Day of Mourning

(picture courtesy of MyWay News)
Our pastor's response to the VT Massacre...def. some food for thought.

Death on a Virginia Campus
We all feel sad, angry, and perplexed at what happened at Virginia Tech last Monday. Not surprisingly, people want to know why God didn’t stop it. When people ask me that question, I am slow to answer it. Thoughtful answers and inflamed passions are a bad combination, like raking leaves in a windstorm.
But there are thoughtful answers.
For example, I might answer by first asking, “Which tragedies do you want God to stop? Just this one in Blacksburg, VA? Would it be okay then if God did not stop the killing of Amish children last September? What should God do about the children whom insurgents blow up in Baghdad? What should He do about the children swept away by the Tsunami in Banda Aceh or buried in the Pakistani earthquake?”
What are we asking, when we ask why God didn’t stop the massacre at Virginia Tech?
If God stopped each tragedy before it happened, what would that interference do to human freedom? Either human beings are free or they are not. If we are free, then we are free to do both unimaginable good and unimaginable evil and everything in between. If we don’t like that, we don’t like freedom. Maybe we would like some form of servitude.
A few others make the giant leap of saying, “If God is supposed to be all powerful and compassionate and doesn’t prevent what happened to those students, then I don’t believe in God. Such a God would be a monster.”
That is a possibility, but I have a question. If there is no God, whom do you see about what happened Monday in Virginia? And about your grief, anger, and confusion? And about all the other senseless human violence? And about the impersonal violence of earthquake, hurricane, and fire?
Without God you still have all the tragedy and all the emotion and no one to turn to who might help make sense of it some day and even bring something good out of the evil.
Which brings me back to the Amish of Pennsylvania last September. Of all the heart-rending images, none so captured our attention as the communal determination of the Amish to forgive the man who killed their children.
That strange community, living on the outer margins of American culture, experienced the same kind of brutality that assaulted Virginia Tech, and the Amish couldn’t wait to forgive. And millions of people saw them do it on television.
Unimaginable evil and unimaginable good stared us in the face again last Monday. Mr. Cho meant evil in West Ambler Johnston Hall and in Norris Hall, but God meant it for good; just the way He did on Good Friday, when envy and political expediency crucified Jesus, and God raised Him from the dead. How determined are we to trust God and to forgive the killer?

– Pastor Bo Matthews