It just breaks your heart

Rod Dreher, who I know can be both hit and miss, takes time to muse on the difficulties we have processing such tragedies.  Crimes, wars, abuses, murders - these we can chalk up to the evil that  men do.  And sometimes, as suggested by the testimony of that nurse at Camp Mystic, it can be the fact that we are flawed people.  The goes for some of those in charge of the alerts that were delayed.  Or just the decision to build a camp in low lying areas known as 'Flash Flood Alley.'  We make mistakes. That is not to condemn these or others for decisions made.  It happens.  We're an imperfect brood in a fallen world, and sometimes those imperfections can cause endless pain and suffering.  I don't envy them the guilt they may live with in the coming years. 

But there are still times when you do want to go out and shake your fist at God. The Psalmists knew this all too well.  Though I've never known why this was supposed to be some slam dunk against the existence of God that atheists seem to imagine.  Dreher suggests Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov had better arguments than the often puffed up Voltaire. Perhaps. Nonetheless, the most such arguments could do would be to cast some doubt at the proclamation that God is Love, all Powerful, and yet such things happen (see Harold Kushner).  They have nothing to say about a God existing one way or another.  

And it isn't like Atheism's answer is any better.  Which is basically conceding that suffering happens  because it happens, like atoms and gravity.  Besides all notions of meaning are subjective illusions anyway.  You suffer, so do birds and caterpillars and honey badgers.  Sucks to be you I guess. In the end you matter no more than a donkey burp.  Which is about all atheism can honestly offer.  Would we suggest, therefore, that this proves atheism is wrong?  

Anyway, it's a deeper subject to delve into than this little blog can handle.  And, as we used to say in ministry, it's not like getting an answer would take away the pain.  It's not as if Job would be comforted if he found out his suffering was due to a wager between God and Satan.  Yet my son did notice something.  Recently there has been newstalk about younger Americans not wanting kids.  Apparently some celebrity came out and said kids are the pits, and everyone she knows who has kids is a miserable schmuck.  Which, of course, is an extension of our abortion era mindset about kids as a disease to be cured, only to be blessings if and when convenient to certain people.  

Nonetheless, when something like this happens, it seems everyone is shaken.  Not that we don't care when tragedy strikes adults or older people or anyone really.  But when children are impacted, no matter how our pop culture might suggest the best kids are no kids, it's just not in our DNA to really believe it. Like so many dogmas that our post-God era promotes.  So often reality is the first line of defense against what we are taught nowadays.  Which, in its own weird way, gives hope.  No matter how much our best and brightest appear to want us to toss the real and embrace the mortal sins of the world, there's just too much of that Divine spark in us for it to last against overwhelming common sense and common virtue.  Which might be why, no matter how the Psalmist laments the question of why God has forsaken him, he inevitably ends up proclaiming that the same Lord is his shepherd.