Jay Singleton, former youth pastor at Edgewood Assembly of God in Columbus, Georgia, was arrested Wednesday and charged with “criminal attempt child molestation, criminal attempt sodomy, and driving with a suspended license.”
WTVM-9 reports:
Columbus police have arrested a former youth pastor at Edgewood Assembly of God on several charges including child molestation and sodomy.
Homer Singleton, 45, known as Jay, was arrested on Wednesday, June 28 around noon after the Columbus Police Department’s Special Victims Unit was investigating an individual for attempted aggravated child molestation. Singleton was arrested near the area of Broadway and 8th St.
The pastor of Edgewood Assembly of God, Charles Hayes, released the following statement concerning this incident:
Two years ago, he was on staff here and left Edgewood Assembly of God. My heart goes out to the family. They need prayer. Jay needs prayer.
Singleton was recently a volunteer worker with the children’s ministry at The Refuge Church, which is a satellite of North Highland.
Pastor Robert French with the Refuge Church sent us the following statement:
We are saddened about the alleged situation here. We will continue to pray for the family, his wife and his son. The church is here to support them during this horrible situation. As a church, we will do everything we can to provide the necessary support.
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The former youth pastor was charged with criminal attempt child molestation, criminal attempt sodomy and driving with a suspended license.
Religion is a tradition and a part of life across the entire globe, appearing in virtually all cultures. It comes in many shapes, sizes, and flavors, and advocates both peace and violence. People may change their religious ideas over time. Across all of these variations, a single variable is shared: faith based not on objective fact, but on belief.
By itself, that isn’t a problem per se—religious beliefs don’t necessarily need to conflict or interact with secular ideas. But when they do, we get problems. Historically, civilizations ruled by religious ideology inevitably face challenges when it comes to making rational decisions about the greater good of society.
At the center of America’s founding principles, we have the separation of church and state. There’s a very good reason for that foundation and it isn’t because the founders were faithless heathens or that they hated religion. It was because, in their time, religious institutions wielded tremendous power over governments and interfered with progress and prosperity.
Fast forward to today, and there are a number of fascinating examples of yesterday’s problems causing today’s problems. Where then do schools fall into this argument?
Socialization
Our schools teach us many things—the liberal arts, sciences, arithmetic, and sometimes even life skills such as those taught in the rapidly disappearing home economics classes. Yet regardless of the grade level or subject, the central tenant of all schools is socializing our children.
Socialization teaches them how to interact with others, what’s expected of them in the world, and how they must interact with rules and authority. Foundations begin at home but are molded by the social experience.
What then for students who are taught that it’s expected of them to follow certain religious tenets? Even if we ignore that religious ideas taught at schools can conflict with the beliefs acquired at home, we must acknowledge that institutional teaching of religious ideas limits the freedom of choice. It robs individuals of the privilege to choose their own beliefs, by spiking the proverbial thought pool with predispositions.
Furthermore, schools that push religion absolutely influence how tomorrow’s adults will interact with the rest of the world. Being taught that a single idea is right and familiar makes foreign religions and ideologies appear strange and at times threatening. It plays perfectly into fear-mongering of the “other” where one religious belief is backed by the power of the state.
Objectivity
Religion becomes an issue in schools not when attendees practice their own beliefs, but when the institution itself favors any form of “belief.” Schools must be objective; they need to teach skills and facts based on the best available evidence, and religion simply doesn’t fit into that category because it is inherently not evidence-based.
That doesn’t mean religion is inherently good or bad; it simply falls into a different category from what schools are intended to teach. Truthfully, there should never be room to argue about material taught in schools because the information ought to be undeniable.
For instance, one can argue whether stories in the Bible, Quran, etc. are true, but absolutely no one will disprove grammatical rules, mathematical formulas or basic scientific laws. The last comes with some caveat, as scientific theories are continually rewritten based on new information.
Admittedly one might argue that cultural identity and historic events are open to interpretation, but the underlying facts don’t change. The president during World War II is not a point of debate any more than whether or not the Civil Rights Movement actually happened.
