Scripture won’t take away the tears, but it helps us understand – and live
Just as shock and grief from the senseless murders in Tumbler Ridge were fading from the national consciousness, Canadians were jarred by another disturbing revelation.
Police allege a 15-year-old girl in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia and a 14-year-old boy from Rivers, Manitoba were discussing potential attacks on their schools. The Online conversation was flagged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Interpol and shared with the RCMP. The pair began discussing their plans online just 10 days after the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, police say. The boy was charged with uttering threats. The girl faces charges including conspiracy to commit murder and uttering threats to cause death.
Only one month previously, six children and two adults were killed in a mass shooting at a high school and the shooter’s home in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. Shock and grief invaded the hearts of all Canadians.
People outside the church and within the church are falling back on the ‘whats?’ and ‘whys?’ People are casting about for credible answers in hopes of settling troubled spirits and drying tears.
God is at work in his creation in spite of its evil, sin and suffering.
By now, Christmas is perhaps a distant memory. But can we remind ourselves that the beautiful story of the birth of our Saviour is also soiled with the upsetting news of the murder of innocent children? King Herod murdered all the baby boys in Bethlehem. Right from my Sunday School days it has been a blot on the Christmas story. But now I know it was an inevitable part of it. Especially these days we need to know the whole story. The creeping darkness and unsettling times we lived through in 2025 have come too soon in Tumbler Ridge. We need encouragement. We need the whole story. We want to understand. So now, where did I put my Bible?
If we let Scripture illuminate and guide our life experiences we will be reminded that God is at work in his creation in spite of its evil, sin and suffering. We especially need to know this today. We read that Jesus was born into this very same world! The murders in Bethlehem illustrate the broken world Christ came to save. It’s not a welcome part of the Christmas story but, like the horror of the crucifixion, it remains part of the whole story. God is at work among us. Don’t give up even though you may struggle and suffer because of the way life is.
Abel is only the first innocent person to die. God permitted and allowed it then as he does today.
But this all begs a foundational question: how did evil, sin and suffering arrive in a creation made by a purposeful and loving God? Genesis 1:31 tells us that “God was pleased with what he had made.” But by Genesis 4, Cain murders his innocent brother Abel. Was the killing of Abel an inevitable part of the creation story? Yes.
This is the world we too have been born into. Abel is only the first innocent person to die. God permitted and allowed it then as he does today. Life here is a mix of contrasting good and evil, joy and sadness. Murder is right there at the birth of our world and right there at the birth and death of our Saviour. This is what this world is like, as if we need to be reminded. But we do need reminding especially as the likes of King Herod are still with us: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Muammar Gaddafi and now Putin.
Gaddafi was a Herod to his Libyan people and a disrupter of world stability and peace so much so that Canada along with many other countries broke off diplomatic relations. Around 2000, Canada and other countries restored those relations. The Libyan embassy in Ottawa hosted a formal reception to mark the restoration. I was minister of Grace Presbyterian church Ottawa at the time and through an unusual but understandable circumstance I received a formal invitation. Should I go? Do I want to go and identify with his corrupt and evil regime? I went. I wanted to go as an identifiable Christian so I wore my collar. There were big pictures of Gaddafi and a sumptuous banquet table the centre of which was a whole roast lamb. Did I fit in among the 30 or so mostly oil executives, investors and engineers all looking for a slice of the pie? No. I stuck out. What to do? I remembered that all of north Africa in the early centuries of Christianity was predominantly Christian and remained so until the Muslim invasion. Augustine himself came from Hippo on the coast. So I pointedly asked one of the embassy dignitaries, “How is the church doing in Libya? (i.e. under Gaddafi’s evil regime) His hesitating response was, “Ah… yes… fine…. we have a church in Tripoli.” I asked the same question of the Cuban delegation and got roughly the same kind of answer.
. . . like moths to a summer porch light, it batters us. We are drawn to it like gossip over the backyard fence. . .
The foundational question then becomes: how did evil and suffering intrude into God’s good creation? The answer: because Adam and Eve had a choice. (Genesis 2:15-17 and 3:1-2) Satan/the snake deceived her so that she chose to want to know good and evil (or ‘everything’, or ‘bad’ as some translations put it). But God never built us to be able to know everything and especially to be able to handle evil. Only God can. We are drawn to it as well for we have inherited Adam and Eve’s ability to choose – and choose it we do! Not surprisingly, like moths to a summer porch light, it batters us. We are drawn to it like gossip over the backyard fence, or vicariously on cable TV, Netflix, etc. On social media it is especially addictive for the vulnerable. Portrayals of sin and evil in the media help sell the advertiser’s products. Studies have shown that these portrayals increase our screen time and therefore ratings and profits. The old newspaper headline adage “if it bleeds it leads” works. Also interesting is that the recently announced Oxford University word of 2025 is “rage-bait”. It describes what occurs when news media deliberately run a story that angers us. We stay tuned longer. Ratings and profits go up.
