THE NEWS STORY that hit the presses recently regarding the cold-blooded murder of two brothers, ages 5 and 7, hit hard. How, why, would anyone do such a thing? If those of us looking on from afar are absolutely perplexed, how much harder it must have been for those who loved those kids. And how could we have for those grieving anything but compassion?
So understand that I do not mean to criticize when I say that a statement made (if accurately reported) by a grieving family member hit me almost as hard as the original story.
The good lady reflected with deep feeling on her love for her grandsons so tragically taken. She spoke about their love for each other and through tears said that they were so inseparable in life that in death they were buried together, holding hands.
Thus she talked about the tragedy, and she very understandably wondered, “Why?”
Who wouldn’t wonder? If having faith requires us never to ask such questions of God, even angrily, then I have precious little. I believe that a God who did not hate this sort of evil worse than we do would not be worthy of our worship.
Which is why this grieving lady’s words worry me. Trying to make sense out of senselessness, she asked, “The only question I have of God is, ‘If you need my babies, why did you have to take them so violently?’ I know that death is a part of life. But I cannot understand this.”
Nor can I. But I do know this: God did not take her grandsons. A murderer did. Their death was not the will of God. It was the will of a despicable criminal. But why, we ask, would a good, loving, and all-powerful God allow such a thing to happen? No easy answers. Even if God could explain the riddle of suffering to us, which is like asking Einstein to explain relativity to a babe in arms, would we truly feel a great deal better?
Part of the answer to pain’s existence lies in two words. Free will. God has given us the capacity to choose to love him or to reject him, to choose good or to choose evil. He could have created robot-like creatures with no such choice, but the Father didn’t want robots; he wanted children who could respond to him and to each other in love, whose lives could be rich with the opportunity to choose love and joy and life and beauty.
Even God could not create a world where being given the freedom to choose good doesn’t also mean being free to choose evil. Those wrong, wicked, mistaken choices bring suffering both to ourselves and to those caught in the wake of evil. Someone’s terrible choice cost the lives of two little boys and hurt their family deeply.
But it wasn’t God.