Her tears had stopped,
but her eyes were still red with grief. He gave her a Percocet and sat on the
edge of the bed. She took his hand in
hers and pressed it to her cheek, closing her eyes for a moment or two. Then she looked at him directly.
“I don’t get it, Josh,”
she said.
“What don’t you get?”
he asked.
“You say that God loves
us so much that He sacrificed Himself for us in the person of his only
Son. You say that He hears and answers
prayer. You say He deserves our absolute love and devotion,” she said.
“I believe all those
things to be true,” he said calmly.
“Then why is there so
much shit in the world?” she asked bitterly.
“Why do children starve, and good people die of cancer, and innocent
girls get raped and evil clerics blow up innocent people in the name of
Allah? Why is Giuseppe dead?” Unable to
contain her emotions, she broke into fresh sobs.
Josh looked at her long
and hard. “If you expect that my faith
somehow gives me all the answers to the unfairness of life, you are going to be
disappointed,” he said. “I don’t know
all the answers. I have asked the same
questions of God that you just asked me.
But I do know a few truths that might just help you understand a
little,” he said.
“Right now I need all
the help I can get,” she said.
“OK,” he said. “Here goes.
There are two things that keep this world from being the perfect place
God made it to be. The first of these is
what has cursed man from the beginning – the fact that God made us with free
will. Since the garden, every man and
woman has been free to choose their own path. There are people in the world who
voluntarily choose to do evil. God usually does not stop them – not because He
is complicit in their evil, but because He will not force someone to behave as
He wishes them to. Secondly, and hand in hand with that, there is the presence
of sin. Sin is the cancer that eats up
everything that is good in people and replaces it with bile and hatred. Sin is what twisted Dr. Tintoretto’s life and
filled her with anger and misery. Sin is what drives fanatics to murder in the
name of a supposedly compassionate god. Sin
ties us in knots and keeps us from reaching for the good and perfect life that
God has waiting for us.”
She nodded,
understanding but not convinced. “And there is something else,” Josh
added. “That is the fact that God is
omniscient and we are not. When
something like today happens, all we see is the short term pain and anguish and
not the eternal consequences. Sometimes
great evil can be turned into an even greater good. And sometimes pain is the way that God draws
us nearer to Himself. Did I ever tell
you about my cat, Lovecraft?”
Isabella actually
laughed a bit. “You named your cat after
a writer of Gothic horror stories?” she asked.
Josh sighed. “I told you I was a total nerd,” he
said. “Lovecraft was a pretty Siamese,
friendly and approachable. Far and away
the best-natured cat I have ever owned!
Of course, she had to be, given that I was a very typical mischievous
teenager. But one evening, we went off
to Wednesday church services, and Lovecraft the cat found her way into our
garage. Dad had been bass fishing that
Saturday, and left a rod and reel leaning in the corner with a lure still on
it. The lure was something called a
“Devil’s Horse” – about three inches long, shiny, and with three treble hooks
attached to it. I guess the lure was
hanging free and the cat batted at it with her paw. The treble hook bit in and
got hold of her. The more she yanked and pulled, the deeper it went. So, being a cat, she tried kicking at the
lure with her back claws to make it let go – and she got a hook in her back leg
as well. By now the rod was broken and
the garage has got fishing wire everywhere.
When panic and flight did not work, Lovecraft tried aggression
again. She BIT the lure to make it let
go - and got a third treble hook through the cheek!”
Isabella looked at him,
laughing and crying at the same time. “I think I know that feeling!” she
said. “Everything you do makes the
situation worse!”
“Exactly!” Josh
said. “So we get home from church and
Dad’s fishing rod is smashed, there is fishing line all over the garage, stuff
is strewn everywhere, and in one corner, tangled in a huge ball of fishing line
and miscellaneous things that had gotten caught up with her, was my poor cat,
yowling, hissing, and ready to claw the eyes out of anyone who got close!”
Isabella was giggling
now, as the Percocet took hold. “So what
did you do?” she asked.
“I wasn’t able to do
anything,” Josh said. “I was only 10
years old. But my Dad got a beach towel and threw it over the cat, wrapping her
up tight. Then he uncovered one pierced
cat member at a time, pushed the hook through the wound until the barbs came
out the other side, used wirecutters to cut the barb off the hook, and then
pulled it back out. You should have
heard the cat howl! It sounded like she was being disemboweled! And despite the towel and two pairs of hands
helping, she still managed to claw my Dad up pretty good. After he got the last hook out and cut her
free of all the fishing line, she bit him for good measure, went streaking out
of the garage and under the house, and did not come out for two days!”
“Poor kitty!” Isabella
said.
“The thing is,” Josh
continued, “to her limited understanding, Dad was just torturing her. There was no rhyme or reason to his actions
that she could understand. All she felt was the pain. But the whole time, he was actively working
to free her from the mess she had gotten herself into. And she clawed and bit him for his troubles!”
Isabella was quiet now,
her rich brown eyes staring up at Josh.
“That’s us,” he
said. “That’s our whole world. We are so caught up in our own sin, our own
misery, and their consequences that we can’t even begin to see a way out. And when God tries to help us, we fight back
because we can’t see the situation from his perspective. All we see is more pain, so we lash out at
Him. But the whole time He is just
patiently trying to extricate us from the mess we landed ourselves in by our
own stubbornness and pride.”
Isabella was quiet for
a very long time, and he thought that perhaps she had gone to sleep. But when she spoke, her voice was soft but
very clear. “Thank you, Joshua,” she
said. “It doesn’t make everything better
– but it helps me understand. A little. I still wish Simone and Giuseppe did
not have to die.”
Josh’s own tears
started up again, surprising him. “Me
too,” he said softly.
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