Gareth Black joined Hollywood Baptist Church in Belfast for an evening of questions! Billed as “Making Sense of God in a World of Covid”. Gareth was grilled by Assistant Pastor Aaron Williamson on the perennial subject of “If God is Good – why is the suffering in the world?” – around the the great issue of recent times the global pandemic.
Aaron put questions to Gareth such as: How has Covid changed people in terms of their focus and priorities? How can a good God allow this particular suffering? “God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it’s his megaphone to rouse a deaf world – CS Lewis.” If that’s true, what is God shouting to us through this pandemic? How do we take Covid seriously but not live and operate in a spirit of fear? How do we navigate different opinions around Covid and restrictions etc? How can we love and serve one another despite all the different opinions we have?
There were around 60 people at Hollywood that evening, and they joined in an extensive Q&A, which carried in informally at the end of the meeting!
Gareth said, “It was a great evening, with lots of really good interaction both in the meeting itself and from really encouraging people afterwards. There was much discussion about how the church should respond to these issues, especialy when we disagree about things like resrictions. The guiding principles in all of this are to be a good witness to the gospel, and to care for one another in the church as we work these things out together.”
The whole evening was captured on film and can be watched here:
