Sandy Hook: Why the senseless slaughter?

Like all of you, I am at a loss to comprehend what happened last Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The lives of 20 innocent young children and six of their teachers and administrators were extinguished by a madman as they were gathered to learn in a place they believed was safe from harm.

Why did it happen? How do we go forward in the face of such senseless depravity?

These are questions that I cannot answer adequately. But I do know that none of us should take solace in dodging them by attributing what happened to those children as a modern-day version of God exacting punishment on a broken and dark America, just as some believe he did thousands of years ago against his chosen people, the Jews of Ancient Israel. Such a view, wherever proclaimed, attempts to pass the buck of responsibility for murder to God, while simultaneously letting us off the hook as sinners.

What follows has helped me begin to cope with the fury, despair and hopelessness that overwhelmed me as I learned about the massacre of these children. Here are excerpts from comments on the Connecticut tragedy made by Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Pastor Keller's thoughts get to the heart of a catastrophe like this, especially as Christmas approaches.

“As a minister, of course, I've spent countless hours with people who are struggling and wrestling with the biggest question — the why question in the face of relentless tragedies and injustices.

“First, we have to recognize that the problem of tragedy, injustice and suffering is a problem for everyone no matter what their beliefs are. Now, if you believe in God and for the first time experience or see horrendous evil, you rightly believe that that is a problem for your belief in God, and you're right — and you say, ‘How could a good and powerful God allow something like this to happen?'

“But it's a mistake to think that if you abandon your belief in God it somehow is going to make the problem easier to handle. If there is no God or higher divine law and the material universe is all there is, then violence is perfectly natural — the strong eating the weak! And yet, somehow, we still feel this isn't the way things ought to be. Why not? I'm just trying to make the point that the problem of injustice and suffering is a problem for belief in God but it is also a problem for disbelief in God. So abandoning belief in God does not really help in the face of it.

“Second, I believe we need to grasp an empowering hint from the past. When people ask the big question, ‘Why would God allow this or that to happen?', there are almost always two answers. The one answer is: Don't question God! He has reasons beyond your finite little mind. And therefore, just accept everything. Don't question. The other answer is: I don't know what God's up to — I have no idea at all about why these things are happening. There's no way to make any sense of it at all. Now I would like to respectfully suggest the first of these answers is too hard and the second is too weak because, though of course we don't have the full answer, we do have an idea, an incredibly powerful idea.

“One of the great themes of Hebrew Scriptures is that God identifies with the suffering. I think the texts are saying God binds up his heart so closely with suffering people that he interprets any move against them as a move against him. Christians believe that in Jesus, God's son, divinity became vulnerable to and involved in — suffering and death.

“But it is on the cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock, that God now knows, too, what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack. We don't know the reason that God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn't, what it can't be. It can't be that he doesn't love us. It can't be that he doesn't care. God so loved us and hates suffering that he was willing to come down and get involved in it. And therefore the cross is an incredibly empowering hint. OK, it's only a hint, but if you grasp it, it can transform you.

“And lastly, we have to grasp an empowering hope for the future. In John 11 we hear Jesus say: I am the resurrection and the life! Resurrection means the restoration to us of the life we lost.

“Oh, I know what many of you are saying, ‘I wish I could believe that.' And guess what? This idea is so potent that you can go forward with that. To even want the resurrection, to love the idea of the resurrection, to long for the promise of the resurrection even though you are unsure of it, is strengthening.”

Pastor Keller's thoughts have strengthened me. My prayer is that they will strengthen you, too.