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God Can Work With Anything
Since last weeks unimaginable tragedy in Blacksburg I, like you, have played spectator to both the good and the bad in humanity. Those earning high marks for “cluelessness” and insensitivity are a large majority of the media and at least a few over zealous and under informed proselytizers - both of whom seemed to operate with blinders on given the circumstances. But in contrast to these lowest denominators, the compassion, love and resilience displayed by all those touched so directly by this tragedy, as well as the heartfelt sympathy extended by everyone in the world beyond, has hopefully inspired us all.
Strange that we often only see the glory of humanity when sadness and suffering abounds.
Over the last week I have been included in no shortage of discussions regarding this reality with friends as well as a “current events” Sunday school class. It is called “Anything Goes” and is appropriately named for the variety of topics brought in, as well as the inevitable question that seems to permeate all discussions: How are we to walk in our faith in a culture where “almost anything goes?”
There was little doubt about this week’s topic.
The irony in discussing such a seemingly random and sad event is that on the surface it would appear to be exactly the material one might use to summarily explain God away. Yet, by the end of all our discussions the clear focus was upon God’s remarkable presence in and through such events – not His apparent absence that would allow such a thing to occur.
In response to the question of, “why suffering exist in the world,” the standard answer seems to be that the same “free will” that allows genuine Love to exist also allows us to turn away from one another and ultimately God, resulting in a fallen creation where things do not operate as they were originally intended. All of these things that are “not of God,” form the basis of evil or “the will of the evil one” if you are so inclined. On the surface it would seem that this fully explains the existence in which we find ourselves – a never ending struggle of good and evil in a world that is as beautiful as the spring flowers outside your classroom window one moment, and as mad as a crazed gunman acting on his long pent up rage the next.
But Christian’s go further to claim that God has taken care of this difficult contradiction in one supreme moment in history where the giving of Himself in complete forgiveness has resolved all our wanderings from Him and the sometimes horrific results. And that if we could somehow ultimately trust Him with every detail and outcome in this fallen world (even and maybe especially the worst ones), then all will ultimately be well.
Perhaps the greatest evidence of this truth is that no matter how evil might choose to open the door of suffering to us – whether the capriciousness of a deranged gunmen or the chance malfunction that takes an airliner from the sky – God’s gift of forgiveness to the creation has put an unchangeable mechanism in place by which His Grace inevitably flows in from all sides. And thus such events are not only countered - but counted among the most likely opportunities through which we might discover who and who’s we really are . . . Where the world’s frivolous demands fall away and all that is precious and fragile and real in life becomes so abundantly clear.
But at the end of the day we must do our part - we too must ultimately somehow reach a place where we can forgive and hand it all over. Nowhere has that been more apparent to me this week than in the inclusion of Seung-Hui Cho’s name among those mourned by VA Tech students on the memorials at the drill field. No less the victim perhaps, of a world that materially and practically can be as cruel as it is beautiful. What would he say – what could he say, to this great act of love offered up by many who suffered so horrifically his wrath?
Though I have to wonder whether I too could offer such unconditional forgiveness in the face of a tragedy that had affected me so immediately, I do know that such acts are the wings upon which true healing comes in on. If God is anywhere, he is present within these young student’s hearts – and ultimately in every place and time, steadily seeking us no less in the joy than in the suffering of our lives.
May this truth carry us all bravely forward and bless us in the better days ahead.
- Stuart