The Evil in Our Midst by Dr. Ray Pritchard
I am writing this note at 11:18 AM CDT on Wednesday, two days after the horrific massacre at Virginia Tech. The precise time doesn’t matter but somehow I feel that I must begin this way because of the weariness I feel in my heart. It reminds me how I felt in the days after 9/11. Somewhere in my personal journal, writing a few days after that catastrophic event, I noted how exhausted I felt, how angry and frustrated and yet how lethargic I was. I remember feeling embarrassed to write that, especially in a journal that no one else would see. I have since learned that my reactions were perfectly normal after an event of such magnitude. At first there is the shock and the sudden jump in adrenaline. Then you sit for hours watching the TV, getting the latest report, flipping from one channel to another until you have squeezed out every last bit of news, listened to every interview, pondered the timeline, heard the dissection of the killer’s mindset, and wondered at the strength of the good people who make up the Virginia Tech family. Eventually the mind grows weary from the sheer weight of what has happened.
Yesterday I was asked during a radio broadcast why bad things happen to good people. I answered by saying that no really knows the answer to that question, that the best minds in history have grappled with the problem of evil, and that we can’t draw a straight line from our knowledge to a troubled young man with two guns on Monday morning. To put the matter that way is not to say that there aren’t answers. Perspectives might be a better word. The Bible offers many perspectives on God and evil that help us in times like these. But inevitably we want more. Not just, why did this happen? But why now? Why here? Why did this person live and that person die? Why didn’t God stop it? Or why did he allow it? We have a son who is a senior in college. Like all parents, we worried about his safety and then stopped to think, “It could have happened at his school.”
One part of the Christian answer stresses that this world is not the way God created it. Evil has invaded the world and taken it over. … Read the rest of this blog post at: Keep Believing Ministries.
