The Question We Can’t Escape

Alright, I’ve avoided the question for long enough. And whether I knew it or not, my articles the past couple of weeks have really been building up to this. We’ve talked about what we ask after a tragedy, and we’ve talked about what we don’t ask after a tragedy. Now it’s time to address the question that keeps coming back time after time, whether we’re ready for it or not. Let’s talk about theodicy.

In a nutshell, theodicy means the question of evil: How is it that evil exists in a world ruled by a loving, all-powerful God? Why do bad things happen?

As I said last week, this question is worth exploring, but only under the right circumstances. The types of conversations that this question produces are intellectual, theological, and philosophical in nature. The point isn’t to make someone feel better, but rather to explain a very difficult truth. Which is why I left this question out of the discussion up to this point: It’s not the type of question one should be discussing while still reeling from a tragedy.

When we talk about theodicy, we’re entering the world of apologetics, which focuses on defending the logic of the Christian faith. I know a lot of people are enamored by this topic. I personally don’t focus on it much, and I’m by no means an expert, but this question in particular came up in nearly every class I took in seminary. It’s one that is inescapable in the life of faith, and so it’s one that we each must have an answer for.

What follows is my approach to the question. It’s one (informed) take, but it’s not necessarily the universal answer for everyone. I hope that you find it compelling and helpful, but if not, please know that there are other perspectives out there that I would invite you to explore.

Why do we exist?

When we ask the theodicy question, we tend to take an anthropocentric view, focusing on the bad things that happen to human beings. Of course, this isn’t the only way of thinking about the question of evil, but it’s the most common one, so it’s the one that I’ll address here. If we want to understand why bad things happen to people—and specifically to us as individuals—we have to first take a step back and understand the purpose of human existence in the first place.

Why did God create us? After all, God was perfectly complete on his own. He didn’t even need us in order to have relationship. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit exist in perfect union as the Trinity. And he didn’t need us to rule over because he was already the lord of the universe. No, God didn’t need us for anything. Rather, he created us because he wanted us.

We serve a God who wants to know others and to be known by them. We serve a God who wants to share life with others. And ultimately, we serve a God who wants to love others and to be loved by others. And guess who those “others” are? Us.

That’s our purpose for existing: to know God, to live life with God, and above all, to love God. Of course, we use other words to describe these sorts of things. We say we’re meant to enjoy God, honor God, glorify God, worship God, obey God, and on and on. All of these things are true, but I think they can all be summed up in these three actions: knowing God, living life with him, and loving him. That’s what God made us to do.

What does it take?

But in order for that to happen, some things have to happen first. Love has some prerequisites in order for it to be real. And the most important of those prerequisites is free will. Love cannot be compelled. God does not want a planet full of robots saying, “I love you, God,” on cue. No, he wants people to choose to love him of their own will. Anything less would be meaningless.

But of course, having the free will to love God necessarily requires the option to not love God. To turn away from him. Even to despise him. And so, when God gave human beings the capacity for love, he inevitably gave us the capacity for rebellion. And that’s where sin and evil come into play. When we turn away from God and his plan for our lives, we commit sin, and sin has consequences.

And what are the consequences of sin? Well, we call them “evil.” We call them that because we don’t like them, and they cause us immense suffering. Things like death, heartbreak, and pain are all natural consequences of sin. But these consequences aren’t limited to just the personal, individual level. Larger-scale evil like disease, natural disasters, systemic injustice, and acts of terror are also just as much results of sin as instances of evil that are more easily traced to individual human actions.

Because for almost as long as we’ve been in existence, humans have been committing sin and rebelling against God. We’ve used the free will that God gave us for our own selfish purposes, and the evil that we see around us is simply the natural result of that. God did not create evil; we did, through our evil actions. And when we point the finger at God for terrible things that happen, we’re simply trying to distract ourselves from the fact that all of the bad things that take place ultimately point back to us.

Evil is nothing more than the consequence of the sins committed by human beings on a personal, societal, and global level throughout history. Our world, nature, society, and the universe itself are ravaged by the results of our centuries-long rebellion against God, and so when bad things happen, we really have no one to blame but ourselves.

I want to be clear here: I am not saying that any individual instance of evil can be tied to any individual sin, whether it be personal or collective. There is a tendency to look for a group to blame whenever a natural disaster hits or a mass shooting takes place. This impulse is natural but misguided. The relationship between sin and evil is deep; it’s complex, and it goes back farther than even our history books. It’s not that any particular decision causes any particular evil result, but that our continual acts of rebellion against God continue to keep the world in a state where these sorts of evil things can and do happen.

