In the Face of Tragedy

Hurricane Rita is making her way through the gulf coast of Texas. Traffic is jammed. People are frantic. Refugees are packing up and fleeing once more with no sure destination. Hard telling where they'll find a place to rest their heads now that their world is being threatened once more. Who knows how much damage this one will do. People don't know whether or not they'll have a home left when they get back. How can these people make sense of this kind of tragedy?
We had an interesting discussion in crisis counseling yesterday about the assumptions we hold about ourselves and the world and what we do when they are shattered by a crisis. We believe that life holds meaning (at least we hope it does, right?). The rest of what we assume is built upon this main assumption that things don't just randomly happen. They happen for a reason, regardless of how we choose to assign the meaning. We can so easily become Job's friends who try to convince him he has unconfessed sin because of what has happened. Even though we may not realize it, deep down we hold onto some of these ideas with white knuckles. And it's okay to reject randomness to a certain extent because it's adaptive.

We believe that the world is good and will continue to be good to us. When combined with the sense of meaningfulness, this becomes a belief in some sort of justice in the world. We acknowledge that there are horrible things that go on in the world but we don't believe they happen in "our world" because that would just be unfair.

We believe that we are good and worthy people and that therefore, tragedies will not happen to us due to this sense of justice. We cannot conceive of something so horrible happenning to us because we cannot conceive of ourselves being bad enough to "deserve" it. Again, this can be adaptive when everything is in place because if we really came to terms with our sinfulness we just might go crazy.

So what happens to these assumptions when something like Katrina happens and people lose everything they have? The victims are most likely wrestling with letting go of these assumptions I've listed above. They've been shattered to peices. How can God do this? How can God let this happen? Why did it happen to me and not someone living in another state/town/etc.? What did I do to deserve this? It could take a lifetime to rebuild them. The outcome could be more healthy or it could be more maladaptive. Who knows.

And while I have no idea what I'd be doing or thinking if this had all happened to me, my heart goes out to them. And not just hurricaine victims, but everyone in this world who has faced that point of crisis when you know you have no more resources to draw from. Your ability to cope with what has gone on is no longer available to you. Maybe they've lost a loved one, maybe they've lost everything they have, maybe they're dealing with disease or terminal illness. These people are all around us, searching to put meaning to their situations.

And I wish that faith offered more answers, but I am not sure it does. I do not believe that tragedy always seeks individuals on purpose. I don't understand this fully though. I don't know why God's lets these things happen. And while faith does not offer answers, I am glad it offers hope. We have hope in Christ that these kinds of sufferings are only temporary and can actually be considered "pure joy" because they help to develop perseverence. Yeah, try telling someone that while they're going through something like this. (I'm sure that would go over really well with some folks). Someone has to have extraordinarily strong faith to have such a mindset. But the truth, when put in an eternal perspective, is that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ Jesus. Not death, not destruction, not sickness, not poverty. I just hope that if such hardship befalls me I will be able to say these things...that I would be able to trust God, embrace the mystery of it all, and bless His name even though I don't understand why it's happenening.