Russellings of the Spirit

“I don’t know.”

Frankly, I hate that answer. I hate hearing it. I hate giving it. I try to do everything in my power to avoid it.

Because it is an answer that is not an answer. And depending on who just said it, “I don’t know” hints that there might actually not BE an answer to your question.

And really… what with Google and Facebook and science and wild imaginations of really bright people what are the odds that there is a question in existence that doesn’t have SOME KIND of answer?

I am a pastor. I am a father. I am a husband. In each one of those roles I frequently experience the demand to be both a provider and a seeker of answers to a whole host of questions.

Right now though, “I don’t know” is all I’ve got. And oddly enough I am pretty OK with that.

Today’s question is “WHY?”… always one of the toughest of the five standard queries of journalism. It is being asked in connection with the horrible events over the weekend here in Overland Park, Kansas in which a raging anti-Semite shot and killed three people… two United Methodists and a Roman Catholic.

Today is also the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing that took three innocent lives.

The “WHYs” are multiple. “Why did they do it?” “Why those people?” “Why then?” “Why didn’t anyone stop them?” “Why violence?” “Why killing?” And I know that there are a lot of people who also ask, “Why did God allow something like this to happen?”

Let me get back to you on that last one. As far as the other ones go though, all I’ve got for you is, “I don’t know.”

I don’t want to appear to diminish the need for finding those answers. Those answers might go a long way toward helping prevent future tragedies like these from happening. But for right now, I am not sure answers are the things that will do us the most good.

In fact it might even be better to avoid answers right now.

You see, Frazier Glenn Miller (or Cross as he also called himself), the alleged shooter in Overland Park, HAD lots of answers. He KNEW with utter certainty what was wrong in the world. He had NO DOUBT whatsoever about the solutions. According to interviews I have read with people who knew him, there was never any room in his vocabulary for “I don’t know.”

I believe our wiring as human beings leads us to abhor vacuums in our storehouse of knowledge and to seek answers to life’s persistent questions. This wiring is the reason we know there are microbes that both help us and harm us and planets that orbit the sun. That wiring is why we can now drive cars, fly airplanes, communicate across time and space, repair damaged hearts and brains, build skyscrapers and highways, and perform many other amazing feats.

No question… the drive to quench our “thirst for knowledge” has improved the quality of human life in countless ways.

But today I want to counsel us to be OK with “I don’t know.”

Because see, when we don’t know (and when we are willing to SAY we don’t know) we feel needy. We feel powerless. We feel vulnerable and dependent. And we yearn for nothing so much as a pillar on which to lean and from which to draw strength and support.

Something like a loving God perhaps?

Earlier I said that one of the “whys” in tragedies like the two today is, “Why did God allow this to happen?” I do not for one moment believe that God either allowed these events to happen or caused them. I believe that God’s heart is broken when innocent life is taken and needless suffering of people is caused.

However, one of God’s most precious and most dangerous gifts to humanity has been the gift of free will. With that gift we freely pursue paths of knowledge and joy. With it we also pursue paths of hatred and destruction. It is up to us.

I believe that when tragedy strikes us because of the existence of evil and hatred, God is there, waiting to enfold us in loving arms, to provide comfort and assurance in the middle of the storms. As the Wise One tells us: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.” Proverbs 18:10, NRSV. I reject as forcefully as I possibly can any idea that suggests God caused these tragedies in order that people might turn to him.

The thing I DO know with absolute certainty at a time like this is that God’s power to redeem is unlimited. God can and HAS – throughout the ages – taken the broken pieces of a fallen and sin-soaked world and used those same exact pieces to create something new… something beautiful… something life-giving and rich out of them. It is, in a nutshell, the story of Easter.

God’s done it before. God will do it today. God will do it again and again and again. Blessed be the name of God. AMEN.