What now?

So God gave us free will in order that we may love him, and we instead used that free will to turn our backs on him, with the ultimate consequence of that rebellion being the evil that we see in the world today. What are we supposed to do about it?

I think the most obvious thing is to turn back to God and live out his purpose for our lives. If we’re meant to know God, to do life with him, and to love him, then doing those things will by definition lead to a good life. We’ll still live in a fallen world, and we’ll still feel the effects of evil, but we won’t have to live under the oppression of our own sin. God became a human being in Jesus, and he overcame sin and death, giving us an opportunity to forsake sin and return to him. This is the most important way that we can combat evil in our world.

We must also pray. God set up the world in such a way that our prayers have an effect on the world around us. Prayer changes things. It can lead to healing, both of people and of societies. It can lead to reconciliation. It can lead to safety. It can combat evil in so many ways that we don’t even understand, and that’s OK. We don’t necessarily have to understand it all. We just have to be faithful to pray and ask God to intervene for us against evil.

We also have an opportunity to combat evil by resisting it when we see it in the world and when we’re tempted to participate in it ourselves. Hatred, bigotry, selfishness, violence, and so many other forms of evil are all around us (and sometimes, tragically, inside of us). We cannot simply stand by and allow it to take place. When we see it in the world, we are called to speak out against it, to resist it with the influence that we’ve been given. And when we see it in ourselves, we are called to repent of it and to do better.

And finally, we have no other choice but to trust in God’s ultimate plan for the world. Evil has free reign for now, but we know that in the end, God will one day overcome evil once and for all. He will remove it from the world and cast it into utter destruction. His plan for the world—the way that he always intended for it to be—will one day become a reality, and when we trust in that truth and live with it as a reality in our lives, we are fighting evil in our own way.

The world is broken; no one can deny that. We broke it, and we see the consequences all the time. But ultimately, God is on our side. He wants to know us and to be known by us. He wants to walk through life with us. And he wants to share in a loving relationship with us. When we choose to say yes to God, we see just how good he is. And he is good. He’s the only source of good we can turn to in a world overrun by evil. In the end, good will prevail over the evil that currently oppresses us, and if we choose to be on the side of good, then we will prevail over it, too.

The Question We Aren’t Really Asking After a Tragedy

Last week, I published an article entitled, “Questions We Ask After a Tragedy.” In it, I listed five common questions that come up when something terrible happens and offered what I hope are helpful responses to each question. Though the post was well-received, the most common feedback was that I’d left an important question off the list: How could God allow this?

I chose not to include this question for a reason. I do think it’s an important question, and one we should at least try to answer. And it is true that we tend to voice this question a lot after something terrible happens. After all, it only seems natural to wonder why a loving, powerful God wouldn’t intervene when a person sets out to kill others. But I think that often when we ask this question, we aren’t really asking it to get any sort of answer.

Here’s what I mean: When a person is still reeling from a horrific event, they aren’t exactly ready to talk about theology. A person who is in shock may ask a philosophical question, but that doesn’t mean that they are looking for a philosophical answer. And someone who’s mourning a major loss doesn’t need an explanation for their suffering; they need comfort.

The truth is that there is no answer to the question, “How could God allow this?” that would make a victim or someone close to a victim feel any better in the wake of a traumatic event. There is a time for such discussions, but the moments directly following these horrific acts are not the right time. Why, then, do we ask this question during these moments if an answer to the question isn’t what we’re looking for?

I think that there are a few reasons. First of all, we ask the question because we have to. Tragedies tend to double as crises of faith, even for the most pious of believers. When something bad happens, it forces us to question what we believe, and so we have no choice but to ask why something so awful could happen in a world ruled by the God we claim to believe in.

We also ask the question because the very act of voicing the question has value. It gives an outlet to pain and tension that, left unrecognized, could lead to anger, resentment, or even a loss of faith altogether. It brings God into the equation, even if his exact place in that equation is in question for the time being. And it creates solidarity between us and the people around us, as well as every person throughout history who has suffered pain, because we have all found ourselves asking this question at one point or another.

And ultimately, we ask this question because we don’t know what else to do. We’re scared and confused, and the only way we know how to express those emotions is to ask God how he could let something like this happen. I think that within the context of a tragedy, we’re not really so much concerned with the intellectual responses that this question tends to warrant. Rather, we have more practical, fundamental questions that we just aren’t able to voice.

