The first response to tragedy is compassion—a word that literally means “to suffer with” or “to suffer alongside.” Frankly, a hand on the shoulder, a tight embrace, a look of empathy, or sitting quietly and sensitively alongside a grieving person means much more than attempts to explain the inexplicable or efforts to identify with the individual using expressions such as “I understand.”
We don’t understand. Every situation is unique as is every person negotiating the hurt of a tragic situation. Supportive presence is far more important than any words.
Vast diversity within Christianity prohibits a response to this question that is the Christian answer to it. At best my words represent one perspective among many.
When it is time for words, caution is advisable. Individuals in grief are vulnerable to an extent that is imaginable and easily susceptible to a distorted understanding of profound truths. Immediate tragedy often is the crucible in which one’s theology of life is formed.
Typically my verbal comments to persons in grief are responses to specific questions. I make no effort to impose on a person more than they want to know or can process in difficult moments. However, the basics of the perspective on tragedy that I comment to others include:
God desires our good. The God whose nature is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth does not impose tragedies on people. The divine will is for health, wholeness, and abundant life.
Tragedies occur because people make bad decisions or act out of illness. To affirm that every person is created in the image of God is to acknowledge every person’s right to make decisions—bad ones and good ones. We are not mindless and heartless puppets manipulated by the strings of a divine marionette but persons of free will who make choices inherent in which are consequences.
I find no more personal consolation or theological credibility in blaming tragedies on the devil as on God. Yes, evil exists in the world. But, free people have choices to make regarding good and evil. Personal responsibility is far more important in this discussion than a dualistically conceived “anti-God figure”—by whatever name—who rivals the deity in power. Of course, mental illness or emotional sickness can skew reasoning and a commitment to values that otherwise would aid a person in making a decision of the good of others rather than one that results in tragedy.
Finally, Christianity moves beyond comfort through words and actions of compassion to address the causes of different tragedies and to explore the possibility of minimizing, if not eliminating, them. Even as we grieve with the families and friends of loved ones whose lives needlessly have been cut short at Virginia Tech, we long for and, indeed, pray for a mood in our nation that makes hate unacceptable and violence an intolerable offense.
Amid the vast religious diversity in our land, all religions offer comfort to the grieving and speak, as if with one voice, about the need to be done forever with the thought that killing settles anything.
Please e-mail On Faith if you'd like to receive an email notification when On Faith sends out a new question.
Email Me | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
