A Random World of Good and Evil

How can one make sense of a world such as ours and a race of creatures such as us?

Sometimes we fool ourselves into believing that we have seen it all. A random shooting at a senior high school in Montreal, or a well planned and effectively executed killing spree in Columbine, or 'God Lovers/men haters' flying planes into the Twin Towers, or assorted genocides, ethnic cleansings, wars of all descriptions and madmen with nuclear capabilities, we breath a sigh and suck up our strength to carry on. But then we remember a tsunami of unprecedented destruction, hurricanes and floods destroying entire cities, AIDS orphaning an entire continent and the despair of poverty over the majority of mankind.

Sigh.

And what about the cute little boy around the corner who whose ugly tumours and even uglier treatments disfigured and tormented him for months till finally the disease tired of toying with his little body and his family's hearts and mercifully snuffed the breath of life completely out of him?
Can we take anymore of this?

Like Bruce Coburn in his song Tokyo we complain to God:"Why'd you have to show me that accident scene? Didn't I get enough shaking up?"

We try to comfort ourselves by saying surely we have seen the worst that life can show us and perhaps we can doggedly and blindly stagger on while holding to our faith in an activist and good and powerful God.

But then comes the Amish School House Massacre. This twisted plot to capture, sexually molest and torture little girls before killing them seems to puts an end to our simple faith that God is watching over and caring for and intervening on behalf of sparrows, and lilies and little innocent girls in their modest powder blue dresses.

If God Is, and if He Loves us, How can these innocent children be dead?

When we have thought that human beings have plumbed the ugliest depths of depravity and that there cannot be any lower regions into which a beast or a man can descend, we now have this new unimaginable act of human degeneracy.


It has never been easy to believe in a God who intervenes to defend the innocent and the weak as many would teach is promised in the pages of scripture and sometimes we let ourselves hope that this might still be the case. We try to tell ourselves that if only we looked deeply enough into the present situation or if we hold on in faith a future revelation will reveal the true mercy at the heart of this unexplainable tragedy and perhaps our faith will be justified.

I don't know what to think of it all but I am certain it is impossible to make the propositions of a simplistic, triumphalist Christian faith fit rationally and consistently over the facts of life on God's Green Earth.

The most I can say is that I hope for redemption of this evil.

I am a Christian largely based on my inability and unwillingness to live in a world of unredeemed suffering. Somehow the price of pain exacted upon innocent infants and children, and not so innocent children and adults must be for the purchase of something of ultimate and overarching worth. Because if all this suffering is really for nothing then we all should find an appropriately high ledge, climb upon it, and step away from this wall of pain.

But I can't do that because Jesus has assured us that the worst word is not the Last Word nor the Greatest Word.

I think Christianity still has something we need to hear because of Jesus and Jesus alone. No other figure addresses the mystery of suffering as well as that of this tortured man, hung naked upon a tree, dying between two thieves. That is why I stand before you as a person who believes that if any meaning can be found, it will be found in this man called Jesus.

I have come to believe (hope, really) that the redemption story is still in process of unfolding and life is worth living because the crucifixion of Jesus is not past only. It is past, present and future as well.

The continuing crucifixion is this unexplained and unmerited suffering we see all around us. It is the revelation of the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, in the screams of the women and children of Darfur as they are burned alive in their thatch huts; in the flailing, falling man who in his desperation to escape the 'hell fires' of the burning Towers, hurtles himself 100 stories down to concrete below; and in the bodies of those little Amish schoolgirls as they lay bleeding by the blackboard; and in the broken hearts of gentle, simple folk as they gathered outside the pastoral one-room Pennsylvania school house.

I hope we never see another 'crucifixion' again but I expect we shall awake another day, probably in the not too distant future, and learn of a fresh atrocity so unimaginably evil that it makes the Amish Horror pale in comparison.

If this is not the fellowship of his sufferings and the revelation of Jesus (as the least of these) being physically present to us, then absurdity, and chaos, and death rule at the centre of the universe. And if this is so, then oblivion is better than life.

Where can we find hope or meaning in this absurd world, in this Random World of Good and Evil?

The storyteller who gave us the book of Job painted a picture that makes more sense of the world as it is revealed to us in the morning news and in the revelation of the life of Jesus in the Gospels. In this most profound book, the author reveals a universe that is in a struggle of titanic proportions. The accuser of 'man to God' and of 'God to man', Satan, comes before God to undermine the Lord's attachment to His creation. Satan does this by denigrating the pinnacle of creation, Job a truly righteous man.
Job is accused of loving God only for the things that God provides thereby declaring Job a fickle mercenary and not a faithful and loving servant. He calls him a 'prosperity gospeler'. This denigrates the man Job, all of the rest of creation, and subtly by logical extension it also slanders the author of this creation as well.

God allows the testing of Job to unfold.

In the struggle that ensues it appears that God can in no way refute Satan's vile claims other than to let Job's suffering continue unabated, unaided, unsuccoured.

If we hold to God's foreknowledge and Omniscience we know that God knew the outcome but for some mysterious reason it was necessary for Satan to witness the steadfastness of Job's integrity in suffering even when no help was given and as the Accuser continued to pour contempt upon Job's and God's integrity.

Apparently God needed Job and Job's suffering.

Perhaps He needs ours as well.

We cannot understand why, but it seems to me that we either believe this or we surrender all belief in the face of the suffering we see so abundantly in the world.

The murderer of the Amish children lost a child at birth and apparently he used this as an excuse to avenge himself on God by sexually assaulting and killing innocent children. He reasoned that since God allowed his daughter to die he was justified in molesting, torturing and killing.
If this is not satanic logic and satanic power then tell me what natural cause exists that can make animals act in this way?

This man suffered an evil (the loss of his premature child) but because it was not redeemed by faith and integrity it was used by a greater evil to magnify that suffering and to deliver it upon even less deserving folks.

It appears that in this struggle the devil has won.

But then there are the other ones who suffered in this tragedy. We are now hearing about the Amish grandfather who stood with the surviving children outside the schoolhouse telling the little ones that they must forgive this evil and not think harshly about the man who did it, and about the grieving mother who has invited the family of the perpetrator to come to their child's funeral so they can receive support, comfort and love among the families of the little girls who have just been viciously murdered.



What are we to make of these strange reports?

I think that in the courts of heaven the accuser declared victory earlier this week when first he displayed the bodies the dead children in Newspaper and Television reports around the world. But perhaps today he has had to ask for an adjournment now that the pleas of the Amish families for forgiveness and mercy, not hatred and vengeance, have been presented before the hosts of heaven and the world.

I could not have reacted like these dear Amish families have. I could not have given God a case to present before the hosts that would deny Evil a victory over Good.

But I do see that perhaps there is hope that someday a final victory, a final overturning of the accusations, a final redemption will be won when you and I and the rest of humanity can emulate our Amish brothers and sisters.

God Bless those who suffer and do not hate. They are 'Jesus' in our midst and I believe they are a part of the mysterious necessity that may yet be mankind's Salvation.

It is a hope that is as close to faith as I can see on a distant and obscure spiritual horizon. A horizon that still shows the silhouette of a cross upon a hill. Dark as it is, there is a sun rising (not setting) behind that hill. When that sun has fully risen , I believe that the shadows and the darkness will be become light and the resurrection will be more than a story in our heads about something that happened 2000 years ago.

LH