Dealing with Tragedy / Q&A / Bible on Shuffle

Author

Douglas Jacoby
October 01, 2025

Good morning from North West England!

This past week has been a full one, with lots of fellowship, correspondence, preparation for the upcoming trip to Mongolia, resiliency training sessions, physiotherapy, a wonderful home group in Manchester, our online communion service, lots of walking, and strewing Vicki’s mother’s ashes on Morecambe Bay. Oh yes, we also suddenly became 40 years younger (photo below). We wish!

Douglas & Vicki, London, 1985 (sent by friends in Ulaanbaatar)

The purpose of this ministry is to spread the knowledge of the Word of God, produce valuable biblical resources, equip teachers, and create global networks of men and women passionate about the Bible. We also assist promising Bible teachers through underwriting graduate level tuition, conference attendance, and other opportunities under the rubric of continuing education.

Special thanks to those providing website access and free books for Uganda and Eswatini. We are 56% of the way to our goal. If you’d still like to help out, please donate here.

In today’s issue, in addition to new Q&As, you’ll find a couple of very thoughtful articles, starting with Alan Shlemon’s excellent article on processing tragedy (like mass shootings, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and terrorist attacks).

DEALING WITH TRAGEDY
by Alan Shlemon (Stand to Reason)

It’s been a difficult month [September 2025]. We’ve witnessed multiple tragedies. No doubt Charlie Kirk’s killing has been on the forefront of our minds. How can it not be? The public nature of his murder was visually disturbing.

But that’s not all that happened this month. The same day that Kirk was killed, a student at Evergreen High School shot two of his classmates and then killed himself. This all occurred just a week after the country was reeling from the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. Although she was killed in August, media attention spiked the week before Kirk’s death due to graphic video footage of her stabbing appearing online and in the news. These tragic stories even overshadowed the next day’s memorial of September 11, 2001, a terrorist attack that impacted the world…

GOD HAS THE BANDWIDTH—WE DON’T

God, who is omnipresent can handle all that evil, pain, and tragedy. He’s capable. He has the emotional and psychological bandwidth to witness his creation repeatedly commit evil and not become overwhelmed. Finite humans, though, are not God. We don’t have the capacity to handle inordinate amounts of evil.

This faux omnipresence hurts us. Our faux omnipresence leads to a faux omniscience. We think we’re present at these tragedies, so we’re tricked into thinking we understand what happened. We saw it online, after all. It was in high definition. Because we “witness” these events, we’re expected to know the truth about what happened, make an immediate evaluation…

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

THE BIBLE ON SHUFFLE?
by Greg Gilbert (from Crossway)

Have you ever put your music on “shuffle”? Shuffle mode is great because most of the time, unless you’re listening to a Broadway musical, songs are self-contained.

Guest article

That means you can jump from track 3 to track 17 to a whole different album and not miss anything. But imagine taking your favorite movie, breaking it into minute-long sections, and then playing the movie on shuffle—sixty seconds from the middle, then sixty from the end, then sixty from the opening credits. That leads to nothing but chaos! But why? Well, it’s because a movie isn’t just a collection of unrelated bits. It is a story. It begins, develops, and finally resolves. Themes are developed, characters are introduced, and their lives are traced, and the result is that one minute follows after another until you have a fully developed story. KEEP READING

Q&A 1702-1705

The Q&A list is ever expanding! Some of the newer posts include: Is too much Bible study possible? What is Kezazah? and Where is God’s protection? For the Q&A page, please click HERE.

For the Living New Testament Commentary—covering every passage of the NT—click HERE. (Website membership required.)

LAST DAY FOR EARLY REGISTRATION
2026 Biblical Study Tour, Greece & Turkey

Today is the last day of early-bird registration for the October 2026 Biblical Study Tour Paul Copan and I are co-leading to Greece and Turkey.

Reply today if you would like to save $105.

Tour details HERE.

Q4 ENGAGEMENTS

Oct: Mongolia and Asia iFaith trip
Nov: Mexico City: Seminario Nacional de Enseñanza and Mountain Theological Seminary graduation (Spanish division)
Nov: Los Angeles, CA (Santa Clarita)
Nov: Boston, MA: Evangelical Theological Society, Society of Biblical Literature, Institute for Biblical Research, Evangelical Philosophical Society, and Tutku Educational Travel
Dec: Nairobi, Kenya
Dec: Bujumbura, Burundi

AI & BYE

Last week I featured a talk by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, on narcissism. Several readers noticed that the “talk” was AI-produced—although it still consists of Peterson’s words and seems to accurately reflect his advice on the topic. What an interesting world it’s becoming!

Thanks for reading our bulletin!

  • For all bulletins 2004-2025 (1000+ pages of biblical material), click here.

  • To access the website, click here. There is new material every week—typically, every day!

  • To become a website member (only $0.10/day, paid annually), click here. Your membership is a tremendous boost to this ministry.

  • To donate to the ministry, click here. Current focus: Eswatini and Uganda, East Africa.