As the story of the senseless slaughter at Virginia Tech has unfolded, I’ve seen a lot of faces on the news recently. I’ve heard the stories that go with those faces, the hopes that I can imagine were wrapped up in those stories, the passions, the proud parents, the potential futures. A gifted dancer. A self-sacrificial leader. A professor who has survived the Holocaust in what must have seemed another lifetime in order to block a doorway and lose his own life shielding students from the gunman.
I’ve seen the face of a killer, staring out from the world of the dead in his photograph, chilling me. I wondered initially was can cause someone to commit this insanity. I think I caught a glimpse of what was broken inside when I saw his picture.
Thousands are probing their faith right now. This is the age-old question that theologians call “the problem of evil:” why would a loving God allow bad things to happen to good people?
Have you ever seen a parent pour years of painful effort into raising a child, only to have that child ignore their best efforts, and break the parents’ hearts as they chose a different path anyway? We’re the children that have broken God’s heart.
You see, He couldn’t have created us in His image without giving us freedom. Freedom to create, freedom to think and examine, freedom to choose. The bittersweet agony for God is that He knew the possibility that some, even many, of us would choose not to love Him back. Some simply ignore His best efforts and follow a different course.
And so, in a world where nothing is as it should be, as it was designed to be, insanity and sociopathy take control, and precious lives are taken. Instead of walking toward the sunshine, we prefer to take comfort in the shadow.
We just keep walking the other way.