A Balanced Viewpoint
Most information we’re given as adults comes with a major slant or agenda. Even this piece has an agenda, which you’ve no doubt assumed at some point from the title. Pushing a single religious ideology as “right” is simply not something that belongs in our schools.
Yet we see it all the time. It’s not the little vestiges such as the pledge of allegiance, but the general favoring of certain religious ideas as being more correct. For instance, the ancient religion of the Greeks is taught in most schools as “mythology.” That title assumes the ideas and stories are fictitious—something never directly linked with the world’s major religions.
Think to yourself and ask if you’ve ever seen primary or secondary school offering a class on “Islamic Mythology.” You won’t ever see this class title because it pre-supposes that one of the world’s current “top” religions is based on fiction. It becomes inappropriate to do so because it might offend someone, yet the former class on the Greeks is acceptable because there’s scarcely anyone left to be offended.
This is a double standard and truly violates the spirit of an institution built on fostering creative free thinkers, though the former point is somewhat of a “liberty” to be taken with modern schools.
But inevitably, balance would dictate that schools either teach all religions or none. The sheer number of beliefs makes the first option unreasonable, leaving only one serious choice.
For a moment, however, we need to return to reality from the land of fair and hypothetical ideas, because the real world works quite the opposite in practice.
Politics and Religion
Returning to one of our original points, we have the idea that religion and politics should be separated. It’s a founding principle in America, but that doesn’t mean it’s practiced or accepted by everyone everywhere.
Even in the United States, where religion is legally separate from the state, we constantly see the use of religion to steer politics one way or the other. Pastors, priests, rabbis, and all other sorts of religious leaders seek to use their influence to steer voters or public policy.
Those raised on an education where religion is omnipresent are far less likely to object to making decisions based on religion because such a thing is already a standard in their lives since childhood. And it wasn’t just mom or dad pushing those ideas.
Of course, there are other extremes that demonstrate our point much more clearly. Religious states such as Iran are the talk of the world, not because of their unbridled prosperity, but because of the threat they perceive to those with differing beliefs. The same could be said of Israel, who despite a secular slant, is dominated by a single religious faith system that very much impacts public policy.
One last form of state-sponsored religion is the unorthodox practice of a dictatorship backed by a “cult of personality.” Like the Hitler youth groups of World War II Germany, countries such as North Korea and China practice devotion not to an otherworldly deity, but to a person. These beliefs are communicated in school in a manner no different from in a devout Christian or Islamic state.
It should be noted that in either case — secular or spiritual religion — both institutions seek to repress information on a massive scale. Without the use of specialty programs such as VPNs, those in many of the aforementioned countries have severely limited access to information online, as their governments prevent access to the outside.
Obscuring dissenting ideas is just one of many tactics used by state-sponsored religion, and schools make it easier by issuing textbooks that only contain information in support of the dominating ideology.
Secular Religion
The last point we’d like to discuss is with regards to the above points on what may as well be termed “atheist religions.” Though traditional spiritual religions have no place in schools, their absence shouldn’t be taken as permission for similar secular dogmas to step in.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in today’s cult of science. It quietly invades our classrooms, pushing singular ideas as being the one and only correct explanation for phenomenon when insufficient data exists to support a certain conclusion. And it can have dire consequences.
For the last half century, schools taught a generation of students that butter was somehow inferior to margarine. That in itself wasn’t a problem because the research seemed to support it; the problem is that today many institutions still teach these same, incorrect ideas because the established professors cling to old “facts” like a religious ideology.
These are the people – part of the “science is never wrong” group – who selectively ignore information that is detrimental to their own beliefs. These beliefs are the unintentional replacement for spiritual belief systems that need to be rooted out all the same.
If and when religion is removed from our schools, then we can truly create the most open and creative minds. These students will be the leaders of tomorrow who help to end meaningless conflicts based solely on beliefs.
Do you think religion has a place in school? Why or why not?
About the Author: Carla is a thinker and rational debater with a major focus on modern issues ranging from education to politics. With a background in cybersecurity and freedom of information activism, she brings a unique perspective into arguments, always with a hope of opening minds to new perspectives.
Andre Leaphart, an associate pastor at Fellowship United Church of Christ in Chesapeake, Virginia, was charged yesterday with “sexual battery with the intent to transmit infection.”
