Who was he?

His name was Andreas Guenter Lubitz.  

I say was because at 28 years old he decided to end his life and about 150 other people on a plane that he was piloting on Tuesday.  Apparently he waited for the captain to leave the cockpit and locked the cabin and began an almost 10 minute descent into the French Alps.  The plane was en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf and crashed at just before 11am.

So why would someone do this?  Who was this guy?

According to his Facebook page he was a pretty normal guy.  His interests include mundane things like Burger King, a local DJ and he obviously loved flying.  His friends describe him as a normal and friendly person.  It doesn't seem like he was upset about anything.  He loved working for Germanwings and seemed to have a lot going for him.

No one suspects any terrorist connections either.  There were no radical religious chants as the plane began its descent.  No rationale for his behavior.  No recorded suicide note.   In fact, his breathing was normal as the captain tried to break down the door.  Screams were heard from the passengers but Lubitz remained silent.

The story just doesn't make any sense.  How can absolutely no one have any idea that this young man was considering doing something so horrific?  Perhaps the investigation will reveal clues to what the intention behind Andreas Lubitz really was.  Until then we are in the dark.  

Here is what I do know.  

No one makes this decision out of the blue.   The captain didn't leave the cockpit and the random thought of crashing a plane blipped across his mental radar and he decided to give it a shot.  

They say that he was terse with the captain minutes before he left the cabin.  Maybe Andreas got an unwelcome text from a girlfriend.  Perhaps there was something very deep that ran between Andreas and the captain that exploded inside his mind wanting revenge in some way.  Maybe he had been planning this for months and kept it locked inside for that very moment.  Regardless of the reason, there was a reason.

I do know that because there had to be a reason, there had to be a moment when this seemed like a good idea.  Like a seed placed in soil, there was a moment this idea was accepted in his mind . . . and no one noticed.  

I do know that the human mind has deep and dark soil.

I do know that all of us have had moments where we wanted to settle a score . . . or give up . . . or take control regardless of the outcome.

And I do know that for as connected we like to think we are, things like this happen . . . but they shouldn't.  I do know that these kind of things get intercepted when we invest in others.  Whether it is neighbors or co-workers or friends . . . connecting with people and digging deeper into the soil of their lives can be the single most effective way to stop things like this happening in the future.

As spring comes around, maybe this is the kind of event that reminds us that we need to get our hands dirty in the soil of other people's lives.

#3: But you didn't answer the question!

Okay . . . so some of you felt like I answered the question about why God waits to punish evil btut never answered the question as to why it is there to begin with.


Good point.


I thought that perhaps most have already heard the whole "God created us having free will" or God wanted our love so much that he gave us the freedom to not show it." Essentially God wanted people who would want to choose Him.  The only way to chose that love is to have a choice between God and 'not-God' or what we might call evil.


That seems to be the most popular answer in this kind of category - but it doesn't answer the question either.  Does that mean that God set up evil in the universe for us to choose between it and Him?  It reminds me of the Far Side Cartoon where God is standing over a cookie sheet in an apron with a huge globe about to go into the oven.  Around Him are cans of "light skinned" and "dark skinned" as if they are ingredients.  He is shaking a can labeled "jerks" and the caption in his thoughts is " . . . just to make it more interesting . . ."  Makes me laugh.


      So what do we make of it all?  How can we believe in a God who either introduces evil into the world (knowing that it would bring about universal suffering) or a God that is powerless against its introduction (in which case He is a bit weak).
     I think the answer comes from how we view the question.  Do we view it from the perspective that God acts within a certain set of acceptable behaviors and attitudes?  If we view it from this perspective we have every right to put God on trial and find Him wanting.  From this perspective we set up certain parameters that a being like God should be confined to.  When the reality wanders outside those boundaries, then we can either do one of two things: revise our understanding (toss out our pre-conceived ideas) or toss out God.  From this perspective, it is easy to see that we have tossed out God.
     The problem, of course, is that we are judging God by human standards of what is the right way and the wrong way for a God to act.  We immediately rush to judgment saying that there is no way that a perfect God would let evil into the world if He was perfect.  Are we experts in this area?  Is it possible that our sense of right and wrong is (appropriately) finite? 
     What if the idea of God allows for a deity that acts in ways that are completely wild and beyond our sense of what a God should and should not do?  Why couldn't God have allowed a will that deviated from His own to take form and tempt us so that we could have the power of choosing God over our own wills?  Why does it necessarily follow that a God who allows evil for the purpose of giving us free will is not a perfect God?  It is one thing to say that you don't want to follow a God that allows suffering in the world.  That is our right.  It is another to say that such a God couldn't exist.  That is our arrogance.
     Perhaps a healthy amount of doubt is good all around.  It is good to doubt preachers, teachers and (ahem) blog writers and disagree with what they have to say.  It is equally good to have doubts about God.  But . . . perhaps the best doubt is the one that we don't often indulge in - our perspective.  Perhaps we are the ones who have a limited and narrow view of God that we need to walk away from.  
   

