Why Tragedy Doesn’t Let God Off the Hook

It’s now two weeks after the worst earthquake to wreak havoc on southern Turkey and northwestern Syria in over 80 years. As of Monday another powerful temblor has struck the same region. Buildings collapsed. More lives were lost.

You’ve heard the argument. You’ve thought it too. 

If God is all powerful and good, why does he allow for so many good people to suffer? Why would a good God let bad things happen in the world he made?

When we witness tragedy in our own lives, like the death of a loved one, or when we experience tragedy on a regional, national, or global scale—the existence of evil and suffering seem to outweigh the goodness of an all-powerful, benevolent God.

If he is good, then he sure isn’t powerful. And if he’s powerful, then God sure isn’t very good. In fact, he sounds a lot more like Disney’s Maleficent than he does a deity.

Or he’s a young child playing burning ants with a magnifying glass. What a maniac. 

Based on these observations about our world, any reasonable person in this world should come to terms with the simple fact that God does not exist. But if God does not exist, then why should anyone have a problem with suffering and evil at all?

If God is not there, if he is nowhere, then why do we call something “good” or “evil” in the first place? If God is not there, isn’t suffering just a feeling—no more or less important than other experiences we live through?

But tragedy doesn't let God off the hook either. If God does exist, then the very existence of suffering and evil is a really big problem for Christians to make sense of. However, it’s an even greater problem for everyone else—because ultimately, evil and suffering have no one to report to in a world without God. They happen to us and we can’t control them, and there is no reason for it and there is no end to it. It just happens—or it doesn’t (if you’re “lucky”). Chance, or luck, meaningless whatever, governs human existence and some have it better off than others, I guess. How should I know?

If God does not exist, then does “survival of the fittest” govern reality? Is that what determines who lives and who dies? Evolutionary choice—the strong consume the weak? If that’s the case, why not make that the acceptable norm? Why have societies that punish criminals? Why try to have just societies and pursue peace if it’s all for nothing and no reason? Why try to play god if there is no heaven above or hell below? Maybe a MadMax world makes sense, with the powerful consuming the weak.

And if God’s not there, isn’t it just natural for people to live and die—some longer than others, but to no real end and with no purpose and with the stronger butchering the weak-minded and simple people?

What I’m challenging here is the notion that all of life is just random chance. If that’s the case, then no one should complain when bad things happen. If it’s a random, meaningless life, then we have nothing to object to, nothing to hold others accountable to, and nothing to live for. Stuff just happens because it happens.

When a person is unjustly murdered, we can’t respond with outrage because it just happens. Why should we care if someone dies, if it’s all just chance and there’s no one to report to?

I realize that this does not let God off the hook for all of the tragedy that happens in this world. God does not stop all evil and suffering from happening, and he hasn’t yet eliminated evil from existence. That’s true. But what’s so interesting about the Christian story is that God does not let himself off the hook either, in fact, he actually has decided to put himself on the “hook” of human suffering. God did this in the life and death of his son, Jesus. 

Jesus entered into this world of evil and suffering, and he became a curse for us within it. He was afflicted, mistreated, imprisoned, beaten, mocked, and murdered. God in Christ knows human suffering, tragedy, evil, despair, fear, loneliness, grief, agony, deceit, frustration, and the rest. All of it. 

God took evil and suffering so seriously that he allowed for his Son to experience evil and suffering to the fullest on the cross. God allowed for pain and death to swallow him up. He took death so seriously that he didn’t just face it head on, but he went down in the grave.

Because God in Jesus Christ did that, we can trust that he not only knows what our suffering is like—and he not only empathizes with us in our pain—but he also has a decisive plan to triumph over all evil and suffering. Death did not get the last word, he conquered the grave by rising up out of it. Because of that, his plan is set into motion and we can trust that he is going to put an end to evil and suffering forever.

