I'm being assaulted.

Not by violence, you see, but news of it. All the stories of bloodshed and disaster and evil are getting to me. It's really messing up my happy new year here in the suburbs.

For those of us whose lives don’t seem to reflect the expanse of human suffering in the world, how can we label our good luck as a divine blessing without simultaneously implying that God decided to screw everybody else? It is then that God starts to feel like a nickel slot machine. Solomon used different language when he proclaimed in the book of Ecclesiastes, “There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve.”  Aw Shoot. Makes no sense to me either.

People living in perennial peace are often afraid to question God’s sovereignty. Maybe if we don’t say anything, God won’t check his records and notice we got two paychecks by mistake while someone else forgot to get paid at all. Or perhaps worst of all, the numbing softness of our lives prompts no philosophical questions whatsoever. When that happens, God becomes unnecessary. Suffering has no meaning. Violence is mere cinema.

Dictators dreaming of nuclear weapons, suffering children dying in rubble, desperate looters shooting the innocent at will—how can we not see the hand of evil at work in the world? Essayist Lance Morrow wisely observes that  “each era gets its suitable evils.” The play is the same; only the cast of characters changes from generation to generation.  

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