I'm not sure whether this is fantastic or hideous. It certainly seems like it would be easier than reading Butler's Lives

I've nearly repaid my student loan, at last the end is in sight, I've decided to stop the deferment, mostly so I don't have to fill out the blasted form again, since there's only a little left to repay.

Sometimes getting benefits is mixed blessing, I didn't realise at the time but many benefits fluctuate over time. My initial Housing Benefit, covered almost all my rent, but it seems that my attempts to update the rent office about the variations got misplaced and so I had been underpaying rent for a while. Thankfully I was able to pay off the difference clear the mess up quickly, although I've requested that the Housing Benefit will get paid into my account, rather than the rent office, and just pay full rent.

I had a couple of things come to mind, while running errands today for work, and wondered what people think about them.

Firstly, Is Hell, a cold rather than a hot place? Hell is often defined as being cut off from God, since God is the ultimate source of everything (energy included), would Hell be a cold barren place, with the fires of Hell being an attempt to keep the (demonic) population from freezing solid, by using the souls of the damned as a fuel source?

The Second one, are some of my current answers to the age-old question "Why do bad things happen?" in reference to natural disasters, is misinformed or stupid decisions. My point being that earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes tend to be regular occurrences in some areas. Yet thousands suffer each time a hurricane flattens known vulnerable areas like Florida and other parts of the South-East coast of America, as the result of their or their family's decision to live in that area. The same goes for cities, like San Francisco built close to known fault lines.

For human relationships, the problems are more complex, but the simplest answer I have is that we willfully ignore God's guidance. To use a computer analogy, we disable the firewall and anti-virus software, because it slows down the computer, and then go surfing porn and 'warez' sites, and then gasp in disbelief when a 'cracker' steals our credit card details and loots our savings. Then when an expert is sent by the manufacturer at his expense, to show us how to fix the problems and prevent them happening again, he gets nailed to a cross for his troubles!

As a summation, Bad things happen because we and others in this world make bad choices, through ignorance and contrariness and we and others suffer the consequences of these choices.

Diseases, I don't really have a good answer for, I must admit that the cold and flu viruses are definitely not one of my favourite parts of God's Creation, just having got over several days of a cold. Does anyone have any insight why God created viruses? It's nice to feel better afterwards, but somehow I don't think that was the reason!

Ben asked a question, sort of. I made a reply, sort of. It took me chuffing ages, so I mention it here to make it seem more worthwhile to myself. I believe it was Pratchett who pointed out that the difficulty in spelling banana is knowing when to stop.

As I'm here, previous posts:

On the resurrection.
On the universe as a closed system.
On faith and works (in various places).
On the problem of evil.
On the Blessed Virgin Mary and labour pains.
On law and grace.

Hello,

Minutes to kill at the library, so I'll blog. Luke's birthday yesterday, so had a meal out at A.S.K. or Ask, depending on who you're talking to. Amazing pizza, but incredibly tired at the end - skipped out before the bill had been settled (not without throwing an appropriate amount of money at those contemplating said bill)

Visited 4/5 agencies now, nothing much has happened yet. One of my old managers is asking me back to do some tmporary work - not sure what to do about that; sounds like a trap, but potentially very useful.

I got a book on Christian Meditation from Chritians Together at County Hall, which is good, and my work colleagues got me (no pound sign!?)35 worth of book tokens, which is a cross between a present and torture, as I had to decide what I should spend that amount of money on - the conlusion: Jeeves and Wooster, An Intorduction to Logic, British History, And a History of the Crusades.

It's going to kick me off any second, so I'd better post. Bye.