Claire…ification – When Tragedy Hits

Here’s a list of a few things NOT to say:

”God needed another angel”
“God won’t give you more than you can handle”
“Everything happens for a reason”
“It could be worse”, followed by your “worse” story…
“I know how you feel…”

Several years ago I read a book written by Harold S. Kushner titled “When Bad Things
Happen to Good People.” I’ve read several others on this topic since then, but this classic really helps us to make sense of things that sometimes don’t make sense. It helps put God’s place in and response to tragedy into a proper perspective, and, it helps us to realize how important it is to choose our words carefully when we are responding to someone who has received a scary diagnosis or is experiencing grief or is facing any other difficulty in their life.

There is no rhyme or reason why one person gets sick and another does not, or why a natural disaster wreaks havoc on one community versus another or why God seems to miraculously spare the life of one versus another. Rabbi Kushner suggests that there are some natural laws that we don’t understand that are likely at work.

We are on a slippery slope when we start suggesting that people deserve what they receive, good or bad and it’s also ridiculous to think that God is doling out tragedy to those who can handle it best. Sometimes really crappy stuff happens to really good people and it just stinks.

Rather than leaping to some assumption that it is “God’s will” for the terrible thing to occur, we would do better to shift our focus to the reality that God is likely to be grieving with us in our pain. If we hold God responsible for all of the unfair things that happen in the world, how can we take God seriously as the source of moral values?

During times of untimely death, starvation, war, abuse, prejudice, diseases, and other tragedy and hurt, we need to remind ourselves that God does not cause our misfortunes. According to Kushner, “Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws. The painful things that happen to us are not punishments for our misbehavior, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God’s part. Because the tragedy is not God’s will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed by God when tragedy strikes. We can turn to God for help in overcoming it, precisely because we can tell ourselves that God is as outraged by it as we are.”

In times when we need strength, hope or patience, we simply need to turn to God acknowledging that we can’t handle whatever it is on our own, and we need to let God offer us comfort, hope, and peace.

God hates suffering but can’t eliminate it. God is not cruel. We live in a fallen world that is filled with unfairness, cruelty, natural disasters and accidents. The world is far from perfect. God does not cause us pain but is with us in the pain. God loves us and is not rewarding or punishing us. Let us consider this when we face our own trials and also when we are encountering others. And let us think before we speak a non-helpful word to others. Perhaps sometimes it is better to simply tell another that we are sorry for what they are going through and show them that we care. Sometimes less words is more helpful.

Peace y’all,