Ok, here goes. Here’s my best attempt to answer the question that I’ve heard in a variety of ways on the playground bench, in hospital rooms, on airplanes, in the grocery store line, and even in the middle of a party attended by former Catholics, non-practicing Jews, highly intellectual secularists, and all-people-lovin’ hippies.
In this last instance, an acquaintance I was talking to just casually laid the question out there – and it was like one of those record scratching moments where the room goes silent, and suddenly all eyes were on me. I guess that’s the danger in letting people know you’re one of those pastor-types. Then you’re expected to be able to go from enjoying a glass of wine and talking about live music to solving the universe’s biggest mysteries in two seconds flat.
This acquaintance asked, and apparently the whole party expected me to answer this question… “Why did God let our friend die?”
She was asking about a mutual friend we all deeply loved who had died a few months earlier under tragic circumstances. I’m pretty sure the whole party stopped to hear my stumbling answer not because I’ve actually got the answer, but because everybody has their own version of this question depending on how their own life story has unfolded.
I’ve also heard it in these forms…
- “Why do bad things happen?”
- “Why does God/Spirit/Higher Power let bad things happen?”
- “Why doesn’t God/Spirit/Higher Power do something when people are suffering?”
– and in a variety of other ways.
Some of us ask it subconsciously. Sometimes it shows up in our resistance to organized religion or other people’s faith. Sometimes it shows up in our own inner quibbling, in the distance between what we want to be true and what we think we know is true. A lot of times it’s a part of our wrestling with what our lives ultimately mean and how we want to live them.
It’s a hard enough question to try to answer in a room full of adults, but last week, I heard it from the backseat while I was driving my son home from school. One of his buddies had brought up the Newtown shooting during a class discussion that day, and he wanted my take on it.
Here’s what I told him. It’s the same answer I give adults – just with different words. I share it because I know mine is not the only kid asking this question, and mine is not the only adult heart that is asking it with him. I use God language because that’s what resonates with me. Feel free to fill in what makes the most sense to you and adapt as needed.
- These things happen, because we have to be free to love. We have to choose love. Nobody else can choose it for us, or it isn’t love. God loves us, and hopes we choose to love each other and God, but it doesn’t always work that way.
- When we don’t choose love (which shows up as generosity, kindness, fairness, compassion, thoughtfulness, etc.), then hurt or brokenness happens. We can think of our world as a big web, where we’re all connected and our well being is tied to the well being of everybody else in the web (and the web itself, if you want to bring the natural world/creation into this). If one connection is damaged, then it has effects for all of us. When we mend a weakened or broken connection, the whole web grows stronger and healthier. Sometimes it can be hard to see where hurt or brokenness has happened in the web. Sometimes it’s hidden. Sometimes it happens so often it becomes “normal” to us, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hurt or brokenness and it doesn’t need to be healed through love.
- Sometimes people don’t know how or can’t choose love. Sometimes they don’t realize they’re causing hurt or brokenness. Sometimes they don’t realize they have a choice. Sometimes their minds are hurt or sick just like our bodies can be hurt or sick, and they cause a lot of harm to themselves and to our web.
- God does not cause hurt or brokenness for any reason, ever. One way to think about God is as the One who created or dreamed of this web. God holds the web (and all of us) with enormous hope and deep, deep love and affection – just like our parents dream and hope for us in love. God wants only the best for each one of us and for the whole web. But we also have to want it. We have to choose love.
- If the web seems awfully broken, and we’re feeling scared or worried or not at all hopeful, we can always be a part of the healing, of offering love. We can start with our friends and families, and we can reach wider by sharing, speaking up, acting in kindness, changing how we live, and moving through the world (around our web) in gentle ways that strengthen our connections to each other and God. And if God seems far away when hard things happen, look for those who are acting in loving kindness and doing their best to bring about healing. (Hint – it might be you you’re looking for.) That’s where God will show up. God shows up wherever there is hope, wherever there is healthy change, wherever there is forgiveness, and wherever we find healed and strengthened and restored connections.
I’m not sure how much of this my son absorbed the other day. His head was full of the happenings of a day spent at school, and he does love to bait me with questions about spirituality so he can talk about “God” in air quotes and question my answers to his questions. I’ve heard this is the job of a pastor’s kid. Whatever the case, I do hope he heard me say that the world needs the love he has to offer and how he chooses to act will make a difference to our web. Because it does, and it will.
Note: I’d like to recommend a book that has influenced how I think about this hard question. The Fall to Violence, by theologian Marjorie Suchocki, is pretty accessible and you might also find it helpful and enlightening.
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Leah Lonsbury is writer and mom who has worked as a pastor for two progressive churches, taught high school English, and worn a variety of other professional hats. A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Leah went to seminary in Atlanta, Georgia and now resides in Madison, Wisconsin. She currently spends her time chasing her two children, working for justice in her community, volunteering with the Alliance of Baptists, and writing preaching resources for The Immediate Word.
The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the blog contributor’s. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. Writers may have conflicts of interest, and their opinions are their own.
