{"id":3912,"date":"2008-12-23T00:30:56","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T00:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l.html"},"modified":"2008-12-23T00:30:56","modified_gmt":"2008-12-23T00:30:56","slug":"how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;How can that woman believe?&#8221; A Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Here is a letter sent to me about a woman struggling with faith, and one of her major questions is a deep, dread-type question: The shocking injustices some experience.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Gary Haugen spoke at the service at Willow on the International Justice<br \/>\nMission.&nbsp; He discussed the sex trafficking, as well as many other<br \/>\ninjustices going on around the world.&nbsp; He would tell a story of some<br \/>\ninjustice occurring in the world and then say, &#8220;How are these people<br \/>\nsupposed to believe?&#8221;&nbsp; Gary then described some of the work that IJM<br \/>\ndid&#8230; and, I believe, his idea was to show that there is hope&#8230;.and<br \/>\nthat God created us to fight the injustice.<\/p>\n<p>However, I have heard the arguments about free will and that God is<br \/>\nmerciful and just and of this sounds good in theory.&nbsp; But the question<br \/>\nI need answered is this one: <b>&#8220;How is that woman supposed to believe<br \/>\nthat there is a God that is good and just&#8212;a God that she can trust?&nbsp;<br \/>\nHow?&nbsp; How is that woman supposed to trust?&#8221;<\/b>&nbsp; She was stripped of that<br \/>\nability.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<b>Our questions for today: What are your experiences with such abusive situations? Have you seen such women (re)learn to trust God? How did they do so? What can you say to this &#8220;seeker&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p><\/b>You can&#8217;t tell me you can go on &#8230; after being raped or sold into prostitution &#8230; where you see evil at it&#8217;s finest, where you see power being abused to its greatest extent &#8230;&nbsp; Question: How is someone like that ever supposed to believe\/trust in anyone or anything, let alone, God?&nbsp; Not just state a belief. In her very core, in the middle of the night, when no one is around, when she is all by herself. I cannot believe that someone like that could trust &#8230; and it&#8217;s not for lack of trying and praying &#8230; because God knows I want to believe. I fell a bit like Charles Templeton. I would like to believe&#8230;.but&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The book that John Ortberg wrote about faith and doubt &#8211; describes his own doubts&#8230;.but he was not in a brothel serving men 30 x a day.&nbsp; Imagine being stripped of all dignity.&nbsp; When I put myself in that woman&#8217;s shoes, I cannot believe.&nbsp;&nbsp; I would feel nothing, as the only possible coping mechanism; the pain would be too great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a letter sent to me about a woman struggling with faith, and one of her major questions is a deep, dread-type question: The shocking injustices some experience. Gary Haugen spoke at the service at Willow on the International Justice Mission.&nbsp; He discussed the sex trafficking, as well as many other injustices going on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-problems-for-faith"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;How can that woman believe?&quot; A Letter - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;How can that woman believe?&quot; A Letter - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here is a letter sent to me about a woman struggling with faith, and one of her major questions is a deep, dread-type question: The shocking injustices some experience. 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Gary Haugen spoke at the service at Willow on the International Justice Mission.&nbsp; He discussed the sex trafficking, as well as many other injustices going on&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2008-12-23T00:30:56+00:00","author":"Scot McKnight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l.html","name":"\"How can that woman believe?\" A Letter - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-12-23T00:30:56+00:00","dateModified":"2008-12-23T00:30:56+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/19879975236b70da80f4cbea933c59d0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/12\/how-can-that-woman-believe-a-l.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"&#8220;How can that woman believe?&#8221; A Letter"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/19879975236b70da80f4cbea933c59d0","name":"Scot McKnight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c10\/c10b0226ed6cfd8319b2b8742ac4088ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c10\/c10b0226ed6cfd8319b2b8742ac4088ax96.jpg","caption":"Scot McKnight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/smcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}