Notes From Jon

Common questions arise whenever human beings encounter suffering – we heard them over and over after 9-11, and we’re hearing them now. You might think we should ask “why,” and we’ll get there eventually. But for right now, trying to find a way to think and to respond when something like this happens, atheists and believers alike will come to one question:

Where is God? How could he let something like this happen? How could this young man, no matter how disturbed, bring himself to commit such a horrible act? How could God allow these young people – in the budding stage of life, their whole futures before them – how could God let this happen to them? And where is he now? Where are the justice and vindication? Where are the consolation and the joy?

It’s a question as old as the oldest book in the Hebrew Scriptures – Job. How fitting it seems in times like this that the oldest of writings about God are not songs of praise or accounts of his greatness… but questions about good, evil, justice and God’s seeming absence in the midst of suffering.

And if we learn anything from Job, it’s this: Now is not the time for answers, for trying to figure out eternal “why’s.” Even after watching those videos, after hearing of his troubled past, even after hearing psychological analyses… even then we will not be able to give a decent answer to that question. Now is not the time for answers. Now is the time for mourning and for reaching out.

Where was God last Monday? Most of us weren’t there, so we can’t say. But we’re starting to hear stories. Professors and students willing to lay down their lives for others. Unexplainable escapes and near-misses. The outpouring of compassion that touched so many lives at a crucial time.

Where is he now? He’s working, through his Spirit, to bring unity to a world that’s usually divided by class, color, religion, and yes… even team loyalty. He’s speaking through the voices of churches and Christians who, instead of calling for heads, are calling for FORGIVENESS – for Cho Seung-Hui and for the school administration and staff. After all, did we learn anything from the incident in an Amish school a year ago?

We can ask where God is, and where he might have been, and that’s appropriate. But what we cannot do is allow that question (or the answers) to let ourselves off the hook. No matter where we perceive God to have been last Monday, we know the task WE have been given: to comfort those in mourning, to offer prayers for those who have been hurt, to stand up for love instead of revenge, to offer forgiveness instead of lawsuits. These are not the jobs of a select few – they are the jobs of every believer, whether in the wake of a massacre or simply in our day-to-day lives.

Where is God? He’s right here where he’s supposed to be. Question is… where are we?