Again, I’m not saying that the question of why God lets these things happen isn’t worthwhile. But I don’t think that’s our main concern when we’ve just been struck by something horrendous. Rather, I think that when we ask this question, what we’re really asking is something more like this:

Does God care?

When something awful happens in our lives, it often seems like God is unconcerned. After all, if he was interested in what was happening, why wouldn’t he intervene? In these moments, we need to know at the most basic level that God cares about us and what we’re going through.

And fortunately, we have plenty of reasons to believe that God does care about us. Not only does scripture consistently tell us of God’s love and concern for his children, but it also tells us the story of just how much God cares about human beings and what happens to us. God cared so much that he became a human himself and entered history with us. That’s pretty incredible. And if it doesn’t demonstrate God’s concern for the world and for what happens in it, I don’t know what does.

It might not be too difficult to believe that God cares about the world as a whole. He did creat it, after all. But God isn’t just concerned with the big picture. He also cares about each person individually. The truth is that God knows each of us intimately. Like a loving parent, he cares for each of us uniquely and is concerned about us and the things we are concerned about. Sure, God cares about the world, but he cares about each person in the world, too.

When these terrible things happen, it’s natural to wonder whether or not God cares about it. But the unequivocal truth is that he does. God cares for the world, and he cares for each of us individually, and we need to be reminded of that (and remind others of that) in the midst of tragedy.

Could God have stopped this?

These events also make us wonder about God’s power. Is it possible that God didn’t stop this from happening because he simply couldn’t? It would certainly help answer the question of why he allows these things. But it would also mean that he hasn’t overcome evil. and if that’s the case, then why would we trust him?

Scripture is clear that God created the world and rules over it. It’s true that some things—and I would argue many things, if not most things—that take place in this world are not what God wants, but that’s not because he does not have the power to stop them. God has the ability to do whatever he wants. But he allows things to happen outside of his will for reasons that we do not always understand. But we don’t have to completely understand that to believer that God is in control.

I want to be clear here: God does not want these tragedies to happen. They are not a part of his will or his plan for the world. When people are violent and hateful towards one another, they are going completely against what God wants for them and for humanity as a whole. God’s will is not always carried out, but that’s not because God does not have the power to carry out his will. We know that he does, and that ultimately, his plan for the world will come to fruition in the long run.

After something horrendous takes place, we need to know that God is in control. Trusting in him and the fact that he is still on his throne, even when the world around us seems completely out of control, is what helps us maintain our faith and a sense of stability (however limited it may be) through the darkest of times.

Where is God when bad things happen?

So we want to know about God’s concern for us, and we want to know about his power over the world. But neither of those things does us much good unless we are sure of his presence with us. Because in the wake of a disaster, it doesn’t feel like God is there. It feels like he’s somewhere far away focused on something else. It makes us ask, “Where is God?”

Of course, we aren’t the first to wonder where God is. One of the recurring themes throughout the Psalms is the question of where God was when his people were taken into exile by foreign armies. After all, the temple was the representation of God’s presence with his people, and they had been removed far from it. (Not to mention that it had been burned to the ground.) But as we know and as the psalmists came to find out, God’s presence isn’t limited to any geographical location.

The answer to the question, “Where is God in the midst of tragedy?” is simple. He’s right there. He’s there mourning with the victims and their loved ones as they cry out in pain and desperation. He’s there working through the servicepeople and volunteers as they rescue, heal, and protect. He’s there comforting, drawing people to himself, and yes, intervening in ways that we cannot perceive or understand. When tragedy strikes, God is there.

When terrible things happen, we don’t need long, theological discussions about why God allows certain things to happen while stopping other things. Though that may be the question we ask out loud, it’s not the question that our souls are crying out for answers to. What we really need to know is that God cares, that he’s in control, and that he’s with us. These truths mean so much more in the midst of tragedy than any philosophical argument could, and they are the truths that we need to hear and to share when disaster strikes.

And strike it will. When it does, may we do our best to hear in others the questions they may not be able to articulate themselves and offer them the comforting answers that they so desperately need.

Questions We Ask After a Tragedy

Last week, a lone gunman killed over 50 people and injured hundreds more at a music festival in Las Vegas. Last year, 49 lives were taken in a shooting at an Orlando night club. In 2012, a shooter attacked Sandy Hook Elementary School, murdering children, teachers, and staff. These are but few of the recent mass shootings that shook our country to its core. The list, unfortunately, could go on.

