This project offers an expansive theological understanding of the relationship between suffering and the divine while providing grounds for constructive human responses to suffering. To do this, I use an ecomimetic investigation of bats – selected because of their relationship to the COVID-19 pandemic – to explore the complexity of creaturely suffering in an interdependent world. Next, I offer an explanation of vulnerable suffering that is grounded in God's faithfulness to all of the creation that God called good. Rather than using this explanation to excuse human indifference to suffering, I argue that embracing one's creaturely finitude authorises constructive responses to suffering.

该项目提供了对苦难与神性之间关系的广泛的神学理解，同时为人类对苦难的建设性回应提供了依据。为此，我对蝙蝠进行了经济学模拟研究（由于其与COVID-19大流行的关系而被选定），以探索在相互依存的世界中生物遭受苦难的复杂性。接下来，我将对脆弱的苦难做出解释，这是基于神对神所称的一切造物的忠诚。我不是用这种解释来为人类对苦难的冷漠辩解，而是主张拥抱人性的有限性可以对苦难做出建设性的回应。