The events that unfolded in a small Nashville school last week have me shaken. Running through the emotional gamut. I have chills as I pen this words. A normal day, by all accounts. Parents dropped their kids off at school, kissed them, and told them goodbye. They didn’t know, though. They didn’t know this was goodbye with a capital G.
I’m shaken because I have three young kids. Eleven. Nine. Seven. They haven’t reached the age of cynicism. They remain shrouded in a cloud of naivety. People are good. Life is beautiful. It would never cross their mind that another human might be so filled with anger and evil that he or she would want to shoot people, and shoot them with the intent to kill. There’s something deeply disturbing and evil about killing children. Jesus seemed to agree when he said it’s better to drown yourself in the depths of the ocean than lead children astray.
Why would God allow this to happen? That’s the question, right? That’s THE question. How could a God who formed the planets look down on the events in Nashville and not intervene?
When evil blankets our normal lives, our first response is to turn to God. And that’s a fair way to respond, is it not? If God is all-powerful, what does it say about his character that he allows bad things to happen? If God can form planets, he can surely stop a deranged, mentally ill human from murdering helpless people.
Does God not see how lives will be forever changed - and not for the good? Does God not see into the homes of those six victims and into the eyes of their loved ones? The excruciating pain they feel. The tears that collect into a river of grief.
So, I ask again, why God? How can our Creator call himself good and not intervene?
GOD DOESN’T CAUSE OF EVIL
I want to suggest something so scandalous, so unorthodox that it might actually be true. To be fair, I’m not trying to give you an answer to the question, Why God? Too often, that’s what we want, isn’t it? We want a neatly wrapped package of solutions to appease our ego, a quick fix to our overwhelming pain. And all the packages we receive seem to hurt more than they help. Here are a few:
Everything happens for a reason.
God is in control.
God is a righteous judge. You can’t know his ways.
This tragedy happened so God could reveal his glory.
God needed another angel.
God will use this to make you stronger. He won’t give you more than you can handle.
And the list goes on. Maybe these little quips work for some people, but I can’t for the life of me understand how they help us make sense of God. If everything happens for a reason, God has a lot of explaining to do. Like the Holocaust. What’s the reason behind millions of people dying?
As Harold Kushner says,
“Why must everything happen for a specific reason? Why can’t we let the universe have a few rough edges?”
What if some things happens for no reason at all? They’re senseless, the by-product of a chaotic, broken world. What if God isn’t the engine driving every event? What if God doesn’t need more angels?
I mean, really, how petty is a God like that? What better way to make someone hate God than to say, “I know you love your daughter, but I need her more.” Yuck. That makes me nauseous. Uneasy. That can’t be who God is.
Fortunately, I don’t think it is. Here’s the rub: we live in a chaotic world where bad things happen. God is not the cause of catastrophe. Ever.
GOD CAN’T STOP EVIL
But that’s the not part we struggle with, is it? Most folks aren’t silly enough to believe God causes evil. The real question is why doesn’t he stop it? Why doesn’t the Creator of the Stars peer down at impending tragedy and say, “No, not on my watch. Not today evil.”
That’s what I would do.
And now I’m going to suggest something scandalous. So scandalous, as I said above, it might actually be true.
And here it is: GOD DOESN’T STOP EVIL BECAUSE HE CAN’T.
I know. I know. That sounds ridiculous. But does it, really? We’ve been conditioned by our culture, one of progress and limitless potential. We can do anything if we put our minds to it. And we’ve transposed those beliefs onto God. But what if God can’t do everything? What if God’s absolute desire for our freedom and his absolute commitment to love prevent him from intervening, even when evil looms. And what if this doesn’t take away from God’s divinity, but enhances it?
If God can, in fact, reach into time and prevent bad things from happening, then it creates a lot of problems, especially for thoughtful people. It says that God chooses to heal some, while allowing others to die, which, to me, makes God more cruel than loving.
Thomas Jay Oord says it like this.
“If God can control evildoers, then we should blame God for allowing the atrocities they commit. The God who fails to prevent preventable evil is morally reprehensible. A God who allows evil isn’t worthy of our whole-hearted love. We may fear him, but we can’t worship that God with full admiration.”
The problems are just beginning, though. If God can heal, then there must be a formula to activate his healing hand. Some way to get his attention. What is that way? Well, it either has something to do with how you live or how you pray.
If you do all the right things, then bad things won’t happen to you. You surely know people in this camp, right? I was in it for a long time. The “God blesses those bless themselves” folks fall in this category. As do the “Pick yourself up by your bootstraps” folks. Basically, if you live in the South, you believe this to some degree.
The other camp is the praying camp. If your child isn’t healed, then you didn’t pray hard enough. Or you didn’t pray the right words. Or you didn’t have enough faith when you prayed. Or...you see the problem, right? Healing depends on the right mechanics or skills, as if God is in an eternal slumber, unaware of your plight.
IF GOD CAN’T STOP EVIL, WHAT’S THE POINT OF GOD?
What is even the point of God, then, if he can’t prevent evil? And this is why we need the cross. This is why Easter matters. For Christians, the penultimate image of God isn’t an all-powerful warrior who lords over all created things. It’s a vulnerable human who gives up his life on a cross.
In the early years of my sickness, when I was in so much pain I could hardly stand, I prayed for God to heal me. I invited others over and asked them to pray for me. Someone even came over and anointed me with oil, hoping that would do the trick. Nothing worked. My symptoms got worse. Ultimately, I had to reckon with reality: God wasn’t going to heal me.
GOD CAN’T TAKE AWAY PAIN. SO HE ENDURED IT.
God can’t prevent evil or take away suffering. And because he can’t, Jesus came, so that he might know, really know, the fullness of human suffering, so that we might then have a companion in our darkest hour.
The message for anyone who suffers is this: God is with you. When you hurt, your Father hurts. When you cry, God cries. God came to earth, suffered the worst of deaths, descended to the depths of Hades, so that we will never be alone.
Because he couldn’t take away your pain, he endured it.
And, to be honest, this is the God we need when life is dim. We don’t need a fickle God who might heal us, if we only have the right words. We don’t need a God who will keep bad things from happening if we only act right. We need a God who descends into our darkness, places his arm around us, and gives us a tissue when the tears start to flow. Then uses that same tissue to wipe his own tears. God knows. He knows the pain of loss, of abandonment, of physical pain.
Because God hung on a cross and endured the fullness of pain and suffering, you can trust that you will never be alone in yours. God will never abandon you. He isn’t distant or disconnected from your pain. He is with you through it. This is the gospel, good news for those destined to endure dark days, which is all of us.
Grace and peace, friends.
This is so so good. And it brings up questions I have had for a long time about prayer- how we pray and what we are praying for- and an even better question- why do we pray?