Reflections on the Newtown Tragedy
It seems like almost everything that could be said about the Newtown tragedy has been said, but there will be lots more. I am embarrassed by most of it and just wish that people would mourn and quit having emotional ADHD about it, jumping to conclusions and "fix-its." Everybody wants an answer. What if there is no answer? Can we live with that? Even as Christians? I think Christians are the worst to leap to some conclusion, analysis, solution, interpretation of the murder of 26 people on a Friday before Christmas in an elementary school in a small town. It is senseless. We don't want senseless; our idea of rationality demands sense, a reason, a cause, and therefore predictability and a solution. Even if the reason we come up with us wrong, we take it, we grasp it.
The big talking points are "Where was God?" "We need gun control," and "We need better mental health programs."
Where was God? The answer, "We've shut him out of our schools, so why do we expect Him to be there?" is alternatively facile, snarky, self-righteous. Yes, we do ignore God and live as if He does exist, and then get worried about theological answers when these things happen. But at Christmas, we must remember Immanuel, God with us. God is with us. He is not Allah, the distant, remote, and inexorable. He is not "watching us from a distance" like the old Bette Midler song. If this act seems random, and probably is, I can't help but think how many "random" acts of violence God's hand stays. There is another song, "What if God were one of us, just someone on the bus?" He was living as one of us, but that song diminishes Him. He is living in us and we are the angels, the messengers. He is with us because we are with those who mourn.
Facebook is the trite capital of the world, and I've seen little posters and poems of how the children were carried to heaven by angels that morning. Yes, and no. That does little to assuage grief. Nothing, nothing will ever erase this for those parents. We don't want to mourn; we don't want to be in that deep hole of despair, at least not very long. Job's friends got it right at the beginning. Just sit with the person, hold a hand, get a cup of coffee. No answers. They don't exist right now.
I think these acts remind us of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. That normalcy can mask the unspeakable. That middle-class American-ness does not protect from the impulses of sin. The news reports said last night that the murdered mother received 10,000 dollars a month in alimony from her divorce--almost $250,00 a year. That's a lot of money to most of us, and it was no safeguard.
As to the political arguments, shame on everyone. Just shut up. You're being reactionary and duplicitous and mercenary. There will be time to talk about that later, with some rationality (although I have little faith in rationality). The government can't come up with a budget; how is it going to control these things?
Be quiet. Pray. Write a kind letter. Tell people you love them. Contemplate that sin is powerful, and recognize how powerful it is in yourself.
The big talking points are "Where was God?" "We need gun control," and "We need better mental health programs."
Where was God? The answer, "We've shut him out of our schools, so why do we expect Him to be there?" is alternatively facile, snarky, self-righteous. Yes, we do ignore God and live as if He does exist, and then get worried about theological answers when these things happen. But at Christmas, we must remember Immanuel, God with us. God is with us. He is not Allah, the distant, remote, and inexorable. He is not "watching us from a distance" like the old Bette Midler song. If this act seems random, and probably is, I can't help but think how many "random" acts of violence God's hand stays. There is another song, "What if God were one of us, just someone on the bus?" He was living as one of us, but that song diminishes Him. He is living in us and we are the angels, the messengers. He is with us because we are with those who mourn.
Facebook is the trite capital of the world, and I've seen little posters and poems of how the children were carried to heaven by angels that morning. Yes, and no. That does little to assuage grief. Nothing, nothing will ever erase this for those parents. We don't want to mourn; we don't want to be in that deep hole of despair, at least not very long. Job's friends got it right at the beginning. Just sit with the person, hold a hand, get a cup of coffee. No answers. They don't exist right now.
I think these acts remind us of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. That normalcy can mask the unspeakable. That middle-class American-ness does not protect from the impulses of sin. The news reports said last night that the murdered mother received 10,000 dollars a month in alimony from her divorce--almost $250,00 a year. That's a lot of money to most of us, and it was no safeguard.
As to the political arguments, shame on everyone. Just shut up. You're being reactionary and duplicitous and mercenary. There will be time to talk about that later, with some rationality (although I have little faith in rationality). The government can't come up with a budget; how is it going to control these things?
Be quiet. Pray. Write a kind letter. Tell people you love them. Contemplate that sin is powerful, and recognize how powerful it is in yourself.
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