Bombing Puts Religion To The Test
The Oklahoma City tragedy raises the Big Question for the monotheistic religions: If God is totally powerful and perfectly good, why do the innocent and the righteous suffer?
Why do children die in terrorist bomb explosions? In drive-by shootings? Abusive homes? Why do the virtuous die of horrible diseases? In earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes? In war?
Sages through the ages have engaged in heavy theological lifting, known as theodicy, to reconcile God’s omnipotence and goodness with the presence of evil.
Before considering how Judaism, Christianity and Islam respond doctrinally, what about where the canonical rubber hits the road - in everyday life?
It’s here that clergy and spiritual counselors must translate often complex concepts and tenets into clear, comforting answers for grieving believers, sometimes including themselves.
Countless volumes have addressed the question. This summary from scholars of the Big Three religions probably isn’t the final word:
Judaism
There are several contradictory answers, none entirely satisfactory. One is that God has given human beings free will with which we can rebel against or obey God’s norms.
Another view is that suffering is a form of atonement, a balancing of good and bad deeds, the paying of dues for what we’ve done or not done.
There’s also the position that God’s ways aren’t our ways and we don’t and can’t know and must trust God.
Christianity
The challenge is living with the tension of these polarities: God is all good and loving and powerful. And the world that God created is finite and imperfect, containing sin and evil, and that God gave to nature a certain autonomy and to humanity freedom.
God does not cause evil or intend harm to come through the forces of nature. The danger comes when we anthropomorphize the Creator, judging God from our perspective of power, freedom and love.
Islam
This world is a preparation for eternal life, our lives a test. Tribulations develop faith, wipe out misdeeds, produce lessons for others and primarily emphasize our total dependence on God and our limitations. It is in true obedience to God that we can live in peace and goodness.
God’s compassion is revealed in the reward of eternal life. When someone dies an accidental death, the person is a martyr and goes directly to paradise.
Everything is good. There is no evil or suffering per se, only the abuse, misuse or overuse of good. All suffering is because mankind has disobeyed God.