The Mystery of Evil

The Virginia Tech Massacre has been another moment when our world has stopped and we have been forced to look in at ourselves in various ways. What is wrong with our society? What causes human beings to be so violently cruel? What could we do to make sure nothing like it happens again? For those of us outside of America we are left astounded and confused by the seemingly irrational debate on the freedom to hold guns in that country. For those of us who have a Christian faith we have many other questions being hurled at us, many coming from within our own souls.

For me, the horror has been more poignant as I myself live and work with students and by the fact that I was walking around American College campuses just a few weeks ago. I have walked around those campuses where I have dear friends worried that it could and thankful that it has not happened there. I have also been living in the last days with a tragic illness to a young friend whose husband is one of my dearest friends. The questions have been so much sharper as the Virginia Tech killings unfold

I have also been agitated by the questions the media are asking, the quick conclusions they are making, the need for accusations and blame. I think there are certain things that are so common in our lives that we can ask why they happen. A student fails an exam and we can ask why they were not working. We can seek to find out what were their distractions and why had they lost interest in their studies. We can then seek ways we can put it right. I am not so convinced that the same search for solutions, or how it could have been avoided, can be applied to such an event as happened at Virgina Tech. There are only a few people in history who have carried out such atrocities. Where you might expect certain behavioural patterns to be clues to a student’s academic achievement slipping, there are few behavioural patterns that can lead to the conclusion that any person will kill 32 other human beings.

For me the accusations being hurled at the University authorities in not closing down the campus after the first shootings that morning at Virginia Tech are understandable in the raw grief and pain of families and friends of the victims but they are not realistic questions in the colder more objective investigation of the events of the day. Very few people after a shooting incident immediately assume that it will trigger a mass killing, especially as by the time the police had got there the shootings had seemingly stopped. Such a rationale would actually have us evacuating cities and towns every time there was a gun crime. In a country where guns are sold like iPods we would be closing down vast areas of the United States on most days. There was no way that the authorities could have imagined or deduced what was about to descend on their campus when they reached the first shootings.

But it does reveal a need within us to have everything neatly sorted as to why and how and who can be blamed and what can be done to stop it happening again. We seem to need to redeem the situation. If we can find lessons or cast blame or sort out the rational explanation then somehow we will have solved something. I wonder if it is a lingering trait of the mindset of rationalism. On a television interview a few days after the shooting American novelist Lionel Shriver gave me a window to deal with the inexplicable. Shriver challenged this tendency to redeem tragic events such as Virginia Tech. Shriver dismissed such pursuits and declared the event as “a mystery of evil.”

This made total sense to me. I have no idea whether Shriver shares my Christian faith or not but it has been my concern for many years that in the age of rationalism we lost the mystery of God. We tried to seamlessly explain him in our scientific styled doctrinal conclusions. Like Eve in the garden we were stretching beyond our human limitations and in some senses like Eve by reaching to be more than we are we became less than we are because we lost the awe of the mystery, took control back from a God whom we did not need to trust anymore because we knew as much as Him. To quote a David Gray line, “We were trying to spell what the wind can’t explain.”

The Virginia Tech Tragedy is similar territory. A tragedy happens and as humans we need to have it sorted by gaining control of it. We need to rein it in so that there is nothing we cannot explain. We need to find all the answers, all the mistakes that caused it, all the ways to fix it next time. But we cannot because we are dealing with something beyond us, something we cannot control. We again reach beyond our human abilities when we try to outwit this or explain it. Tragically with all our human progress and knowledge we can’t. This is the mystery of evil. It collides in the spiritual cosmos with the mystery of grace. We have questions that we will ask in our heartbreak, grief and tears but we kid ourselves when we think we will find simple solutions or rational symmetry to the event. Somehow we have to trust, in the seeming silence to our prayers, that the mystery of God is still involved in our day. And there, bereft of our human capabilities, we find faith. And somehow in that place where the mystery of evil meets the mystery of God’s grace we find ourselves in the most sacred ground. Somehow; mysteriously.

That faith will not solve our problems nor will it erase our hurt. Rich Mullins put it so well in his song Hard To Get:

“And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained…”

Actually… here is the whole song, a wonderful Psalm for an event such as this…

Hard to Get

You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened by the hurt
Do you remember when You lived down here where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread
Did You forget about us after You had flown away
Well I memorized every word You said
Still I'm so scared, I'm holding my breath
While You're up there just playing hard to get
You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that's not as patient as Yours was
Still we do love now and then
Did You ever know loneliness
Did You ever know need
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in Your sweat
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You're up there just playing hard to get?
And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained
And I know that I am only lashing out
At the One who loves me most
And after I figured this, somehow All I really need to know
Is if You who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time
We can't see what's ahead
And we can not get free of what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret I can't see how
You're leading me unless
You've led me here
Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led
And so You've been here all along I guess
It's just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get.

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