How Could God Let This Happen?
The unthinkable events that took place in Sandy Hook are difficult to stomach for many. Our world has become desensitized to evil to the point of denying it’s existence. We’ve robbed life of it’s sacredness. We have violated marriage, the base of our society. We have come to believe truth and goodness to be subjective, allowing each person to decide what is right and what is wrong. In selfish self-centeredness, we’ve turned on ourselves. This is a dangerous path, for it is when we let our guard down, believing that there is no threat, that we are at our weakest and most vulnerable. That’s when the enemy attacks.
You might wonder how God—if we believe Him to be good and loving—would allow such atrocities to occur. If He is all-powerful, couldn’t He stop this evil? Well, He could, but that would be to rob us of one of our greatest gifts, free will. We have all been given the ability to choose, to make our own decisions, and obviously He has granted us this gift so that we may choose to love. Love cannot be forced on us or taken from us, it is only given and received freely as a gift, as a gracious act of the will.
From the beginning of time God has allowed us to choose, hoping of course that we would choose to love. Parents do the same thing with their children, doing all they can to raise them the way they think they should, but in the end the children have free will and will make their own choices, some to love and some not.
The Light Can Rid Us of Darkness
As bad as it seems to get around us, there is always hope. From before the times of Jesus the people of God have continually been frought with difficulty and struggles whether in exile and captivity, or slavery and persecution. Jesus came to bring hope. In fact, you can see throughout the biblical accounts of salvation history the hand of God at work to bring hope and peace to His people. It is always the decisions of the people that bring death and destruction upon themselves and the world.
In the story of creation, God bring light to the world which “was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss. (Gn 1:2)” From chaos God brings order. He creates man in His image with high hopes for him, planting Him in a paradise. It is man who chooses disobedience bringing death to the world (Gn 3). Again and again this is the story of humanity. Then Jesus, love personified, gives Himself to us coming to our level as a man. He seeks to show us, so that we can see with our own eyes, how to love. Yet again, it is man who denies Him, rejects Him, and puts Him to death. But there is hope.
“Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
~ John 1:5
No matter how difficult it gets, our hope cannot be extinguish, because our hope lies in Jesus Christ. A tiny candle placed in a pitch-black room illuminates all. And even though there is more darkness than light, the immensity of the darkness can never extinguish the purity of the light. Jesus beat tempation, conquered sin, and denied death of it’s power. He brought hope to the hopeless.
Painful Reminders that Bring Hope
It sounds good, but it can be extremely difficult to see the light when you are surrounded by such darkness. But even in the darkness, even in the most tragic events in history, God has triumphed. Evil never prevails. Take for example the tragic manifestations of evil on 9/11, the catastrophic natural disasters that have ravaged cities, and even the massacres at Sandy Hook. This darkness seems to be unbearable, but it is in this darkness that God brings His light. Just look and you will see the way something deep within us is reawakened by these events. Our true humanity is brought to light. We remember what is most important. We remember how to love and we choose to do so. All of these dark times have later served as symbols of hope and love to the world, reminders that there is still goodness and love.
This is not to deny the evilness of these events, in fact it proves that it is ever more present, but it also reveals to us the salvific nature of our eternal Father who desires above all else that we love. Not love in a sentimental, romantic-comedy kind of way, but love in it’s pure, unconditional form. Love is not a feeling, it’s a decision and it’s time we decided to do more of it. A friend of mine once said that we must be the ones to bring faith, hope, and love to a world filled with doubt, hate, and despair. Truly we must love. We must love until hurts. We must love when it’s painful, uncomfortable, and even when it seems impossible. “For with God all things are possible. (Mt 19:26)”.
“So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”