Fallen Actions in a Fallen World
by the Rev. David Wentz
Note: On Monday, Sept. 16, a mass shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., killed 13 people, including the shooter. Bishop Marcus Matthews issued a statement that day, calling for the church to pray and to act. “(A)fter our prayers are said, we are also called to act to end the gun violence in our nation,” the bishop wrote. “We must stand up to the pain these acts of violence inflict. Connected to one another and to God, we must take a stand for peace so that Christ's ‘shalom’ is available to all.” Read the full statement at http://www.bwcumc.org/news/bishop_calls_prayer_and_action.
I write this two days after the shooting at the Navy Yard. I wish I could say the nation is still in shock, but it seems that this kind of thing has happened so much recently that we have become largely numb to it.
Yet the questions remain. Where was God in all this? Why were some people killed and others escaped? Did God cause it, or allow it, or ignore it? Or was God powerless to prevent it?
One of our members works in the same building, on the same floor, where the shootings took place. He decided to stay home that morning. We praise God for that decision, and rightly so. Yet, was that God’s divine intervention? If it was, why didn’t God keep the victims home from work? Does God play favorites?
There is a whole branch of theology, called theodicy, devoted to answering the question of evil: how can we reconcile the evil that happens every day with an all good, all knowing, and all powerful God?
A large portion of the Christian world subscribes to a theological viewpoint that says God does indeed play favorites, that God causes everything that happens, and that we just have to accept it—either because God knows it’s best even though it looks evil to us, or just because God is God and He can do what He wants to.
I have to admit that at times like this, I’m almost tempted to subscribe to that viewpoint, just because it seems like an easy answer. There are certainly Bible verses that seem to support that interpretation.
Others say, with less biblical justification, that the victims must have really been bad people, secret sinners who died because God was punishing them for their sins. This was the argument Job’s “friends” used to explain Job’s suffering. If you read the end of the book of Job in the Bible, you will see that this line of reasoning made God very angry, because it was so far from the truth.
I can’t reconcile either of these views with my understanding of the whole flow of the Bible. The Bible consistently and repeatedly illustrates that God is love, God is on the side of those who suffer, (and that) God does not want to condemn or punish us. To the contrary: God sent His own Son, Jesus, to take our punishment on himself, because God wants everyone to be saved (John 3:16-17; 2 Peter 3:9).
So why do these things happen? Here are the truths with which I comfort myself in times like this.
First, we live in a fallen world.
This world is not the way God planned it. God created us to share a relationship of love with Him. Love that is forced is not love, it is coercion. So God gave us free will. Our first ancestors used that free will to disobey God. That introduced sin, decay and death into God’s creation.
In essence, God put us humans in charge of this world, and we sublet it to the devil. In fact, the Bible calls Satan “the God of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4).
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus told us to pray for God’s will to be done on earth, as it is being done in heaven. If everything that happens is God’s will, Jesus wouldn’t have told us to pray that prayer. Any way in which earth is different from heaven is a way God’s will is not being done on earth—and it’s a call for Christians to work toward change.
In Luke 13:1-5, Jesus as much as says that you can’t judge people’s righteousness based on what happens to them. Fallen people in a fallen world make fallen decisions and take fallen actions, and those decisions and actions often harm innocent people. I do think it’s safe to say that a person who is an active Christian, seeking every moment to live for God, and surrounded by a loving, supportive Christian community, will not be the perpetrator in a tragedy like that of the Navy Yard. But I don’t think we can say that such a person would never be a victim.
I believe every Christian can and should cultivate an awareness of the Holy Spirit’s guidance in our lives to the point that we can recognize warnings about situations of danger. And I do believe in the power of prayer for protection. However, neither of those beliefs should be construed to say anything about the spiritual standing of someone who suffers a tragedy. Tribulation in this world is the birthright of every Christian (John 16:33).
Second, when and how we die is not nearly so important as our standing with God when it happens.
Everyone is going to die sometime. If we live 10 years or a hundred, in the light of eternity that 90 year difference is less than the blink of an eye. This is not to minimize the tragedy of a life cut short. It is to maximize the comfort of knowing where we will spend eternity - and with whom.
Third, and most important, God is love.
We know, by faith and by much testimony and by personal experience, that despite the seeming logic of the question of evil, God is all loving, God is all knowing, God is all powerful. That means we can trust God. We can rest in God. We may not understand it, but we don’t need to. In words familiar to many at the Navy Yard and elsewhere, “That’s above my pay grade.” God knows, and that’s good enough for us. After all, if we could explain everything, where would be the need for faith?
When tragic things happen—and as long as we live in a fallen world, they will—we pray for the victims, we help the survivors, we look to our own standing with God, and we work to be the answer to Jesus’ prayer that God’s will be done. Ultimately, we rest in the hands of the God who loves each of us enough to die for us. That answer may not satisfy the skeptics of the world, but it is all we need.
Blessings,
Pastor David
David Wentz is pastor of Trinity UMC in Annapolis, Md. This article first appeared in “The Lamplighter,” the church’s newsletter, Oct. 2013 issue, Pastor’s Page. Republished by permission of the author.
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