When these tragedies take place, they impact us on a very deep level. It’s difficult to know how to respond in the face of such horror. But there are some common responses that I’ve observed after such events, and they usually manifest in the form of questions. Questions that we ask ourselves. Questions that we ask each other. Questions that we ask our leaders. Even questions that we ask God. Below are a few of the questions we tend to ask after events like the Las Vegas shooting and some ideas for what I believe to be helpful responses to them.

I think it’s important to note that I’ve never personally been a victim of a mass shooting, nor have I known someone who has lost their life to gun violence. Because of this, I understand that my perspective is limited and potentially less grounded in reality than that of someone who has tragically found themselves closer to these situations. Giving a voice to victims and their loved ones is one of the most important things we can do in the wake of these kinds of events. However, these things do affect the nation and the world as a whole in important ways; in a sense, we are all victims of these acts of violence. Shootings like the one in Las Vegas affect me personally, especially on a psychological level. And so, I feel that my thoughts are founded and have the potential to add value to the conversation, though I acknowledge that my experience is not firsthand.

These are the questions we ask ourselves in the wake of a tragedy.

Who did this?

This begins as a practical question: In order to stop the violence, police must know who is committing it. But once the event is over, this question of who perpetrated it still persists. It almost becomes a public obsession. Often, the name of the shooter isn’t released until officials can gather more information, but that doesn’t stop us from speculating. After last week’s shooting, many people used Google to search for the shooter’s identity, only to find misinformation from a forum that was pointing the finger at the wrong man. This urgent search for someone to blame can be dangerous.

Ultimately, the perpetrator’s identity isn’t the most important question. Yes, it’s natural to wonder who committed the crime and to yearn for justice to be served, but when we focus too much on the question of who did it, we can accidentally give off the message that acts of violence are a means of becoming famous, getting attention, and potentially inspiring others to act in the same way. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. And we want to de-incentivize the carrying out of these atrocities in any way that we can.

Rather than focusing on the offender, we might do well to instead give our attention to the victims, the ones who did no wrong but have been forced to suffer the consequences of another’s actions anyway. These are the people who belong at the front of our minds and on the front of our newspapers. They deserve to be honored; they deserve to be remembered. And in saying their names, we can push back against the violence that took them away from us in the first place.

How could someone do something like this?

Once we know who committed the heinous act, we inevitably try to rationalize it. We want to look into the person’s history to understand what it is about them that led them to do this. We start by looking for the typical narratives: mental illness, radicalization by a terrorist group, a personal vendetta. We think that if we can find some explanation for what happened, then maybe things will make sense. Maybe things things will be OK.

But the truth is that there is no explanation for these tragedies. There is no rationality. Sure, there are influences that might push a person in a certain direction. But the act of taking a human life, much less the lives of many people, is by its very nature senseless. There’s no sense to it, and thus, our search for an explanation is ultimately futile.

And yet, we’ve all done senseless things before, haven’t we (though certainly on a much smaller, less destructive scale)? As much as we hate to think about it, we are each only a certain number of misfortunate steps away from doing something completely irrational. Maybe a better question to ask is, “What stands between me and doing something like this?” Because the truth is that these things do happen. And they are carried out by people, like us.

How could someone do something like this? I don’t know. It makes no sense. But the potential do something terrible is within me, too. And I never want to fail to recognize that fact lest I start down the path to senseless action myself.

What can we do to stop this?

This is the question we spend the most time on, and it feels like every time tragedy strikes, we have to start this conversation over from the beginning. It’s become so tied up with politics and money that we’ve lost sight of the real point of asking this question in the first place. It’s not about figuring out who’s on what team or villainizing those whose approaches are different from our own. It’s not even about personal rights. It’s about putting an end to violence. If that isn’t the purpose of asking this question, then why ask it in the first place?

We have to de-politicize the issue of ending these events. It’s clear from their recurrence and their brutality that what we’ve been doing isn’t working. Something has to change. And yes, at some point that has to play out on a policy level. But if we start the conversation by drawing a line between opposing sides, then we’re never going to make any significant change, and these things are simply going to keep happening while we stand by and twiddle our thumbs. Everyone, from every part of the political spectrum, can agree that we want these acts of violence stop. So let’s start there and work towards making impactful changes that work. We have the same goal; so let’s start accomplishing it today.