God wants us to freely choose to know and love him and love can’t be demanded or coerced.
The obvious question we will now want to ask is: why did God give Adam and Eve the ability to choose if he knew we would so often choose poorly? Why? Because God wants us to freely choose to know and love him and love can’t be demanded or coerced. If love is not freely given it’s not love. Evil and sin and the suffering they cause have entered creation through the necessity of choice. Adam and Eve had to have free will to love and obey God or not. Satan, who is present at creation, attacks us through our poor choices. He wants our attention on him and not on our Saviour Jesus – and he is getting it.
How would we know to avoid hate if we did not know love’s beauty? Without darkness would we know or appreciate light?
A fourth question then arises: did God himself have choices at creation? Would we have a perfect world if God did not give us free wills so as to make choices? No. We would be drones living in a neutral universe. There would be no love and no hate as one presumes and reveals the other. How would we know to avoid hate if we did not know love’s beauty? Without darkness would we know or appreciate light? Nature in fact tells us darkness is essential to life. Creation gives us good bugs, bad bugs, good snakes, bad snakes, nutritious plants, poisonous plants, etc. Being sick on occasion draws me to appreciate good health. It seems contrasts are an important part of life. Would I feel fully alive without a few bad days? We all love music, but treble and bass by themselves are discordant. Blend them and we have harmony! Falsity and lies make me seek the truth, love and life I find in Jesus. Also, if there is no hell, as a reservoir for people with unresolved sin, then heaven automatically becomes a bland meaningless place for everybody and anybody. Life can’t be painted in just one colour!
At creation we were given choice and choice produces life’s sometimes dark and painful contrasts. It has produced apart from the beauty, love, life and good it was meant to produce when we choose to live life the way God intended, the likes of King Herod. Saddam Hussein was also another Herod to his people. When I was attending the Libyan embassy reception there was another man who, like me, did not fit. No one was talking to him and he was looking over at me, also standing by myself. I went over and introduced myself. We became friends and I often took Sabih out for coffee. I heard his story and I told him of Jesus. He was an Iraqi Muslim professor educated in Britain. He had taught in several universities along the Mediterranean coast of Africa. For this reason he was a threat to Saddam’s regime and was imprisoned and tortured. He and his family came to Ottawa as refugees. On numerous occasions he came to my church. Once when he was leaving he put his fist over his heart, looked me in the eye and said, “I feel love when I come here!” Contrast! Islam is loveless. It’s all about obeying. It’s darkness. Jesus is light and love. Sabih felt the contrast with the religion he was born into. Life is not monochrome.
There are then three sources of life’s brokenness and suffering:
- When we make poor/sinful/ignorant choices.
- When others make these choices and sin against us or others as at Tumbler Ridge.
- We now must live in an imperfect and fallen creation that does not fully reflect God’s original intention: apart from its beauty, order and majesty there are now accidents, diseases, floods and volcanoes, etc. (Genesis 3: 16-19 illustrates this)
And yet, God is very much at work restoring life and purpose to a sinful humanity and to his now imperfect and fallen creation. What has God done? He has twice acted strategically to overcome the often terrible results of the necessity of choice:
God instituted the necessity of death, just as he promised Eve he would have to do if she chose to know evil: “. . . if you do you will die. . .” (Genesis 2:17).
- As a consequence, every living thing on earth dies. We humans have to die in this body so we can be reborn in a body that can withstand the heavenly presence of God’s awesome holiness. Creation itself is also subject to death but a new earth is promised (Revelation 21). We are invited to begin to be a new creation through Christ who “makes all things new” and it can begin even today if it has not already begun for you. (ie: Acts 3:19; 2 Corinthians 5:17)
- God came himself as baby Jesus at Bethlehem so that on the cross he could take responsibility for our inability to love and obey God. Choice in our lives often leads us to sin and our sin and God’s holiness cannot meet. Jesus lived the perfect sin-free life we cannot live and died on the cross in our place so that one day we can stand in the presence of God. Only Jesus can handle the world’s evil and our sin. We were never made to be able to. When we choose to follow Jesus as Saviour and Lord we are promised new life today and a resurrection into an eternal life in God’s holy presence.
To be fully alive today we need the whole story. Scripture helps us understand it and live it – but won’t take away today’s tears.
Illustration Credit: Nicolas Poussin, Le massacre des Innocents, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
