unanswerable questions

I'm continually stumped by the question of why God allows evil in the world and why bad things happen to good people. I was just reminded of this when I read an email from our group in China working with special needs kids telling us that a baby is not expected to live through the night and that one of the toddlers had died last night. And it reminded me of praying with someone last Sunday who was deeply troubled by the plight of the Hmong in Laos who are right now the target of genocide. I watched a couple of videos about this on YouTube and then couldn't watch any more. It was too painful.

I suppose these are questions that plagued Mother Teresa during her many years of doubt, experiencing "the dark night of the soul." Surrounded by suffering, trying to bring a little grace into a dismal world, she told her sisters to do "small acts of love with great kindness." But it must have seemed like trying to shout down a hurricane.

Yet that's how God is. Elijah was reminded of this when he didn't find God in the wind storm or the earthquake or the fire. God spoke to him in stillness. Jesus was a paradox of divine power clothed in human frailty, so much so that the powerful people of his day felt free to execute him. Rodney Stark has chronicled "The rise of Christianity", showing how Christians eventually took over the Roman Empire by doing small acts of kindness such as staying to take care of those stricken with the plagues that often ravaged Roman cities, while those with means fled to the safety of their outlying villas. In spite of the risks and the apparent futility of it all, the Christians did it because it was what Jesus taught them to do.

So I don't know the answer to the question of evil in the world, other than to say that Jesus cares about people and that I should, too. And it is by doing what I can to love those in the small part of the world that God's entrusted to me that his Kingdom will eventually triumph.