SORROW: Is It Possible To Make Sense Of What Is Senseless?

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4

Why didn’t God do anything? Why those children? Why that town? Why that school? Why those families? If God is all-powerful, all knowing, and ever-present, then where was He? If He is a good God, then why did He allow this to happen? If love and goodness are supposed to overpower evil, then why does it seem like evil continues to win and good lose?

Our nature is to blame, identify, label, and excuse events or issues, and when there is an impossibility of it making little to no sense, we pull God in the mix to either blame Him or assign Him to fix.

Like so many other people, I cry and grieve for the families of Newtown. I asked God what so many others asked… Why?

I’ve heard news commentary and read Facebook Newsfeeds which say we’ve taken God out of our nation and out of our schools, and this is the result. It’s a philosophy of we get what we deserve sort of thing. It’s a fallback to a belief if you keep God in the center then there is some sort of supernatural shield from all evil and tragedy.

This is NOT a biblical way of thinking.

If this were so, then I couldn’t go back thousands of years and read where a king gave an order to murder every Hebrew baby boy by drowning them in the river.

God described the Israelites during that time as His people, yet these mothers were having their babies ripped from their arms and murdered. Senseless… Where was God? Did those Hebrew families not honor God?

Fast forward to several thousand years later when another king ordered the senseless slaughter of all males children ages two years and younger. Where was God? After all, weren’t they still His people? Had they, too, removed God from their lives, their homes, their world?

Believing in God, and accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior doesn’t liberate us from ever experiencing senseless tragedies, any more than having a nation founded upon godly principals exonerate it from evil either.

We cannot mistake the presence of evil as the absence of God. Romans 5:20 reads …where sin increased grace increased all the more.

What is really hard to make sense of is God’s desire to allow mankind free will.

God will not thwart the will of man, even if man’s will is for evil. 1 Cor. 10:13 tells us when temptation comes our way, God will show us a way out. But God will not force us to take the way out.

To be honest, that’s what’s the most senseless to me! Yet, even though I don’t really like that answer, it’s biblical.

When it comes right down to it, where would we be ok with God interfering in our free will?

Of course we’d want Him to stop a tragedy as senseless as the murder of innocent children – that is common sense…. but what if that involved stopping our free will to marry whom we choose to marry? Or have children when we choose to have children? Or live our lives the way we desire to live them?

What if that interference comes in the form of influencing our will to purchase what we desire to purchase? Create and invent what we desire to develop, or watch what we desire to watch? Or become friends with whomever we want to become friends with?

Where would you be ok with God interfering in your free will? Where would you be okay with God influencing your rights?

It seems it’s ok for Him to exercise His will when it appears moral and just, and we shake our fist at God when He doesn’t, but moral and just to whom? Whose guideline do you want to line up God’s will to? Whose standard will you compare God’s standard to? Yours? The Bible? The government’s? Our judicial system? Where does God draw the line at imparting His will upon mankind’s will?

God allows us to partner with Him, and to willingly follow His desires and His will, but by doing that it never absolves us from tragedy. Walking in the will of God guarantees us great grace to carry us through life’s most intense sorrows and deepest valleys, but as for this world and it’s troubles that is it.

Why then should we put our faith and hope in God at all? What benefit is it to me if I am not shielded from sorrow and suffering? What am I hoping for?

Our Hope Is Not Here…

As this world grows darker, our desire for truth and an authentic God will grow greater. Scripture says that …despite all of these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ! Romans 8:37

The world we live in is not meant to last. Our days on this earth were prophesied to be dark and evil.  The life we truly desire is only found in the one to come. The one promised in Christ! It’s the one without sorrow and suffering – and it’s coming! It’s our life in the New Heaven and the New Earth. It’s the one where we live the lives we dream of living now! It’s the hope the disciples spoke of to the first believers. It’s what sustained them in their darkest hour.

But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.  Phil 3:20-21

In the Old Testament, their hope of a savoir is what kept them going in their darkest ours. In the New Testament it’s the hope of His return that helps us make sense of what is senseless.

If we keep our hope on His return, and our hearts set on who He is, we will understand that as evil grows and suffering increases it will be a clear sign of His return. And soon, we will live the way our hearts long for! We will have the life we hope and strive for!

We will live in a world where our King reigns on a throne of justice, truth, and righteousness! A world where evil is defeated, where love abounds, and where pain and sorrow doesn’t exist.

God didn’t promise this life without sorrows, but He did promise that those who mourn in this life will be comforted. I am grateful for that in a senseless situation.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1