Perhaps a complete re-framing of the question is in order. Instead of asking, “How can we stop these things from happening again?” maybe we should be asking, “What have we done that has made these atrocities possible in the first place?” We are responsible for creating a world in which these things can happen, and we are responsible for making the world a place where they don’t happen anymore. How have our views, our rhetoric, and our actions contributed to the mental health crisis, to the rise of radical terrorist organizations, and to the use of deadly weapons against innocents? What are we as individuals and as a society doing to create and worsen these problems, and how can we stop?

Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves, “How can we foster a greater understanding of the sanctity of life in our world today?” The truth is that we have all—regardless of our political leanings or the labels we choose to apply to ourselves—failed on this front. We as a society do not value human life the way that we should, and that is the single biggest contributor to these acts of violence. What if we chose to intentionally treat life as the sacred thing that it is? What if we chose to teach our children to do as well? What if we held each other accountable for treating each and every human being—no matter their race, sex, age, gender, ethnicity, religion, ability, sexual orientation, country of origin, political party, or any other way we categorize one another—as precious, as infinitely valuable, as a sacred living person worthy of respect? Call me an idealist, but I think that the world would be a much less violent place.

How can I help?

These events leave us feeling helpless and alone. But one of the few glimpses of light in the darkness of these tragedies is the way that people find a way to overcome the despair, come together, and work to help those who have been affected. Like Mr. Rogers used to say, when things are bad, look for the helpers. And you have the opportunity to be one of them.

The act of asking, “How can I help?” is brave in and of itself. It’s expression of your willingness to take your focus off of yourself and onto others. It’s a way of saying, “I’m scared, I’m messed up, and I need some help. But I know that there are others who need help more than I do, and I want to be there for them.” The fact that anyone is able to look away from the unbelievable horror in front of them and pay attention to those in need is a true testament to how good people can be.

There are a million different ways any individual can help. Usually, in the immediate vicinity of the attack, medical professionals need donations of blood. So if you’re there or nearby, you have an opportunity to make a huge difference by giving up something you already have more than enough of. Victims and their loved ones may need someone to talk to, or just someone to sit with. Or someone to speak out on their behalf. Or to say their names. Or simply to remember them. And of course, money always goes a long way in these situations when given to the right organization. You can help. You can make a difference. All of you have to do is ask yourself the question, then look around and find some way to get involved.

Why did this happen?

This is the big one, and it’s the one that lingers the longest. It’s the one that keeps you up at night and comes back years later bringing just a twinge of the pain you felt to remind you that you don’t have your answer. It’s the most natural question for someone to ask, and it’s the most difficult one to answer: Why? Why did this terrible thing happen? What is the reason for it all?

When we ask this question, we’re not seeking so much to understand as to find meaning in the tragedy. We don’t want things, especially bad things, to happen without meaning anything. There has to be an ultimate purpose for what happened. Otherwise, it was pointless.

But the truth is that senseless acts of violence don’t have explanations or ultimate purpose behind them. And they don’t have any meaning on their own. They’re simply horrific acts carried out by broken people under the wrong set of circumstances. It’s hard to admit, but all of those deaths and injuries didn’t happen for some greater, cosmic reason.

Still, that doesn’t mean that we can’t find meaning in them. We humans have an incredible capacity for meaning-making. We want things to matter, and so we make them matter by injecting them with purpose in ways that change the way we perceive them and ultimately form us into who we are. This is absolutely incredible, and it‘s what gives us the resilience to press on through tragedy after horrific tragedy.

And so that is what we do. We make meaning out of the most meaningless of acts. In the wake of these events, we find community in the coming together of those we may never have interacted with otherwise. We find inspiration in the stories of the survivors and those who put themselves at risk to rescue others. We find solidarity in mourning with those who have lost loved ones. We find hope when we affirm that the world can be a better place and we commit ourselves to making it so. And we find so much more. These awful circumstances do not give that meaning to us. Instead, we make that meaning despite the circumstances. We make meaning where there is none, and in this way, we bring light to darkest of times.

When awful things happen, they leave us with a lot of questions. Sometimes, we find answers, but more often than not, we find that the answers we seek simply are not out there to be found. Asking these questions and seeking these answers is natural; it’s something we all do. But in the end, it’s not the answers that matter. It’s not even the questions. In the process of the asking and the seeking, we are given the opportunity to honor the victims, to be honest with ourselves, to value life, to give of ourselves to others, and to create meaning where there is none. And I can’t think of a better response to a tragedy—or the inevitable questions that come with it—than that.