Why? Suffering, Evil, and Death

From Michael O'Brien's Father Elijah: An Apocalypse. Excerpts:

"The enemy killed the Lamb."
"You know the rest of it."
"And the Lamb overcame death."
"Yes. But first He had to die."
"Why did He have to die? Why did my wife die? Why are you covered with bruises?"
"Because we are in a real war."
"It is not right!"
"You a priest for so many years and you say that? Of course it's not right. The Cross isn't right. But our Lord took it and turned it into the great sign that the devil hates above all other signs. Each time we accept to bear that cross and be nailed to it, believing against all believing--when it's impossible any longer to believe because of our pain--that's when we defeat him. By the blood of the Lamb."--page 107

The universe is designed to demand everything from us. Why? Because we are made to enter into communion with God and share his life, which consists of absolute self-gift, a self-gift to the point where we must give everything, even our lives, to keep up--and still it would not be enough without his grace.

The universe is designed to be the medium of the exchange, of the divine to the human and the human to the divine, designed to be sacramental, to accommodate God's gift of self and our gift of self.  There was a rupture when we fell, and now the world is often more dangerous, more deadly, than ever it was meant to be.  The world is on some levels disordered, and so humans fall ill, animal turns on animal, the world is often hostile and harsh.  Our intellects are darkened, our wills weakened, our passions disordered.  The devil prowls the world, the flesh rebels, the world allures.  And so there is often pain and suffering that God had never intended from the beginning, that strikes the innocent and leaves the wicked seemingly unscathed.

It's an answer easy to write.  It may not comfort or explain to someone in the depths of grief and suffering. And it would seem that God would rather hear us getting angry at him, believing he has the power to avert suffering, believing he is a good and loving God, and raging to him from the depths of our suffering because he stood by and permitted it to happen, than have us hear anodyne explanations and ponderous platitudes.  See the Book of Psalms for extensive kvetching to God.  He even speaks a curse against apologists in the Book of Job after Job cries out to God for an explanation, rejecting all the pieties of his friends:

After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "My anger blazes against you and your two friends! You have not spoken rightly concerning me, as has my servant Job. So now take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves, and let my servant Job pray for you. To him I will show favor, and not punish your folly, for you have not spoken rightly concerning me, as has my servant Job."…Then all his brothers and sisters came to him, and all his former acquaintances, and they dined with him in his house. They consoled and comforted him for all the evil the LORD had brought upon him….—Job 42:7-8, 11

So take it or leave it. I thought the explanation might help some people. Whatever else you do, though, pray for the victims and the first responders and the whole country, for the society and an end to the culture of death and fear. Pray for the mentally ill and those who love them, who try to care for them.  Pray.