A Newport News man has been charged with sexual battery with the intent to transmit infection.
News 3 has learned from church officials that 40 year-old Andre Leaphart is an Associate Pastor at the Fellowship United Church of Christ in Chesapeake.
Police said on April 12 a Hampton man told authorities that he contracted a sexually transmitted disease from the Leaphart. The victim said the suspect knew he was infected.
After a two month long investigation, Leaphart was arrested Tuesday.
News 3 spoke to Leaphart’s relatives who said he has always been honest about his medical situation with those he was close to and they don’t believe the accusations.
They said Leaphart is always going out of his way for others and they think there is more to this story that has not been exposed.
Mary Ellen Mayo, a friend and loyal reader of this blog died June 19, 2017 of congestive heart failure. Mary Ellen was 56. Mary Ellen infrequently commented, often choosing to comment when she felt I needed encouragement or moral support. Some long time readers may remember her using the Amazonfeet moniker. Mary Ellen, a resident of Florida, battled a number of health problems. (She had Marfan Syndrome.) I was Facebook friends with Mary Ellen. We shared not only our experiences with chronic illness, but also a commitment to progressive political values and a love of cats. A few days before Mary Ellen died, her last post to Facebook was the cat meme posted above.
Mary Ellen will be missed. I am blessed to have been her friend. Mary Ellen was a member of First Unitarian Church in Orlando, Florida. Her church family will hold a memorial service for her on Monday, July 3rd.
Should godly women be in the military, police force, or firefighters? No, godly women should not be in any of these and I will try to explain why I believe this. In the Bible, only men were the ones to go to war and they had to be 20 years old or older. “Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls; From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies” (Numbers 1:2, 3).
Women are the weaker vessel. “Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel” (1 Peter 3:7). “The thing which the husband is specially to understand and take into account is that he is dealing with a thing less strong than himself…The weakness here ascribed to the female sex is primarily that of the body, as we shall see when we consider the word ‘vessel,’ though it may, perhaps, indicate frailty in other respects as well.” (Elliot’s Commentary) And I am sure the feminists will love Matthew Poole’s definition of this verse; “weaker than the husbands, and that both in body and mind, as women usually are.”
In past generations, EVERY ONE knew that men are stronger physically and emotionally than women. Men have ten times the testosterone than women do. Yes, men’s struggle is with their sexual nature but women’s struggle is with their emotional nature. Men and women are different. We are not the same. (It’s sad that I even have to write these words.)
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The Lord instructs husbands to be the head of their wives. “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body” (Ephesians 5:23). They are over them to protect and provide for them. This is God’s perfect plan in marriage and in society; it is the men who are to be the protectors. Being in the military, a firefighter, or policeman takes strength. Unfortunately, feminists have bullied men into women being able fulfill these positions. We are called to be feminine with gentle and quiet spirits. These jobs are all masculine.
Can you even imagine what women in the military who are captured by the enemy must endure? I am sure it is horrible! Women are much more vulnerable and defenseless than men. Women are the ones who are raped. (Yes, some men are being raped today, too, in today’s perverted society but it normally takes several men to do this whereas it only takes one man against one woman to rape a woman.) How about a female police officer caught in the middle of a gang? What if a female firefighter had to drag a 200 pound man down from a second story on a ladder to save his life? Women cannot do this. It is all nonsense.
Middletown, Ohio Republican councilman Dan Picard wants to teach drug addicts a real-life lesson about drug abuse — overdose in Middletown and we are going to let you die. This story is a perfect example of what Republicans want to do when it comes to healthcare. Are you overweight? Diabetic? Do you have high blood pressure? Why should anyone pay for your medical care? Take care of it yourself – and if you can’t? Die. It is beyond me how anyone who cares about human welfare can continue to support Republicans, both at the state and federal levels. What we have is a clash of worldviews, one which puts people first, another which only concerns itself with money and bottom line. Perhaps Narcan is too expensive. Is it within the power of local, state, and federal officials to force drug companies to reduce the cost of the drug? According to Wikipedia, Narcan (Naloxone) costs less than $5 per dose. In the United States, the “price for a package of two auto-injectors in the US, however, has increased from $690 in 2014 to $4,500 in 2016.” Welcome to the perverseness of American capitalism and greed. Congress has the power to put an end to immoral price increases such as this one. Unfortunately, as long as drug companies are doling out millions of dollars in campaign donations to our elected officials, it is highly unlikely that anything will be done about the price of not only Narcan but drug prices in general.