Maybe not in our ideal timing, but eventually, it’s going to happen. Because when Jesus came out of that grave that he went into for us, he began this great work of putting an end to suffering, tragedy, and evil for good. He started to step on evil’s ugly head and has been crushing it once and for all ever since. It’s only a matter of time until we experience the new reality that Jesus has ushered in. And that’s a whole lot more than any other view of reality can say. There’s real hope. It’s a promise. That’s a fact.

Why Do Super Bowl MVP’s Go to Disney Right After Winning?

Why do MVP players who win the Super Bowl go to Disney the next day after?

Somehow, I never noticed that this was a tradition until this year.

And I only noticed it because my beloved Rams won the Super Bowl last year, sending Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp, and Aaron Donald to Disneyland with their families the day after their victory. Then this year we noticed Mahomes strolling down Main Street and the “aha!” moment happened for me.

Who started it?

It started in 1987. The year I was born.

Which makes this tradition 36 years old.

Every year since 1987, we’ve been watching the famous “what’s next” commercial.

So who first said, “I’m going to Disneyland/Disney World?” It was the New York Giants quarterback, Phil Simms after he was selected as the MVP of Super Bowl XXI. That year the Giants beat the Denver Broncos 39-20, and Simms yelled out “I’m going to go to Disney World!”

This phrase became the formulaic advertisement that we now hear year after year for almost forty years.

Follow the Money

Over dinner, the CEO of Disney and his wife met with two aviators who were world travelers. Jane Breckinridge asked the two pilots where they were going next and they said, “We’re going to Disney World.”

From that innocent conversation sprang the concept that would establish this annual tradition. Walt Disney met up with organizers of the NFL, and they together decided that the MVP would say the catchphrase post-game.

For saying this one sentence, can you guess how much that player makes?

The MVP is said to earn somewhere between 30 and 50 thousand dollars just for saying this phrase.

It’s not like any player needs that money, but whatever. I’d say it if I just won the Super Bowl too. Why not?

Unfortunately for me though, and likely anyone reading this, if we want to go to Disneyland or Disney World we will have to fork up a few thousand dollars of hard-earned money just to visit. And we won’t get to cut in line.

What If I Find Myself Doubting That Christianity is True?

Have you ever found yourself doubting that Christianity is true?

I have.

After an event like an earthquake killing over 41,000 people made in God’s image happens, I tend to get rattled. My wife and I were talking on Monday, and she said something that has stuck with me all week. Putting this in my own words because she said it differently but the thought resonates still. When a tragedy happens, normally these things are caused by people so it’s easy to let God off the hook. A mass shooting stems from a person doing the shooting. But when it’s an earthquake, or a fire, or a tsunami, or hurricane, no person can cause that. That’s something beyond our power or control. These things happen because of a higher or greater power.

So cue in the doubt. If God is in charge of everything, that includes these natural disasters. Why is God, who is supposed to be good and loving, letting people die like this? It’s easy to have doubts if you have a brain.

I don’t have a quick answer to this. If I did I’m not convinced an easy answer is a satisfying answer to this sort of question. So if you’re interested in reading on to learn and think with me and have our brains hurt a bit, let’s go.

Some Thoughts On Doubt

Sometimes I think doubt is something created by our own constructs. We tend to think of doubt as the opposite of faith. And because it’s faith’s opposite, it is opposed to faith or against faith.

So we’ll put them in these matter-of-fact categories: faith is this, and doubt is not this.

So either you believe wholeheartedly or you are an unbeliever. This thinking is very problematic, to say the least.

But the Greek word for faith has to do with trustworthiness. For example, if someone in Roman and Greek culture had faith, or embodied faith, they would be someone who was a reliable person. They were honest, they did not lack integrity, and they were true to who they were.

A postmodern equivalent of this would be how we often use the word authentic. Millennials and Gen Z can smell bull. We can tell if something isn’t real or authentic because we’ve been let down so many times by older institutions and older people.

Maybe the Christmas movie Elf is a deliberate social commentary on this. When Will Ferrel’s character Elf walks into the diner and says, “Congratulations! You did it! World’s BEST coffee” all because he read an advertisement on the side of the building that said “World’s Best Coffee.”

