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22 April  2007                                                                

The terrible killings in Virginia have concentrated our attention again on the profound grief of a community suddenly robbed of some of its finest young people. News media have brought all kinds of reports and commentary on the tragedy. Including religious and theological perspectives.

Although one commentator felt that coverage of the memorial service was fairly sparse. The Get Religion writer looked at ways different speakers had tried to make sense of the tragedy (Job apparently was a favourite source of encouragement to those who were suffering).  The speeches of President Bush (quite a good one I thought) and others were also analysed.

As one might expect some of the speeches at the memorial service related to people’s reactions of anger and grief. But a number focussed on the problem of evil. “It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering.”, according to the President. There was encouragement to overcome evil with good. And to have courage in the face of suffering.

But there may have been a ghost in the reporting. The Get Religion blog was set up to look for what it called holy ghosts. “They are facts and stories and faces linked to the power of religious faith. Now you see them. Now you don’t. In fact, a whole lot of the time you don’t get to see them,” according to the blog.

It is possible that the problem of evil diverted the focus from a much more difficult issue. Although to be fair, it was touched on indirectly by a number of speakers who tried to address the matter of grief. What was touched on but wasn’t named, was the problem of death, although interestingly the Muslim and Jewish speakers did name it.

A lot of talk was about the grief involved in the loss of relationships. This is a way of talking about death. That is what death does – it ends life and therefore ends relationships.  I think this is a bigger issue than why evil happens. The problem of evil can be discussed as a kind of third party problem (God’s problem, or the problem of bad people, even an abstract “human nature”). But death is personal. It affects me. That is one reason why it is so hard to talk about.

But it is also hard to talk about because the Christian answer appears to be divisive. Actually it is divisive. It alone of all the answers deals with the both the cause and the nature of death, and provides a certain hope for those who will believe it. And that is where the problem is. The answer to death is not an automatic process applicable to everyone willy nilly. It calls on people to trust their lives to the God who raised Jesus from the dead if they themselves want to be raised up and share relationship with him. The Christian answer is not concerned with the continuing or restoring or beginning again of human life as though that was an absolute that could not be done without. It is about raising humans to a relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit which fulfils God's purpose in creating them in the first place. A wonderful answer indeed.

Dale

Comments

First of all I would like to thank Dale for informing us some interesting links. I've read them and I found some things to discuss, but I think they're not related with our topic today.
I just want to say that I felt sad and profound grief about the tragedy in Virginia. I don't have any friend or family there indeed, but I could feel the sadness and grief.
I don't think that a homicide is a nature process of death. It robbed God's right, because only God who deserve to withdraw our life and breath.
I understand the feeling of the loss of relationship because of the death. In this matter, I'm absolutely agree with Dale, that "Death calls on people to trust their lives to the God who raised Jesus from the dead if they themselves want to be raised up and share relationship with him". If we truly trust in Jesus and have a true relationship with God, then it doesn't matter how scary and hurt the death is, we could stand and say as Paul said "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

Posted by Lidia on Friday, April 20, 2007 at 04:13:05

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