An Ohio city is considering whether dispatchers should send ambulances to every overdose call they get, after the number of overdoses this year has already exceeded last year’s total.
Dan Picard, a Middletown city councilman, proposed a “three strikes” limit for opioid addicts after the number of overdoses jumped from 532 last year to 577 so far this year, including 51 deaths, compared to 74 in all of 2016, reported the Journal-News.
“I want to send a message to the world that you don’t want to come to Middletown to overdose because someone might not come with Narcan and save your life,” Picard said. “We need to put a fear about overdosing in Middletown.”
The 61-year-old Picard, who isn’t seeking re-election, suggested issuing a court summons to overdose victims and requiring them to complete community service to work off the cost of their emergency medical services call and a dose of the life-saving Narcan drug.
If they fail to do so following two overdoses, 911 dispatchers could refuse to send help on their third call.
“If the dispatcher determines that the person who’s overdosed is someone who’s been part of the program for two previous overdoses and has not completed the community service and has not cooperated in the program, then we wouldn’t dispatch,” Picard told WLWT-TV.
The city councilman pointed out that cancer patients don’t get free chemotherapy, and he said patients suffering heart attacks don’t get free bypass surgery on an EMS run.
Congressional Republicans are waging a full-scale war against the health of poor and working-class Americans. Their battle plan is quite simple:
Do away with the federal funding of Medicaid.
Force states to either raise taxes to fund Medicaid or drastically cut services.
Enrich the medical industry by ignoring the runway cost of healthcare, wrongly suggesting the market forces with correct the current excesses.
Raise insurance premiums for the sick and elderly.
Do away with Obamacare regulations that forced insurance companies to cover preëxisting conditions and provide basic preventative healthcare.
Give businesses huge tax cuts.
Give the wealthy huge text cuts.
The Republicans who oppose the current Senate healthcare bill do not object because they want Americans to have better healthcare. What they want is a complete dismantling of the federal government, including any laws and regulations that govern healthcare. These Ayn Rand-loving Libertarians don’t care one whit about whether Americans live or die or whether any of us has affordable insurance. Left to their own devices, these Republicans will destroy the social progress of the past sixty years, remolding America into a fiefdom where the rich and major corporations rule the land. The difference between people such as I and these Republicans is that we actually care about the welfare of the American people and these Republicans don’t. Their concern begins and ends with their wallets. Ironically, most of these Republican are Christians, people who supposedly follow Jesus and keep his commandments. Evidently, these human-hating Republicans have never read Jesus’ words about riches and how those of means should treat the poor.
The solution, of course, is to raise taxes, and provide single-payer health insurance for all Americans — rich, poor, and working class. It is time we take the profit out of healthcare. People should not have to look at their bank balances before deciding to seek medical treatment. As it stands now, even those of us who have healthcare are facing astronomical rises in insurance premiums, deductibles, and drug costs. The only sure way to make certain that all Americans have comprehensive, affordable healthcare is to burn to the ground the current system. This means, first, voting out of office any Republican or Democrat who continues to suckle at the teat of the healthcare industry. These “leaders” of ours cannot, as Jesus said, serve two masters. You will love the one and hate the other. And as it hands now, it sure looks like the ruling class hates poor and working-class people.
I am often asked what it would take for me to believe in the Evangelical God. Is there anything that would cause me to discard atheism and embrace the God whom Evangelicals say is the Creator of everything and the savior of everyone who puts their faith and trust in Jesus Christ? Am I so set in my atheistic/humanistic ways that there is nothing that could persuade me to return to the Christianity I abandoned eight years ago? Simply put, what will it take for me to fall on knees and repent of my sins, professing that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior?
