We Want to Make Sense of This

Like most of you, I have read the array of opinions about the shocking massacre in Newtown, CT, last Friday. People blaming mental illness, people blaming gun laws, people chalking it up to free will, people saying its because we've taken God out of the schools (which is impossible to do!), even a certain religious group blaming the sexual morals of the country. While writing this article, I received an email suggesting that if we just put prayer back in the schools, we can avoid future tragedies.

We want answers - we want to know why. We can accept it just a little bit more if there's some sense to it. But this particular incident is more senseless, more disconcerting than previous tragedies. This one seems to have gotten under our skin more, grieved us more, and worried us more than just about every other.

An acquaintance of mine posted the idea that those who say "everything happens for a reason" are cruel, simplistic liars, and that some things happen for no reason at all. It certainly does feel that way. How can something like this make sense? How can this have happened for a reason under the auspices of a sovereign Being?

Others have posted words of comfort. On top of wanting reasons, we want comfort. We don't want to walk around scared, constantly worried about the welfare of our children going to school every day. We want some assurance that this could never happen to us, and yet we know that the surviving parents in Newtown thought the exact same thing less than a week ago.

I don't know about you, but out of all of this, nothing I've read has been satisfying. (This article won't be satisfying, either.) Most articles oversimplify the problem - but to be honest, the simplicity is appealing. Wouldn't it be nice and manageable if the problem were actually that simple?

My question, though, is not "How could this happen?", but "Why hasn't this happened more?" All the probable culprits, from mental illness to secularization of society to saturating ourselves with first-person-shooter video games, are traceable back to the fallenness of man. This is not to oversimplify the problem - it is complex journey back to the Fall. But since fallenness is the root cause, and all are fallen, why hasn't this happened more?

The answer is Grace. By God's grace, the destructive ferocity of our fallenness has not been allowed to rage unchecked. That is what Hell is - a completely grace-free zone where man’s fallenness is left unrestrained. Although this world is not Heaven (which is a completely grace-filled zone with no fallenness at all to restrain), this world has some measure of God's grace, and that grace protects us from ourselves.

This grace allows us the chance to know and receive Christ. It is the same grace that expelled Adam and Eve from the garden and prevented them from returning to seal their fallen state forever. Without this grace, we would not have the opportunity to repent. When that grace is removed, there will remain no chance at all to repent. This kind of horrible incident is not more frequent precisely because God's grace presently protects us from the depths of how far we've fallen.

I don't know why this happened or how to prevent it from happening again. I can't say the words to ease our fears. But I am grateful for the grace that prevents our fallenness from wreaking the havoc it is capable of.