Reflections from Gene
the Virginia Tech Violence
In his classic book, Night, Elie Wiesel shares his chilling experiences as a prisoner in the Nazi death camps of World War II. He tells about a day in Auschwitz when the prisoners gathered in an open area where a gallows had been constructed. Several prisoners were to be hanged, including a young boy. When the trap doors fell away, the boy did not die instantly. Because he was so light his neck did not break, so he lingered, slowly strangling. All the prisoners were forced to watch.
Wiesel heard one prisoner whisper, “Where is God? Where is God now?”
Certainly it seemed that God had turned his back on this terrible place.
But then another prisoner said, “God is there…on the gallows.”
I wish I had an easy, all-inclusive answer for why horrific incidents such as the Virginia Tech killings happen. I wish I could answer why, just 48 hours later,127 innocent people were killed by a bomb in a Baghdad marketplace. From Blacksburg to Baghdad…so many families suffering because of senseless violence. We are all left asking, “Where is God?”
And my only answer is that God remains there…on the gallows. There is always a cross in the heart of God. God suffers with us endlessly because God loves us endlessly. God’s response to evil and violence and suffering is not an answer or an explanation so much as it is a presence, God with us, God grieving with us at those points where life has been too painful, mingling holy tears with ours.
Maybe this isn’t helpful. We read the headlines from Virginia Tech and we want answers and solutions. We want to know WHY? All I can offer in response is a word of faith…faith in a God who never deserts us, who suffers with us, who shares our pain and bears it all with us. So let us weep together, let us suffer together, let us walk through the valley together. And let us listen in the silences together. For, in the words of a colleague:
God is involved, not distant.
God is the word that comes when no words come.
God is the still small voice that speaks:
“Be of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed;
for I am with you wherever you go.”