Many Evangelicals, of course, believe that no amount of evidence would be enough to convert someone such as myself. I am a reprobate, an apostate, a sworn enemy of the Evangelical God. I have crossed the line of no return. My destiny is already settled, with a first-class accommodation in Hell and the Lake of Fire awaiting me after I die. According to the Bible, I am the pig that has returned to the mire and the dog who has returned to his vomit. I have trampled under my feet the blood of Jesus, and there remains no further sacrifice for my sins. Christian evangelizers are told not to waste their time on the Bruce Gerencsers of the world. Let them go to the hell they so richly deserve!
Other Evangelicals think that I am still saveable. With God all things are possible, they say. Imagine what a testimony to God’s wonderful grace it would be if the preacher-turned-atheist Bruce was brought low before the thrice-holy God and saved from his sins. Years ago, I remember being taught in evangelism class that the best way to reach a community for Christ is to find the meanest sinner in town and lead him to Christ. While I am not a mean person, I am considered the village atheist, a man who hates God and Christians. Get me saved, and r-e-v-i-v-a-l is sure to follow. Or so local Christians think, anyway.
Many Evangelicals believe that God has given me all the evidence I need in order to believe. The Evangelical God has revealed himself to me through creation, conscience, and divine revelation (the Bible). God has done all the revealing he intends to do. If this is not enough for me, I can go straight to hell.
Wait a minute, what is there in creation that proves to a rational, reasonable man that the Evangelical God is one true God, and that forgiveness of sins and salvation are through Jesus, the second God of the Trinity? When I peer into wondrous darkness of a starry night, I am filled with awe and wonder. When a harvest moon rises in the east, giving off its larger-than-life orange glow, I am reminded of the awesomeness of the universe. All around me I see wonders to behold. As a professional photographer, I often spend time peering at the complexities and beauty of nature and wildlife. Even the feral cats resting underneath the nearby post office box cause me to pause, watch, and enjoy. Everywhere I look, I see things that cause me to stop, reach for one of my cameras, and shoot a few photographs. Not far from where the aforementioned cats hang out, there are sheep and goats who often entertain me when I have time to stop and take their pictures. And don’t get me started when it comes to my family. There are times when everyone is over for a holiday — all twenty-one of us, aged two to sixty — that I quietly sit and watch my children and grandchildren. I think to myself, man, am I blessed. With all the health problems I have, I am lucky to be alive, fortunate that I have the privilege to love and be loved. Does all of this, however, say to me, the Evangelical God is real, that Christianity is the one true religion? No, it doesn’t. At best, all that I have experienced tells me that perhaps there is some sort of divine power, a God of sorts, that has set in motion life as we know it. Perhaps — though I doubt it — there is a deistic God who created the universe and then went on vacation, leaving the future of planet earth and its inhabitants up to us. This is the God of some of the people who read this blog, and while I don’t believe in their God, I do understand how they came to believe as they do, and I respect their viewpoint. And they are okay with my unbelief, as is their God.
I have yet to have an Evangelical satisfactorily explain to me how anyone can rationally surmise that their God is the one true God just by looking at starry skies or biological world. I am willing to concede, as I mentioned above, that it is possible to conclude that some sort deistic creator put the world into motion and then said, there ya go, boys and girls, do with it what you will. But, pray tell, what evidence is there for this generic creator God of sorts being the Evangelical God? Well, the Bible says ___________, Evangelicals say, and therein lies a big, big problem. Evangelicals are, for the most part, literalists. When they read the creation account recorded by an unknown author in Genesis 1-3, Evangelicals conclude that their God created the universe in six twenty-four days, exactly 6,022 years ago. Yes, I am aware that some Evangelicals are NOT young earth creationists, not that this really matters. Whether young earth or old earth or any of the other creation theories espoused by Evangelicals, they believe that the foundational authority is the first three chapters of Genesis.
