meaning. Life itself would be meaningless because we would have no choice in the matter. All choices reflect the differences that separate a decision for the best, from one to choose the better, or from the good, or from the not really bad. Or to choose, the bad rather than the awful and the awful as opposed to that which is totally evil. It is precisely because we cannot always tell what is good, cannot always do that which is better, sometimes do that which is bad or create something quite evil while trying to achieve something we think is good, that our lives are meaningful. Our choices are meaningful. And we must struggle to decide what to do.

"God could have created a world in which only good existed, but in that sort of universe we would be unable to recognize the good when we saw it. Good would have no meaning. He created a universe in which what we do, what we allow to be done, is filled with possibilities, not all of them good. So, in a strange way, we share with God in the very process of creation.

"So as long as you are troubled by the existence of evil in a universe created by a good God you probably are all right. And I don’t think God is offended by your impertinence in questioning his judgment. It might just be an indication that you might be useful."

It was both a wholly unsatisfactory answer and easily the most satisfactory answer to any theological question I ever asked. And it frames my thoughts regarding the Church, the sorry state of the Christian religion in these difficult times.

We humans have a propensity to err. We do a lot of things well but we do some things terribly badly. Why should we suppose that the Church, in all its forms and all of its fractured denominations, be exempt from our individual tendency to err? We expect of the Church and its officers that it and they are removed from temptation – or at least, can rise above temptation. When the Church fails to do so, when bishops, priest, deacons and lay officials demonstrate their untoward capacity to behave badly, we are quite understandably upset. We expect more of them. Once when my wife and I were quarrelling I said something in anger, probably an explicative, and she said, "How can you say that? You are supposed to be holy!" "No," I replied, "only God is holy. I am merely religious." And there it is, you see, despite our best professions of faith, we are not holy and we often stand in need of forgiveness for our actions. It is very difficult - sometimes impossible - for us to forgive each other for our errors of omission or commission. But for God, forgiveness is not difficult, probably never impossible. It is a gift given, not earned, not deserved, as an act of love.

"’This day have I put before you life and death; therefore, choose life’ says the Lord" It is in the choosing between and among good, better, best, poor, bad and evil that we choose life. Sometimes our choices lie only between nasty and awful, occasionally between better and best, and only infrequently between good and evil And even when we dither, uncertain about what to do, choosing not to choose, our abstinence from choosing becomes a choice .Even when we think we can accurately predict whether some choice will result in producing a good outcome it is only after we have made our choice that we can we actually discover the effect of our decision. Every decision has unanticipated unintended consequences. In what, then, can we have faith? In this oddly uncertain world, what can we trust? In a word, God.

God has allowed us to choose, allowed us to have meaning, and accepts the challenge that are inherent in that context. It is highly probable that some of our choices will be disastrous, many will be ill considered, and only a few will be really quite inspired. We are creatures whose brains reach maturity much later than our bodies and some people have the misfortune of arriving at great age of body with incredibly immature minds. People do some extraordinary silly things, wicked things. But God, like a loving parent, stands ready to forgive us, his children, when we err. Pick us up, dust us off, and bid us try again.

So I bid you pray that each of us may be given the gift of grace to forgive the Church, society in general , and specific particularly vexing fellow human beings for their individual and collective lapses of judgment, errors of commission or omission and their sins great and small – and for the strength to do better, to do good and not evil in coming days. We are not – any of us – holy, either individually or collectively. We may all only be religious. But we must strive to become forgiving. It is not only the essence but the existential proof of our capacity to love. And absent our willingness to forgive, our claim even to be religious is called into question.

And do not be dismayed when you pray if God seems not to be listening and your prayer seems to be followed only by silence. William Forbes taught me that in the silence every question receives its due consideration; from God if not from human teachers. God knows that there are no questions that are undeserving of an answer – and not just a short, swift, answer, but one fully thought out, well rounded, tested, and subject to infinite process of patient and loving revision. But God has eternity and we think we only have this brief and uncertain life. In point of fact we also have eternity. What we lack is patience and faith. Oh, not faith in God, faith in ourselves, in the power of our prayers. Because we know that we are merely religious and not holy, we think God will listen less to our petitions for redress than to those we think of as saints. But God hears everyone’s prayers clearly and acts – not only judiciously, but mercifully and not because of our merit but because of the love God bears for his creation explicit in the Grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ and made manifest through the Holy Spirit..

Trust, therefore, in the Goodness of the Lord.. May the peace of God be with you.