"I also want to say a word about God and evil. Pat Robertson said that Haiti’s earthquake was caused because of the country’s “pact with the devil.” I don’t even know what he means, nor do I care. But I want to say this: My God does not cause evil. God is not a vengeful and retributive being, waiting to strike us down; instead, God is in the very midst of this tragedy, suffering with those who are suffering. When evil strikes, it’s easy to ask, where is God? The answer is simple: God is suffering with those who are suffering."
-Jim Wallis on his God's Politics blog (read full article here)
When I was in elementary school, my younger sister and I went to a day home after school. One afternoon, in the midst of an intense game of cops and robbers, my sister fell off of her bike and scraped up one of her knees. My sister went and sat on the edge of the sandbox to examine her wound.
The rest of us kids joined her, offering consolation and promising that she could be a robber in the next game. One kid, though, wanted to help her clean up her knee. His idea was to cover the wound with sand so that it would stop bleeding. So, he threw a bunch of sand onto my sisters bleeding knee. Not only did this cause my sister increased pain, it did nothing to help. In fact, scabs formed over the sand and she later had to have the skin on her knees cut open again to get it all out. Kids are stupid sometimes.
So is Pat Robertson (but I guess the White House beat me to that observation). Why would someone throw sand on that? Something is wrong when a response to suffering is so damning.
"Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another."
-Romans 12:15-16
God, I want to be right there with you, suffering with those who are suffering. I pray that, as a church and as people living on this planet together, our response to great suffering would be genuine empathy. Help us to cling to your goodness and your love even when awful things happen.
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