Using the Bible as a tool to prop up what can be viewed with human eyes only causes greater doubt and unbelief. Why? Because what the Bible says about the universe runs contrary to what science tells us. Astronomy, geology, cosmology, archeology, and biology all tell us that what the Evangelicals believe the Bible says about the universe is false. Of course, Evangelicals are taught that the Bible is the final authority on everything, including how and when the universe came into existence. When science conflicts with the Bible, the B-i-b-l-e — the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God — not science, is always right. As science continues to push creationism closer and closer to the dustbin of human history, Evangelicals are forced to defend beliefs that are no longer rationally defensible. So anyone telling someone such as myself that creation — when viewed through the lens of the Bible — proves the existence of the Evangelical God will be met with ridicule and laughter.
The Bible, despite Evangelicals believing otherwise, is no longer a credible source of proof for the existence of God. Evangelicals believe that divine revelation (the Bible) is another way that God reveals himself to us. Unfortunately, thanks to the internet and authors such as Bart Ehrman and Robert Price, the Bible can no longer be used as proof for anything. Now that there are countless blogs and websites dedicated to deconstructing the history and teachings of Christianity and the Bible, it is increasingly hard for Evangelicals to continue to promote and sell the party line. The Bible is not worthless. There are teachings, maxims, proverbs, and such that people, religious or not, find encouraging and helpful. The same, however, could be said of a plethora of religious texts, so the Christian Bible is not special in this regard.
Having read the Bible dozens of times from cover to cover, spending thousands of hours studying its words, books, and teachings, I see nothing that would convince someone not already initiated into the Evangelical cult that the Christian God is the one true God and all other Gods are false. The fact remains that the Bible is not what Evangelicals claim it is, and the only people who believe that the Bible is some sort of supernatural book are those raised in religious sects and tribes that embrace inerrancy. Such people believe the Bible is inspired and inerrant because they either don’t know any better or they refuse to change their beliefs — facts be damned. Extant information, available to all who can read makes one thing clear: the Bible is not what Christians say it is.
Evangelicals also believe that their God reveals himself to humans by giving all us a conscience. Supposedly, the conscience that God gives us is some sort of moral regulator. According to Evangelicals, everyone is born with an innate understanding of right and wrong. God, they say, has written his law on our hearts. If this is so, why do parents need to teach children right and wrong? Why is it that geography and tribal identification, not God, determines moral and ethical beliefs? If the Evangelical God’s law is imprinted on everyone’s hearts, shouldn’t everyone have the same moral beliefs? Of course, they don’t, and doesn’t this mean that there must be some other reason(s) for moral belief other than God? That atheists are moral and ethical without believing in God is a sure sign that these things come from something other than a deity; things such as genetics, parental training, tribal influence, education, and environment.
The fact is, for atheists such as myself, creation, conscience, and the Bible do NOT prove to us the existence of the Evangelical God. Sorry, Evangelicals, I have weighed your evidence in the balances and found it wanting. What then,Bruce would it take for you to believe in God? Is there anything that God can do that would cause to believe? Sure, there is. Let me conclude this post with several things the Evangelical God could do to prove to me his existence. All of these are within the ability of the I can do anything Evangelical God:
Raise my mother from the dead so she can love and enjoy the grandchildren she never got to see.
Heal me. Waking up one morning — just one — without pain would certainly cause me to reconsider my view of God.
Striking Donald Trump dead the next time he lies would certainly be a sign of God’s existence.
Causing the Cincinnati Reds to go 81-0 the last half of the season, Joey Votto hitting 80 home runs, Billy Hamilton hitting .350 and stealing 140 bases, and the Reds winning the World Series would definitely make me believe in God’s existence.
Causing the Cincinnati Bengals to go 16-0, winning three playoff games and the Super Bowl would also make me wonder, is there a God?
On a more serious note, God ending violence and war, hunger, sickness and disease, would certainly get my attention. Unfortunately, I’ve been told that God is too busy helping Grandmas find their keys and Tim Tebow become a major league baseball player to be bothered with human suffering.
And finally, God could just send Jesus to my house. That certainly would do the trick. However, I fear once I tell Jesus what has been going on in his name for the last 2,000 years that he might say, Dude, I don’t blame you for not believing in God. I wouldn’t either, but since my Dad is God, I have to believe whether I want to or not.
Truth be told, I doubt there is anything that can be said or done that would convince me of the existence of the Evangelical God. I have carefully weighed the extant evidence and found it wanting. Since it is unlikely that any new evidence is forthcoming, I am comfortable with saying that the Evangelical God is the mythical creation of the human mind, and I need not fear or obey him.
