the God who was not there

Mike Huckabee, Bryan Fischer, and James Dobson (among others) have spoken in error. Their mistake isn't a new one, though, it's really quite old. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar all made the same mistake. As their friend, Job, suffered, they told him that he must have done something that lead to this tragedy.  Huckabee and Fischer have told us the same thing.

The point of the book of Job is that all six men are wrong about this.

I've been hanging on to this rant for a few days now.  Some of that has been to gather my thoughts, but mostly it was due to the fact that the people who have linked to these guys are good people who have done so in an attempt to make sense of something that makes absolutely no sense at all.  And I think it's appropriate to allow people to work their way through the grieving process.

In the midst of all of that, people have said things that I disagree with (we need more guns), things that I agree with (we need to do a better job addressing mental health), things that I sort of but don't fully agree with (it's the media's fault due to the way they cover these things) and things that I'm not sure about (we need fewer guns).  And in all of these things, I'm fine with them being expressed, agree or disagree, and even too soon or not soon enough.

The notion that God was not present on Friday, however, is one that I'm not fine with.  And that it was our fault that those kids were killed.

The world is a messed up place.  We all get that.  It's part of what Christians believe.  And it's hard to reconcile with the fact that our God is perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and loving.  If God really cares, and really has the power to stop such things, why doesn't He?  That's a question that the Christians, the Jews, the spiritual-but-not-religious, the atheists, and people who don't fit neatly into any category have wrestled with for ages.  It's such a complicated question that it gets it's own seminary word--"theodicy."  Theodicy, which comes from the Greek words for "god" and "justice," is also called "the problem of evil" or the problem of suffering.

If God can stop something like what happened at Sandy Hook, then surely He would, unless He has a reason not to.

Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, Huckabee, Dobson, and Fischer all take this approach to theodicy.  If the blame can't lie with God, then it must lie with us.  Of course, the story that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar find themselves in rejects that solution.  Instead, it's solution is, well, it doesn't really give an answer as to "why."

The question of "why" is of course appropriate.  Humans have a need to understand and to search for understanding.  It's who we are.  But, as slacktivist points out, the book of Job ends in a stalemate:  Job tells God that he doesn't understand people, and God points out that people can't fully understand Him.  Stalemate.

The point of Job isn't "why did Job suffer," but that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were not in a position to speak about God's motivation.   And neither are Huckabee, Dobson, or Fischer, or you or me.

This line of reasoning also troubles me because it removes "Emmanuel" from the mix, "God with us."  Or, as me friend Keith put it on facebook:

Believe what you want to believe. But the story of Jesus on the cross suggests that Christians should be saying that God is present precisely in the places where no one would believe God to be present.

Or, to paraphrase God in Job, "Just because you don't understand how My presence is manifested doesn't mean that I wasn't present."  Emmanuel is the answer to the stalemate in Job.  Or, as slacktivist put it:

When Job learned that his children had died, he wept.  God did not weep.

Jesus wept.

God did not weep, but "God with us" did weep.  And I think that's the cruelest part of the God that Huckabee, Dobson, and Fischer are trying to explain.  Their God is not the God in John 11, the one who wept at the death of his friend.  Their God is the God in the Wallflowers song, "God says nothing back:"

God says nothing back but

"I told you so."

"I told you so."

I told you so.  If you had only had prayers in school, or if you had only said "merry Christmas" more, of if you had kept that plaque with the 10 commandments, then none of this would not have happened. I told you so.

God is not a vampire.  He doesn't have to be invited.

He is here.  God with us.  Emmanuel.  And he weeps with us.