The great challenge is to refuse to let the bad things that happen to us
do bad things to us. That is the crucial difference between adversity and
tragedy. ~ Neal A. Maxwell
Why? It seems like such a simple question,
and yet it is one as complex and as old
as tragedy, accident, pain, and misfortune.
When violent things happen to people whom we consider to be good and innocent, our world is suddenly tossed into turmoil. We find ourselves struggling to make sense of moments and events that really defy explanation. In our struggle for reason, we may thrash about, seeking someone to blame, someone to hurt (to cause pain to in the name of pain), someone to punish. Lacking a credible target, or "enemy" to defile and/or vilify, we may even create one as needed, or make one of ourselves, pouring the salt of guilt over our own woundedness, perhaps in some strange way, allowing us to be numbered among the innocent victims.
At these intersections of innocence and violence, our internal systems of fairness and justice are challenged. We are suddenly confronted with the very real possibility, as evidenced by events right before our eyes, that the world in which we live may indeed be horribly unfair, may not make logical sense, and, in fact, may quite likely be badly broken.
This is a stunning realization.
Along with our search for reason, and someone to blame (almost always a scapegoat), the spiritual and religious among us invariably turn to God for answers and solutions (or, in some cases, a place to affix blame). We want a map to guide us through the confusing and twisted tangle of moral complexities. In his Op-Ed column for the Washington Post Friday morning, Charles Krauthammer says, "With an event such as this [the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus], consisting of nothing but suffering and tragedy, the only important questions are those of theodicy, of divine justice."
This certainly appears to be the case. Newspapers and the world wide web seem to be awash with excited and earnest explanations from the faithful regarding the existence and whereabouts of God during such times of turmoil. They range from the sacred to the profane.
Theodicy, by the way, is essentially the human attempt to explain (and/or excuse) God's presence in the face of the evil that surrounds us. When things are going good, there is really no need or desire to address this issue. Our theology (our view of God) works for us. God is in God's heaven and all is right with the world-- at least, within the reasonable and surveyable proximity of our world as we measure it.
It is important to note here that not all people measure the world in the same way. For some, the boundaries may include only similar or related people, in a gerrymandering fashion, within a given town, or the state of Virginia, or a nation, or a religion. Other people, however, may try to measure a much larger world, perhaps a world largely as it is, and one which, at any given point, contains a staggering amount of injustice, unfathomably so, unimaginably so... mind numbingly so.
But regardless of how we measure our world, when a part of it is suddenly destroyed at intersections of innocence and violence, then we are called to a very different place, a place where our current theology may not work very well. If we suddenly find ourselves stumbling about, feeling around for what we think are the "right" words in the midnight of our own ignorance, and doing extensive amounts of religious calculus and Bible math simply to fill the void of our own unknowing, then it's quite possible one's theology has broken along with one's world.
Standing at the intersection of innocence and violence, at such deeply painful and confusing moments, we can close our eyes, and continue to look for old ways to shape the existing world around our given viewpoint of God, or we can begin to open our eyes, and our selves, and seek new ways to experience the movement of God within our world. It is at such moments when we feel most vulnerable that we are also most exposed to the transforming grace of God.
Sunday at 4 pm
at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Meeting House
the conversation continues.
I hope to see you there. :)
Shalom,
Emma