Why Bad Things Happen to Good Parrots: A Sermon Under the Mount in Three Essays, plus a Short Story about Kurt Vonnegut

Arik Bjorn is determined to dig his way to the center of the theological mountain—even if all he has is a trusty garden trowel: “I have always wanted to aim my keyboard directly at the Creator and ask several pointed questions not about how to live, but about why we are alive.”

In the title essay, “Why Bad Things Happen to Good Parrots,” Bjorn presents a heartfelt reflection 20 years in the making on Theodicy, or the Problem of Evil, “under the collective shadow of Aslan, Frodo and Freddy Kreuger.” In “Magic Chickens, Lemon Seeds & a Universe Sans Unicorns,” he wonders why the Creator presented us with this Universe, so absent in miraculous lemon trees, when human beings seem so good at inventing more interesting ones. And with “The Science Fair at the Edge of the Universe,” Bjorn contemplates Creation prequels, such as a divine spicy midnight snack that may have led to the Big Bang. In the concluding short story, “Vonnegut Lives,” the author makes up for the fact that writer Kurt Vonnegut left our Little Blue Planet without appropriate ballyhoo.

Arik Bjorn lives in Columbia, South Carolina. He is a graduate of Evangelical Ground Zero, Wheaton College. In 2016, he ran for U.S. Congress as the Democratic Party candidate for South Carolina's 2nd Congressional District.

Visit his website, Viking Word, to read his articles at Forward Progressives and Patheos, as well as his fiction and personal blog, The Viking & the River Horse. You can follow Arik Bjorn on Twitter @arikbjorn and on Facebook.