It's been a hard couple of weeks.
There is a lot of bad in the world; sometimes it's hard to have hope when you see it happening.
My job is wonderful. I love my school. There are, however, some really hard realities that I see daily. Adult things that people who are not as mature as adults are having to cope with.
I'm not all, "woe is me" because the bad stuff is not happening to me. I just hurt sometimes for the hurt that happens to others.
One thing I can specifically mention is that this last weekend, one of my former students from the first school I taught at was killed in a car accident. He was 16 years old. Very smart. He was a good Christian guy whom everyone loved and thought highly of. I taught him for two years. He was part of my first and favorite group of kids. I have a lot of fond memories of those guys, who are now growing into young men and women.
Please be praying for his friends and family. This has to be really hard for them to accept.
So I leave you all with a question, I'd really like some non-pat answers to:
How do you justify or explain the meaninglessness in things like this?
I mean, it's easy to say, "God worked it for good" or "six kids came to Christ because of this" or "It was God's will".
Sure God does work things for good, but I don't think he needs tragedy to draw people to him. Is the Holy Spirit not strong enough to do that without requiring death, torture, etc? That's not a good enough answer to satisfy me.
I know that we live in a fallen, crappy world, but seriously, I just want to know how my friends cope with the suffering of the innocent.
Any thoughts?
Jail or free-wheeling inbreeding
Thursday, September 07, 2006 at 10:40 AM
Answers to the hard questions...
priscilla said...
i wasn't able to choke down the huge knot in my throat when i read this, so i sit here weaping. everything that you wrote here is what has gone through my mind just about everyday for the past 6 years. i wish i had the answers.
~
Fawn said...
girl, i so feel you...i used to look at tradegy as the main catalyst for faith, but after barely living and just exsisting...waiting for the wave of tradegy to hit my life i've since traded that bull...doesn't the Bible also say that it is the kindness of God that brings us to repentence? i think sometimes we have accepted things that aren't even the character and nature of God as gospel as we in our human minds try to explain God..like the early church trying to use scripture to explain that the world was flat...all i can say is that the world is round i can't explain why...all i know is that God is real and he won't fit into the boxes that we try to shove him in...i just don't know...hope that was as clear as mud lol! (btw I'm glad that we can comment on your blog again)
~
said...
In my dream last night, I tried to call Adam's cell phone, but I got no answer. In the back of my mind, I knew why, but I refused to believe it. I then called his house phone line. I was sure I would be able to talk to him. I was going to push the voice out of my head that kept whispering "he won't answer...he can't answer". His mom answered the phone, I asked to speak to Adam, and through her tears, she told me that I couldn't talk to him ever again because he is dead. I hung up the phone, in shock...she had confirmed what I refused to accept. After that, I called my mom and cried because I knew I had upset Adam's mom....I knew that I had given her another reminder that her son is no longer there.
----------------------------------
Adam and I weren't really close, yet his death has shaken me to the core. There are days I break down and cry when I think about him and the few memories we had together. I can only imagine how it is for those closest to him. It isn't fair that we have to go through this. What does this pain show? Does it prove our faith in God if we make it through a tragedy such as this? Does God use death to get attention, to fling us into reality? Is it His way of reminding us that He has given and He can take just as easily?
I don't know. I wish I could answer your questions...but when I try, I just come up with more questions of my own.
My birthday is March 6th. I'll be turning 17.
Adam's birthday is March 7th, but now he'll always be 16...
It doesn't make any sense.
~
said...
It is truly a tragedy that Christians offer trite religious sayings to the hurting and needy, that, if the situations were reversed, would not be of any blessing to those offering the counsel. Statements like, “I’ll be praying for you,” bother me because so many times people forget to ever offer a single prayer. Offerings of, “God is in control,” make me sick, because the person praising God’s sovereignty will probably fall apart next week when her dog dies. Here on my cyberspace soapbox I can offer little in the form of concrete answers to life’s most difficult questions, but I will take this opportunity to voice what I believe based on my interpretations of Scripture and my personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Because human beings tend to focus on the extreme characteristics of any person or group based on their personalities and personal experience, or lack thereof, with that person or group (for example, all Pentecostals are tongue-talkers and pew-jumpers; all Baptists are once-saved-always saved; all Muslims are radical infidel-haters) it is no shock to me that God is either perceived as all-loving, or all-judgmental. If someone has been influenced by a legalistic brand of Christianity, he may view God as the cosmic kill-joy. In our present culture of peace, happiness, and acceptance, God is viewed as all-loving, all-merciful, welcoming all who are basically good. Although God is more merciful and kind than we can understand with our finite minds, those are not His only characteristics. Because these “nice” attributes are so overly emphasized, the perception that humans deserve God’s intervention for good becomes prevalent. Therefore, when tragedy strikes, God is blamed for not doing his job. Sometimes God is actually rendered powerless by human choice (similar to Mark 6, where Jesus could not do miracles because of the people’s lack of understanding of who He really is). The same people blaming God forget about all the mercy and grace He demonstrated throughout the lives of the hurting – often in ways they did not even see, or didn’t bother to acknowledge as God’s hand. But therein is another problem: we don’t understand God’s mercy! How often has a person said of a life ended at a young age, “He has his whole life ahead of him!” No he didn’t – he had his whole life behind him. Why do we believe God is only interested in the latter parts of our lives? God’s plans for our lives are in action the moment we are conceived. Not to be ultra-Calvinistic, but the lack of attention to God’s sovereignty unnerves me. For those who die young as believers, why do we not rejoice that they got to go home earlier than most? Wouldn’t we rejoice that someone away at war got to come home early? Why not in the spiritual war of life? The more we pursue God and get to know Him, and not just ABOUT Him, the more we become aware that the human reason doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the realm of God (just look at the Biblical principles of finances for a practical example).
In no way do I mean to belittle those who grieve losses or endure hardships. People hurt, and that is nothing to pass off as trifling. Sometimes life gets overwhelming, even for solid Christians. My point, as I step down from the soapbox, is simply this: remember who God is. He knows the end from the beginning. Nothing took Him by surprise. He didn’t suddenly stop being God for a moment, and tragedy struck in the interim. He knows first-hand through Jesus what it means to hurt, physically and emotionally, and does not delight in our hardships. So let me finally answer the original question of “how my friends cope with the suffering of the innocent.” In moments of questioning why He didn’t intervene as I would have liked Him to, I consider these three things:
First, how many times did He intervene that I didn’t notice or give Him credit for. Second, words like “innocent” and “deserve” really don’t apply when I consider God’s intervention, because He already intervened more than I could ever deserve to make me look innocent at the Judgment. Third, He’s God, and I’m not, all my pondering and considering is best focused on the previous two points.
~
© Jennifer 2005 // Powered for Blogger and Blogger templates