Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Bad things good people
In time of calamity, faith brings hope
As investigators try to figure out why a 64-yearold man opened fire onto an outdoor concert crowd in Las Vegas on Sunday night, killing at least 58 people and wounding hundreds more, some people of faith pondered a more eternal question: Why do terrible things to happen to innocent people?
“The suffering of very good people is a theme that just comes up time and again,” said Cameron Jorgenson, associate professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at Campbell University’s Divinity School in Buies Creek, N.C.
“It’s a necessary question because of the universality of suffering,” he said. “Great people, beloved of God, experience great suffering, and people want to know what to make of that.”
He spoke before the shooting in Las Vegas, but after a series of natural disasters caused death and devastation in the United States and Latin America.
In the past six weeks, Americans have grieved for the suffering of residents of Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico as a series of hurricanes killed dozens of people and left countless homes in ruins. An earthquake in central Mexico killed at least 360 people and injured at least 6,000 more Sept. 19.
Although Sunday’s mass shooting was a man-made disaster, it brought about more wailing as people took to Twitter to ask the question David asked in Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord?”
Others used the internet to complain that a common response of the faithful to the suffering of others — the offering of thoughts and prayers — is hollow.
“Our grief isn’t enough,” Hillary Clinton posted in a reference to gun-control legislation. “We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the [National Rifle Association] and work together to try to stop this from happening again.”
Last semester, Jorgenson led a divinity school alumni retreat focused on the theme of human suffering. Jorgenson and his wife
had recently suffered a family loss, he said, “So my mind has certainly wrestled with these questions.”
The group looked at examples of historical figures who endured great suffering, including Job, the Old Testament figure beset by one personal tragedy after another, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was arrested, imprisoned, held in concentration camps and finally hanged in 1945 by the Hitler regime.
“One of the things we reflected on is the fact that the mystery of human suffering is just that — a mystery,” Jorgenson said. “At the end of the book, Job is reduced to silence and given this vision of the immensity of God and the complexity of the world, and that’s where the book leaves it. His suffering is never dismissed with platitudes.”
President Donald Trump addressed the nation Monday, a day after 58 people were killed and 527 were wounded when a gunman
opened fire on a Las Vegas concert. He praised the speed of Las Vegas police and other first responders who rushed to the scene and assured those who were now mourning friends and family, “We are here for you.”
“Hundreds of our fellow citizens are now mourning the sudden loss of a loved one, a parent, a child, a brother or sister. We cannot fathom their pain, we cannot imagine their loss. To the families of the victims, we are praying for you, and we are here for you. And we ask God to help see you through this very dark period,” he said.
“Scripture teaches us the Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit,” Trump continued. “We seek comfort in those words, for we know that God lives in the hearts of those who grieve. To the wounded who are now recovering in hospitals, we are praying for your full and speedy recovery, and pledge to you our support from
this day forward.”
After the 2011 shooting of then-U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Ariz., President Barack Obama referenced the biblical story of Job, a man who endured suffering that included the loss of his family, to help Americans remember that horrible things happen for reasons that aren’t always clear.
“Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding,” Obama said. “In the words of Job, ‘When I looked for light, then came darkness.’ Bad things happen, and we have to guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.”
Jorgenson, the theology professor, said comfort won’t come from trying to understand why God allows suffering, a notion that presents a stumbling block for many believers.
because of their wickedness. Even when they were not wicked, he felt displeasure with them and dried up the springs and caused deserts to form. I expect this from the Old Testament — where I was taught that God was an angry and punishing God. Yet, as I do the Lectio Divina, I find passages in the Old Testament that speak deeply of faith, even when it seems as if God has hidden his face.
I was also taught that the New Testament is the expression of a more merciful, compassionate and loving God. But then I read I Corinthians, in which Paul exhorts the newly formed Christian community to avoid idolatry and cravings or they will suffer the punishment of God, who killed 23,000 Israelites in one day. Love and fear historically existed side by side in the
Judeo-Christian tradition, and it seems they still do today.
When I meditated on these passages, I associated them with the death and destruction of the hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and fires occurring in our own time. There have been headlines in the news about people proclaiming that God has sent this devastation as punishment for the sins of homosexuality and immorality. It’s interesting that there are no headlines about the sins of greed or hubris — which seem to me to be causing a lot more problems than sexual orientation or identity. On deeper reflection, I found myself connecting to people of Biblical times, who wondered why God was hiding his face. In one of the Psalms, David asks God to awake and help. In a passage from Matthew, the disciples ask Jesus to awake and help in the midst of the storm. I, too, wish God would awake and help.
In the third Lectio Divina
movement, I prayed, asking God to relieve this suffering and to help humanity to wake up to our role in creating the challenges we are experiencing. One phrase that stood out for me is from Psalm 44: “Rescue us because of your unfailing love.” It reminded me, that even though I might not see God’s hand in things, his essence is love and I can trust that.
This awareness of God’s essence as love brings me to the final movement of this
practice of Divine Reading: contemplation and the love of God. If I can occasionally drop into this place of peace, in the midst of chaos, I might have the chance to allow myself to be guided by Spirit to do whatever it is that is mine to do in these difficult times.