I’m not completely sure when I first started realizing that the enormous amount of suffering in the world, so much of it completely gratuitous, is a problem for anyone who believes that there is a loving and powerful God who is in control of what happens. Before reflecting on the evolution of my own thinking on the problem from years ago, let me stress a couple of points.
First I am talking about enormous suffering. I am not talking about the small and even not so small aches and pains of daily life – the broken wrists or torn ligaments, the fender-benders, the shattered relationships, the worries about the mortgage, or the loss of a loved one. Such things, in my view, do not call into question the existence of God, because they could well be explained if there is a loving and powerful God in charge of the world. They could, for example, be “teaching us something,” or molding our character, or making us more grateful for the (other) good things we have (no pleasure without pain), etc.
No, I’m talking about suffering in extremis, enormous suffering that helps no one, least of all the sufferer. Every seven seconds in our world a child dies of starvation. An innocent victim, suffering horribly of hunger and then dying, often abandoned and forsaken. Who does that help? It doesn’t help her. Does it help me? Does it make me appreciate all the more that nice filet mignon I had last night, with that fine bottle of Bordeaux?
And that’s just one kind of suffering – children starving to death. What about others? The birth defects, the disfiguring and debilitating accidents, the cancers and strokes, the brain tumors, the epidemics, the accidental deaths of children, the tsunamis that kill 300,000 people who were just trying to eke out an existence – and I haven’t even started on the tragedies humans create: millions of people displaced from their homes (it’s relatively easy to pass over that one when we just read it on p. 3 of the paper; but think about yourself being removed from your home, forced to wander and find sustenance for you and your family with nowhere to go and no idea of what to do. And having millions of your neighbors in the same boat), innocent casualties of war, millions tortured to death, six million Jews killed for being Jews. And so on.
My experience in my years now of talking about this kind of suffering is that people who hear such comments are all too ready to write and tell me “the answer.” They have a way of explaining why it happens that satisfies their thinking, and they can’t believe that I don’t find their explanations satisfying. I find that with simple uneducated folk and with highly trained professional philosophers.
I had a radio debate some years ago when I was in London with a rather famous professor of philosophy from Oxford University on whether the problem of suffering should cause problems for anyone who believes in God. He thought he had the answers to why there is suffering when there is a good and all powerful God in charge of the world (he himself is committed Christian). The suffering of others benefits those of us who are not experiencing their suffering, as it helps us recognize that grace that we receive and appreciate our own situations all the more. The suffering of others makes us “more noble.”
He wanted to stress this point specifically with respect to the Holocaust. It had an upside. It makes us more reflective and ennobles our lives today.
I have to say, I get rather roused up when someone tells me such things – especially when they do so with the smugness of an armchair observer of suffering. I got pretty angry in our back and forth. I simply couldn’t believe that he thought that innocent children were gassed for the sake of my personal nobility. It’s all about me. God allows such horrible and massive suffering because if he didn’t, I myself would be less noble. I simply lost my cool. It’s all fine that this fellow in his comfy confines of his cushy Oxford position felt ennobled. I (in my equally comfy confines) felt completely repulsed.
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— Bart Ehrman, The Kind of Suffering That is a Problem, June 27, 2017
You can read the entire quote here if you are a member of Dr. Ehrman’s blog. $24.99 a year. Well worth the investment. All membership fees go to charity.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Former Pastor Michael Trosclair and his wife Shari Treba were arrested recently ans charged with “neglect of a dependent in a situation that endangers the dependent” and public intoxication.
A mom and dad from Alabama were arrested after allegedly taking their infant daughter to party at an Indiana bar — as witnesses said the mother drank and smoked while breastfeeding her child.
Michael Trosclair, 45 and Shari Treba, 42, were taken into custody and charged with neglect of a dependent in a situation that endangers the dependent. They were also hit with a public intoxication charge.
