No Easy Answers

When your reasons for believing something are justified ad hoc, you are left susceptible to further discoveries undermining the rationale for that belief.
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

It has taken me a week to even begin to wrap my mind around the world as it is right now.  I am used to natural disasters, car accidents, death in many forms.  Death is a part of life, and I am used to it.  But a week ago Friday, all of my long-held beliefs on life and death and suffering and grief, everything was thrown up against the thought of a school full of children, babies really, being gunned down. 

For the record, I am not talking about gun control right now.  My thoughts and opinions on it are long and complex and I just do not feel like focusing on that right now. 

While I watched the news, watched it unfolding on my television, I waited.  I waited for the “this is because God is not in school/work/our lives” reactions.  I am a child of Texas, of the Southern Bible Belt, of the state that spawns more televangelists hawking comfort for money, child of hellfire and brimstone preaching.  I knew it was coming. 

And it did.

I have heard it on all on tv in the past week.  I have seen it all over twitter, all across my newsfeed.  The massacre (and that’s exactly what it was), was the direct result of a lack of God in our lives.  Not just any God, not the G-d of Judaism, Allah of Islam, the pantheon of Gods and Goddesses of Wiccan and the pagan religions.  Nope, this is a direct result of the lack of the Christian God in our schools.

Common decency, common goodness, is not exclusive of Christianity.  Let me type that again, and as you read it, stop, and read it again.  And again.  And again.  Read it until it sinks in.  Common decency, common goodness, is not exclusive of Christianity.

Natural disasters, the hurricanes, earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, are just that, natural disasters.  God is not getting his revenge on a sinful world.  If that were true, only the sinners would die.  If God was exacting punishment upon us, only the sinners would die.  There would be no innocent victims.  These are the results of plate tectonics, the intricate workings of weather, and more science than I truly understand. 

Shootings, mass shooting, drive-by shootings, shooting during a robbery.  Those are not God’s punishment either.  They are the work of complex people, many of whom are plagued by mental illnesses that have long been left untreated.  Some are just plain evil, and I don’t have a better answer than that, although I know psychologists and criminal profilers do. 

Madeleine Murray O’Hara did NOT put this country on the road to Hell when she demanded that teacher led prayer be taken out of schools. And here is a thought for you, a little education.  There is nothing, a single law, a single piece of legislation anywhere, which says you cannot pray in school.  What it says is that teachers, principals, coaches, the adults in school, cannot lead a prayer in school.  And you want it that way.  You do not want a teacher, whose beliefs might be different, might be dangerous, leading prayer in school.  Children’s minds are easily shaped, and they can easily fall to someone with dangerous beliefs. 

Saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas has NOT started a War on Christmas.  Making sure you are not stepping on the religious toes of someone else does not mean you are less of a Christian.  What makes you less of a Christian??  Focusing on the gifts, focusing on the all out insanity that is Black Friday, focusing on material things, is what has ruined Christmas.  I’ve seen the quote on the internet several times, and it is quite apropos, “Walmart waged a War on Christmas, and it won.” Those of you that are screaming at the top of your lungs about how Christmas just isn’t the same holiday it was in days of yore, stuff your car full of the crap you bought, return it to the stores you bought it from, and donate that money you spent.  And while you are at it, spend a little time in a soup kitchen, or give of your time anyway you can.  There is more Christmas in helping the poor and vulnerable, than there is in bedecking your house in a million lights, running the credit cards bills up for toys that your child does not need, and eating more than you should.

Keeping God out of the workplace did NOT put the country on the path to Hell either.  It did create a workplace where no one has to worry about being bombarded with someone else’s thoughts on God.  It created a workplace where everyone, of every religion is free to work, and is free of someone demanding they convert, right there with the staplers and the toner, and give their life to Christ.  God belongs with you, internally, but not out in the public view, at work.

I do not have any easy answers as to why Sandy Hook Elementary School became a name synonymous with grief and heartache.  I suspect the answers will not come easily, and they will force us to face some of the darkest aspects of our personality.  Saying a lack of God is the reason for it puts blinders on to the hard facts, gun control, mental health, all the other facts that will come out, I am sure, in time.  Stop picking up the easiest explanation for the tragedy in the world, and start looking at what really causes them, start fighting for answers and solutions.  It is time we stopped waiting on God to give us an answer, and to use the brains he gifted us with, use all the talents he blessed us with, and seek out those answers ourselves.

~Jennifer