Why?
The question was asked through anguished tears in the
midst of wreckage littering the visible landscape from the killer
tornado, "God didn't take him in Iraq, why did he take him now?"
The reporter couldn't answer the question.
Oh, if only that suffering woman could have felt God's love that
surrounded her that day, and the assurance that God did not
"take" him! That she could know that God does not work by means
of violence or coercion of any kind!
Tragedy, violence and evil happen all the time and they are never
the will of God. They are the result of free will, a gift given by God
that provides for the possibility of good and bad, the best and the
worst. Because God wants to be loved by us in freedom,* God will
never manipulate us, as if the Master were tweaking the strings of
puppets or controlling powerless slaves.
And nature, too, is part of God's creation. Anglican theologian John Macquarrie speaks of the
possibility
that nature also has been created by God with freedom, rather than subject to manipulation by an
unfathomable God. Nature, then is free to be herself and, like us, has a shadow side. The sun
that warms
us, the breeze that cools, the refreshing rain and the streams of water so necessary to life, are also the
engines of destruction in the powerful forces of earthquake and fire, tornado and hurricane, flood
and tsunami.
God did not take the young husband, brother or son killed in the prime of his life by the tornado; God,
who is love and only love, received him into eternal life.
Kathleen K. Ennis
*Henri J.M. Nouwen, "Heaven and Hell"