“Partying was more important than their child,” a detective wrote in an affidavit. The suspects reportedly were in town for a work conference. Trosclair’s LinkedIn profile shows he’s a former senior pastor, AL.com noted.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers were dispatched to the Wild Beaver Saloon early Friday morning following reports of a woman asking customers for beer, according to the probable cause affidavit obtained by AL.com.
Police confronted Treba while she was standing near a stroller. When police asked her who the baby belonged to, she said the baby girl was hers. Police said that Treba’s “breath and person” smelled like alcohol. She allegedly had to be asked several times who she was and where she was from.
A witness at the bar told the officer that Treba had been offering sex to individuals who would go inside the establishment and get her a beer. The witness also told police that he had watched Treba drink while simultaneously breastfeeding. Other witnesses told police that Treba had previously chained the stroller – with the baby still in it – to a post outside the bar and went inside to buy a drink.
Treba allegedly informed police that she was with her husband and friends from his job.
Her breath alcohol content at the time of her arrest was .193.
Trosclair allegedly became angry after Treba was confronted by police. “Mr. Trosclair became belligerent and started demanding to talk to a lawyer and telling us we weren’t going to do anything,” according to the affidavit. “It was at this time, due to Mr. Trosclair’s behavior, I put him in cuffs for fear he may fight us with the baby right there.”
The baby would be checked out by medics, officers told Treba. They also called Child Protective Services and a child abuse investigator to the location at the time of the incident.
Three years after parting ways with the United Pentecostal Church International, Michael Trosclair, a former senior pastor at Turning Point Church in Theodore, Alabama, was arrested at a bar along with his wife and their infant daughter in tow.
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An official with the UPCI headquarters in Weldon Spring, Missouri, confirmed with The Christian Post Thursday that Trosclair was once a licensed minister with the organization but has not been affiliated with them for about three years.
She declined say for how long he was an active minister.
A February 28, 2018 Christian Post news report states that Michael Trosclair and wife Shari Treba the were found not guilty:
A former United Pentecostal Church pastor and his wife, who were arrested at a bar in Indiana last summer for allegedly being drunk while neglecting their infant daughter, have been found not guilty of the charges.
“After 263 days of silence and public shame, we are grateful for the verdict of ‘not guilty.’ This verdict contributes to our continued healing from the loss and emotional pain caused by this incident. We now look forward to expressing the true story of who we are and what happened,” Michael Trosclair, a former senior pastor at Turning Point Church in Theodore, Alabama, and his wife, Shari Tremba, said in a joint statement released by their lawyer Marc Lopez of Indianapolis.
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Lopez said the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office filed felony charges on June 19, 2017, against the couple, but after deliberating for less than 20 minutes last week an Indianapolis jury found them “not guilty” of all crimes charged.
“I am so happy at the verdict in this case. And I want to thank Michael Trosclair for putting his faith into me and my law firm in representing him. When Michael hired me, he told me he was going to fight this the entire way. And we did,” Lopez said.
Witness testimony showed that while Trosclair and Tremba were in Indianapolis for a financial industry convention they were accompanied by two caretakers who were charged with the care of their 7-month-old as they networked with other convention attendees.
On the night of their arrest, the group had dinner, participated in convention activities, and took a walking tour of Indianapolis, the evidence showed. While walking past a downtown bar, Trosclair went inside to greet a business partner while his 7-month-old daughter stayed outside the bar with Tremba and the two other adult caretakers.
While Tremba waited outside with the 7-month-old child, a patron of the bar called 911 stating he had seen her being neglectful of the child.
Witness testimony at the trial, however, contradicted the allegations of the 911 caller, noting that the only thing Tremba did was consume one 10-ounce beer. The person who gave her the beer testified that he did so about 10 minutes before the police arrived. He also said Tremba was not intoxicated.
When police officers arrived on the scene and informed Tremba to get her husband and that her daughter would be taken to the hospital to be evaluated she became upset. When her husband arrived and learned what was happening he became upset as well and they were both arrested.
I’m not completely sure when I first started realizing that the enormous amount of suffering in the world, so much of it completely gratuitous, is a problem for anyone who believes that there is a loving and powerful God who is in control of what happens. Before reflecting on the evolution of my own thinking on the problem from years ago, let me stress a couple of points.