Later on that famous date with Zoey Deschanel’s character, Jovie, she replies “It tastes like a crappy cup of coffee…[eyes open to behold a diner quality cup of Joe]…It is a crappy cup of coffee.”

Millennials and Gen Z know that you can’t slap “World’s Best Pizza” on the front door of a lousy pizza shop to get us in the door. It doesn’t work. We can tell if you’re sitting on a throne of lies.

How do we know if a pizza place is good, and is operating in good faith? How is it trustworthy? Well, they make good pies with real ingredients, and by word of mouth that news travels far and wide and when you get there you just know it’s going to be good. The smell is there, the taste is on point. Maybe they have an original brick oven that’s been around since the 1920s. Like Pepe’s Pizza in Connecticut. Everybody on the East Coast knows it’s worth visiting. Heck, everyone in the world knows. When I went last year I met people from England trying it out for the first time.

I apologize for my tangent here but I love pizza. In my darkest of times, of questioning the existence of God I think it’s possibly an apologetic for the existence of God. If God doesn’t exist, then how come there is pizza!? As Ben Franklin once put it, “Beer is proof that God exists and wants us to be happy.” My creed is “Pizza is proof that God exists and wants us to be satisfied.”

Back to faith and doubt as constructs, I don’t view doubt as fundamentally opposed to faith.

Faith is composed of three things: knowledge, assent, and trust. There is a cognitive element to faith, but it’s not just that because even the demons believe that God exists and yet they don’t possess true faith. True faith has knowledge, agrees with that knowledge, and actually places personal trust in the object of that faith (in the Christian faith, that is in the person and work of Jesus).

So if we say that faith is more complex than merely believing, I think doubt can also have complexity to it.

Making Room for Doubt

In Matthew 28:17, we have this picture of people bowing down to worship the resurrected Jesus. And then we see, “but some doubted.” Even in the face of just straight facts, people still doubted. They did not personally trust that Jesus was really who he said he was and is.

Now to bring this into everyday conversations that people have in the church or about the church. We might hear people saying silly stuff like:

-You need to pray more, that’s why you doubt.

-You need to read the Bible more, that’s why you’re doubting.

-Is the Bible not good enough for you?

-Is there some unconfessed sin in your life that you’re not fessing up to? That’s why you’re doubting God. Repent!

And with these statements, people are pouring more and more blame on a person who is struggling and feels overwhelmed with doubt.

Ramming Bible verses down people’s throats will not fix a person wrestling with doubt. Saying, “You’re like that person being tossed to and fro that James speaks of, ye of little faith” “You just need to have more faith!” None of these weird responses or reactions have ever helped real people.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at something that’s hard to accept.

It appears that one of the greatest reasons for doubt in and outside of the church isn’t because people are actively trying to find reasons to doubt Christianity. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is trying to become an atheist (Only 7% of the world’s population identifies as being positively atheist/agnostic). Often it’s because people have been driven away from trusting the church because of harm that’s been caused to them by people in the church.

We have the Roman Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandals that everyone knows about—so much so that Hollywood made a movie to Spotlight it. We also have all of the sexual abuse scandals in Protestant circles, like when the Houston Chronicle reported over 700 cases of sexual abuse and assault within the SBC. Or the statistic that 86% of those who identify as LGBTQIA+ were formerly part of a faith community and 54% have subsequently left.

It’s this sort of data that has me thinking we have done a very poor job handling people who have expressed doubts.

How have we handled people who are wrestling with questions? Do we allow for any breathing room here? Do we make room for doubt?

Thinking back on James's comment and how it can be misused to compare a doubting person to be like a wave tossing that person into the sea…

Sorry, but we just can’t do that. The text won’t allow us to.

In his letter, James is actually picking up on a story that you find in the Gospels. It’s that story of the disciples who are in a boat, and there's this big storm that comes and Jesus is sleeping. And they rush to wake Jesus up in the middle of the night, and they're freaking out that the boat’s gonna sink or whatever, and Jesus just tells them, you know, basically, keep calm and carry on.

