"Where Is God?": The Question Usually Asked Only In the Wake of Tragedy

I remember when actress Natalie Wood died, one of her fans was asked to give a response to the loss of the screen icon.  The devotee replied with a question, one that has been asked countless times, in one form or another since this poignant sound bite was uttered:  "How can a loving God allow someone as beautiful as Natalie to die such an awful death?" It's being asked today after the murder of 20 school children in Newton, Connecticut.  It's the question on the lips of parents who've lost a priceless piece of their lives.  It's the headline of television broadcasts, of news reports on radio, in print, and in cyberspace. http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/15/us/connecticut-school-shooting/index.html

What we're seeing graphically played out in tragedies like yesterday's shooting is continued evidence of what the world witnessed on 9/11/2001, and in the Nazi "Final Solution", or the Reign of Terror that was the French "Revolution", or the Inquisition, the Crusades, etc., etc.  It isn't a gun problem.  It isn't an American problem. It's a human problem.  It's a problem of the heart.  The heart of every man, woman, boy and girl born since the dawn of Mankind.  Scripture describes it this way, "The heart (of man) is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9

Popular opinion compels us to let the "face of evil" be worn by someone else. By the Adam Lanzas of this world, the Timothy McVeighs, the Adolf Hitlers and the Osama bin Ladens.  And we DEMAND to know WHY God could be party to such men, and the horror they leave as their legacy. But the stark truth of the matter is this: ALL of humankind is fallen and beyond the ability of any physical, psychological, or social means of self-repair.  Most sneer in feigned disgust when confronted with such an indictment, of men in general, and themselves in particular.  But it's how God Himself describes us.

Yet it is God who offers an answer, a solution, a remedy, for all the evil we see in the world, and, if we are brutally honest, seen also in our own hearts.  As the Creator of humankind, He obviously knows us intimately.  He sees our every fault, no matter to what lengths we go in our attempt to hide our guilt.  He also knows the only Just end to our wickedness.  The continuation of the Biblical passage mentioned above declares, "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve."

When the first humans rejected the authority of God to give us boundaries we should not ignore, for reasons meant to protect and preserve us, He very easily could have erased His Creation and started over.  A few generations later, God nearly did just that when He flooded the Earth in righteous judgement.  The "reward", or consequence, the LORD alludes to in Jeremiah 17:10, is far more than mere removal from the physical plane of existence, however.  God has every right to banish us from His Presence forever--body, soul, mind and spirit entire.

Instead He chose to redeem us, to make provision for Man's reinstatement into the communion God envisioned sharing with His creation.  He has offered the path to restoration in the gift of His Son, Jesus, who became the object of God's wrath in our place. But like all gifts, it must be accepted by the intended recipient in order for its value to be realized. Sadly, we not only reject the Gift, we've rejected the Giver.  And then we have the temerity to ask where He is when the consequence of Man's rebellion rears its ugly head.  As society and civilization continue their inexorable withering, the clear result of our methodical removal of His very existence from our schools, our public spaces, our communal conscience....