To the Editor:
Re “Between God and a Hard Place,” by James Wood (Op-Ed, Jan. 24):
James Wood gives two alternatives for God’s action in the world: either capricious and punitive, or capricious and absent. Christians offer another view: that when God became a human being, he suffered the worst his society could throw at him, dying on a cross. So God chose suffering for himself, and knows it firsthand.
When Haitians suffer it doesn’t mean that God loves them less; instead, it means that God shares their suffering and can raise new possibilities from the death of old ones.
(Rev.) Joan Shelton
Washington, Jan. 24, 2010
The writer is a retired priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 