He says, “Take heart” or “Don’t be afraid. And I think what's interesting about this is people always focus on the “Oh, ye of little faith. Why did you doubt?” part when Jesus is using that older sense of the word doubt in this passage. Meaning he’s not speaking about them having a lack of conviction or lacking trust, necessarily, but of being full of fear.

So to sum that up, Jesus is not attacking the kind of doubt someone might have when we are just wrestling with serious questions or having questions about faith. I don't think the Bible is excluding people who are wrestling with things at all.

I think that instead what we find is an invitation. Much like with the story of doubting Thomas.

This is someone whose first name is now literally replaced with doubt. First Name: Doubting. Last Name: Thomas.

I mean, he's known for the rest of all time as being the doubter. But Jesus doesn't condemn him for doubting. Instead he has great empathy for this struggling man. I mean, sure Jesus says it's better if you believe rather than having to look at this, but he still invites Thomas to look at his his scars, at his hands, and at his feet. Very clearly he’s giving Thomas space to check these things out. That's an invitation.

And a final comment on this comes from a letter in the New Testament that probably nobody ever preaches on, and nobody really ever reads except maybe a single verse. But in Jude, verse 22 says, “and have mercy on those who doubt.”

There is a specific call for us to show mercy toward those who find themselves a Doubting Thomas in this world.

Jude says, “save others by snatching them out of the fire” and “have mercy on those who doubt…waiting for the mercy of Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.”

I mean, goodness gracious, show mercy to those who are wrestling.

Could it possibly be any clearer for us to be patient with people who have questions?

The Bible Teaches Us to Love Diversity

Speaking about the person Jesus, the Bible says in Colossians 1:16 that “by him all things were created.”

To put this differently, this means Jesus is God and he has made everything. From the birds to the bees, the grass and the trees, the mountains and seas—and he has made every single person who has ever lived since the beginning of time.

Everyone has been made by the same Maker.

We don’t know exactly what Jesus looked like because the Bible doesn’t give us a description of his eye color or skin tone, but we do know that he was a man of Jewish descent who lived in the first century. That means he would have been brown-skinned and to our eyes today he would have looked like he was from the Middle East.

This same Jesus who had brown-skin made people with every different kind of skin color and eye color and hair color and body shape that there is.

Pointing out God’s love for the creation he has made, C.S. Lewis once said, “God loves matter, he invented it!” Jesus truly is creative, and his creativity is on full display when we pause at an airport terminal to look around at all of the people he made.

Unfortunately, not every person who has claimed to be a follower of Jesus has loved other people the same way that Jesus loves different people.

It’s because of this tragic reason that people today tend to think the Bible is against diversity and is a white man’s religion—a religion that hungers for power and uses it to oppress others and will do just about anything it can to hold onto power.

But this is not at all what Jesus had in mind when he taught his first disciples the second greatest commandment: “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-31).

Jesus’ vision for his disciples was to love others well and without qualification or prejudice. One lawyer approached Jesus and asked, “Who is my neighbor?” to which Jesus responded (I’ll paraphrase here): anyone and everyone who needs your help. You don’t get to pick and choose who your neighbors are. And you are called to love them as you love yourself. Which, probably isn’t a very difficult thing for you to do. It’s pretty easy to love our self.

If I am hungry, I eat something. If I’m thirsty, I drink something. If I’m dirty and stinky, I take a shower. If I want to drive to the beach, I drive to the beach.

Jesus calls us to apply that same care for those he has put into our lives around us. If I have a neighbor who needs something, I do what I can to help her or him because this person bears the same image that I do.

We are made in the image of our Creator. And this Creator loves creativity. He made you, he made me, and he made all of the diversity we see around us.

As one pastor of old once put it, “There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.”

So, praise God today for making each one of us different.

The Bible teaches us to love diversity.