#4: The presence of evil: How can there be a God when there is evil?

A friend of mine posted from a news source today about how the Catholic church had not only an awareness of abuse that was going on in its own ranks but seemed to shuffle its priests around in an effort to conceal it from the public.  The report highlights the activities of a priest that was hard to read at times in its depiction of (what I believe) is pure evil.  

You know, there are a thousand different things I could write in this space to illustrate the level of evil that exists in the world - right now warplanes are firing rockets on its own citizens because a single dictator is out of touch with reality . . . 

But it is the ordinary evil that is the most terrifying to me.

When I say 'ordinary evil,' I mean the priest that leads the eight year old altar boy into a back room while they wait for the child's parents to pick him up from church.  I think of the visit I paid to a fraternity in my days at PSU watching a frat boy put his hands up someone's dress while she was heavily drunk.  Evil is not so much on the scale of the Nazi regime . . . evil is evident in the emotional torture an abusive husband puts his wife through.  This evil is present in the life of a teenage girl who I sat across from at the diner telling me that her father calls her a pig and a whore.  Evil is getting young 16-18 year old girls addicted to crack so that they perform sexual acts for profit on street corners, on DVDs and magazines.  You will pass those victims today at the mini-mart magazine stand . . . some of you will see them on your computer screen tonight.  

So we don't have to sift through headlines to see that we swim in evil everyday.  Evil takes what it wants.  Evil uses people as props.  Evil obeys its own appetite.  Evil has no concern for the other person or the greater good.  Evil is everywhere.

So if evil is everywhere . . . where is God?  How does He let that happen?  How CAN he let that happen?

For those of you who think, you must have wrestled with this question at some point - "how can there be a God in heaven if there is so much evil on earth?"  Isn't the presence of evil evidence that either:

1. God is powerless against evil (in which case the God designation is questionable).

or

2. God is indifferent (in which case WHO WANTS TO FOLLOW THIS DEITY?)

Both are unacceptable answers to the question . . . that is why I think there is a third way - no silver bullet of faith, but at least a step in the direction of getting an answer.

First, the only encouraging thing to me in the whole mess is that we agree that evil is evil.  If you really think about it, the sense of justice we have is a candle of hope.  If we are just animals with a larger brain case, when would the idea of 'right' have entered the picture?  Right should just be that which leads to survival - regardless of how it affects others.  We should be okay with animalistic instincts like eating our young or incest . . . how animals conduct affairs should be okay with us if there is nothing outside of our instinct.  

But somehow, there is an idea of right and wrong that very few of us reflect consistently. Where did that come from?

And this has nothing to do with social contracts, Rousseau was wrong.  We don't create good and bad to benefit ourselves.  Like C.S. Lewis said - right and wrong are not the keys on the piano that we play for our benefit - it is the music on the sheet that tells which keys to be played.  Where did this music come from?

We grieve the disgusting acts of evil people precisely because we have a sense of what the right should be.  It is more than shaking our heads and agreeing it is wrong - it makes us sick to think of people that abuse power over the innocent.  That passion is more than instinct, it is hope of something greater inside of us.

So what?!  I'm so glad that at least we can grieve injustice - why can't God?  Or at least if God can see that there is evil in the world, then why does it still exist?  Which one of us wouldn't instantly vaporize the priest who abuses children?  Or what if that girl on the pages was your little girl and some creep was baiting her with addiction so he could make money off her body - which one of you wouldn't consider inflicting serious harm . . . or worse?

So why wouldn't you?

As people who count ourselves enlightened, the best thing to do is to let justice take place . . . in time. 

Even we as humans know that justice is a process . . . that it takes time and that wrong is eventually made right.  And I think the assumption is that because we don't see justice happen that God is asleep at the gavel.  In the same way that a court case may drag on for years, we grow impatient with the idea that we have to trust in a God who sees all things and is in the business of setting things right.  Why doesn't He do something NOW?

And this is where it gets really challenging and some of you are going to walk away . . .

If we live under a God of grace, not only is the timetable going to be insufferably wrong before the guilty get their due, but the guilty are going to be shown grace.  Grace is not something we can be cavalier about.  Grace - favor given to those who don't deserve it - is available to all of God's children . . . even the pedophile.

To be honest, it makes me sick.  I want the pedophile to pay.

That is why I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God - no one could make this stuff up.  Grace is scandalous.  It is in some ways sickening (except when it is applied to me).  And in matters of justice it can make God seem like He is indifferent . . . but God leads with His grace and that is why evil still has its day.

For now.