Some people, lots of people, millions of people have more than they can handle.
They are overwhelmed, undone by sudden catastrophe; buried under crushing burdens related to debt, disease, death; drowning in a sea of unstoppable pain or white-hot grief. Some, miraculously, find a way out of the staggering misery (more on that in a minute). Others don’t.
Some people, it is clear, have more than they can handle.
Yet it’s important to note that Christian theology does not hold that it is God who sends the more-than-we-can-handle difficulties our way. God is not the invisible personal trainer, sadistically adding more weight to the bench to see how much we can press before we collapse–our own “no pain, no gain” life coach.
And neither does God visit suffering upon us as punishment. Jesus addresses this in Sunday’s appointed gospel lesson (Luke 13:1-9). Two ripped-from-the-headlines events are used to make his point. The first is the massacre of a group of Galileans in Jerusalem. On Pilate’s orders, these Jews had been murdered for offering sacrifices in the temple, and their own blood had been mingled with the priestly oblation.
Jesus insists that such a tragedy is not punishment from God: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you . . . “
His second example–again from the front page of the newspaper–was a construction accident in which eighteen people had been killed when a tower fell. Jesus repeats the question: “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you . . . “
God does not visit evil on us, for any reason. We visit it on ourselves. And real people suffer terribly and often cannot cope. To tell them this is God's will -- a sort of divine tutorial -- demeans both them and God.
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