We continue discussion of the factors of life that seem to contradict God’s providence in our lives. In today’s study, Solomon addresses labor and man’s inappropriate motivations to work hard.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, Matt Gross and Theodore Ross offer a poignant description of a typical dad on a television commercial: ?The hapless, bumbling father is a stock character in product marketing. He makes breakfast for dinner and is incapable of handling, or sometimes even noticing, a soggy diaper. He tries desperately to hide the crumb-strewn, dirt-streaked evidence of poor parenting before the mother gets home . . .

Genesis 1:26ff explains that humans are God?s dominion stewards over His world. In fact, as this text makes clear, this stewardship responsibility is part of being in the image of God. Humans are accountable to God for this stewardship. It is therefore only common sense that it is not good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Managing the environment is important and to wantonly destroy or do harm to God?s world is irresponsible and hardly pleasing to God.

Solomon begins to discuss factors of life that appear to contradict God’s providence over mankind, and also includes insights on the importance of being able to answer tough questions from non-believers about Christianity.

Two and a half years ago, President Obama declared, as America exited Iraq, that Iraq was now a ?sovereign, stable and self-reliant? state. Today, radical jihadists are destroying Iraq. Over the last two weeks, Iraq has been invaded by fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Solomon establishes God’s providence over all human activity, with much discussion on how this challenges man’s understanding.

The twentieth century witnessed harsh anti-Semitism, vicious pogroms, and the unimaginable Holocaust. Over a third of the world?s Jews were killed. The unspeakable horror of the Holocaust cannot be forgotten and each generation must comprehend this genocide?s magnitude and vow ?never again.? I have visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. once and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, annually for many years. Each time I go there, I am aghast at the horror of what Nazi Germany did.

Steven Wise, a 63-year-old animal rights legal scholar, and the Nonhuman Rights Project (Nh.R.P.) are seeking to establish the legal personhood of animals. It has only been in the last 30 years that the distinct field of animal law (i.e., laws and legal theory for and about nonhuman animals) has emerged.

Bart Ehrman, religious scholar, bitter critic of biblical Christianity and former evangelical, has written, ?The God I once believed in was a God who was active in the world.

May 22, 2014, marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s ?Great Society? address, delivered at the spring commencement for the University of Michigan. Johnson?s speech remains the most ambitious call to date by any president to use the power of the national government to effect a far-reaching transformation of American society.