Where was God in Dallas and at other shootings?
Where was God in Dallas and at
other recent shootings by police officers and of police officers in the US?
That question usually presumes God both being present and able to
intervene to prevent evil from happening. Only the first of those presumptions
feels right.
If God were able to intervene directly to prevent evil from occurring in
the world, then why is does so much evil occur? Why would a good and loving God
allow evil on a grand scale (e.g., the Holocaust or the destruction wrought by
Hurricane Katrina) and on a personal scale (e.g., the shooting of unarmed young
black men by police officers and the recent capricious slaughter of police
officers in Dallas)?
The traditional Christian answer to those questions is that God, in
creating the world, chose to allow individual freedom and voluntarily refrains
from acting. I find that answer disturbing and unsatisfying. The idea of God choosing
to refrain from direct action to prevent millions of deaths and untold
sufferings paints God as a sadist and not a loving creator. Trying to imagine good
outcomes possible only if God allows evil of that magnitude boggles my mind.
A basic biblical metaphor for God is that of the loving parent. My musing
about evil reminds me of Jesus' parable about the child who relentlessly
importunes a parent until the parent consents to the child's request. If God is
a loving parent, then why is God so often silent when God's children implore
God to save a loved one, end gun violence, or otherwise diminish evil's power
in our broken world?
Alternatively, perhaps process theologians and others are correct when they
assert that in the act of creation God surrendered some of God's power to act.
God does not intervene directly to stop or to diminish evil because God in the
process of creating the cosmos lost the ability to directly intervene.
God remains present. God knows our pain, which is one important meaning
of Jesus dying on the cross. And God calls us to act, guiding us forward to care
compassionately for the wounded and grieving, strengthening us to dare to put
our trust in God and in one another instead of firearms, and holding us in an
unfailing embrace of love. We, with the help of God who is always present, can
end violence.
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