Is there hope in the floods?
Thoughts on Camp Mystic, theodicy, what to do or say in times like these
As I write this, the death toll in Texas from the flooding there has surpassed 100. At Camp Mystic, 27 of the victims were campers and counselors, most of these children, young girls. Swept away in the darkness of the early morning.
I haven’t allowed myself to really consider any of this. I’ve hardly been able to read the stories. I have three sons, age seven and under. I dream of what their lives might be, the unfolding possibilities, the innocence of all that potential. I think of my boys hooping and hollering because we got to stay at a hotel last week, and how excited they were to jump into its frigid, overly-chlorinated pool. It was magical to see the hotel, the beach, the ocean, all through their wonder-filled eyes. I have a simple belief, one that seems right. Children should be children, and nothing bad should happen to them. And yet, I know it happens, all the time it happens, and I have nothing to say in response. I don’t understand it. I pray I never understand it.
I think of the parents of these girls. Some of them were anxious to let them leave. Others guiltily enjoying their kid-free week. I can’t imagine it.
I worked at a church camp for two summers when I was in college. Two of the happiest summers of my life. It was at camp where I first experienced the Holy Spirit and invited Jesus into my heart. Everything changed for me after that. It was at camp where I wrestled with the deeper questions of my faith as a teenager. It was working at camp where I first felt the rumbling in my soul of God, calling me to ministry. Camp was my holy ground, my sanctuary.
I can’t help but think, this week, of when the tornado sirens went off when I was on staff at church camp. Each cabin had counselors, and the counselors were supposed to get all their campers out of bed and into our rickety 12-passenger vans, to one of the few shelters we had at camp. I went to one of the camps to pick up the kids (each age group had their own area and a volunteer dean to be in charge of them), and we loaded the kids up with their counselors into the vans, and in the midst of the storm, we hauled them away.
When we got everyone down to the basement of the lodge, the dean of that particular group did a roll call. All were accounted for except one, a camper in the dean’s own cabin. We searched quickly to see if he was hiding, but soon we knew: a boy was missing. He was not here.
The camp’s director, in charge of the entire camp, was a man named Warren, and he immediately sprung into action. He grabbed me and one other staff person and we hopped into his truck. Picture it: tornado sirens wailing, strong winds blowing, rain falling hard, and us, hurrying back through the darkness to the camp site. The tornado, at least according to the radar, was within a five-mile radius of where we were.
This is what I’ll never forget. When we got to the cabin, we opened the door, and the little boy was on the top bunk, his bed hidden behind the opened door. He was sleeping soundly through the storm. Untroubled by the sirens. Thank God, we were able to wake him up and get him quickly to safety. No one was hurt. But I have never been able to really get over how peacefully a kid can sleep when all hell is breaking loose around them. And tonight, as I write these words, I can’t help but think of how peacefully those girls must have been sleeping after a long day of playing in the Texan summer heat.
I also remember how angry I was that a child had been left behind. It was one of the first times I remember feeling that kind of anger, a righteous kind. I didn’t know what to do with it. I don’t think most people do, especially when we direct that anger to God himself. How could you do this? How could you let these little ones perish?
Theodicy is man’s attempt to justify God’s ways, a vindication of God’s goodness in the presence of evil and suffering. It’s what we try to offer to people who are angry at God for what he’s done or for what he’s allowed to happen. We defend God, as if God needs us to offer the world an explanation for him. It’s something man attempts to do all the time, and one that God seems uninterested in. Humanity longs for an explanation, a reason, to understand how these things could happen. God does not offer it. I’ve read the Bible a few times at this point, and it’s simply not there. Oh how I wish it was.
Instead, what God does, is become one of us and join himself to our suffering. He assumes our humanity and he joins his voice to our angry, despondent cries. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he cries! God suffers in his humanity, in Christ, and dies a shameful, agonizing death. He doesn’t offer an explanation to evil. Instead, by dying, he wins a victory to defeat it. He paves the road to a kingdom, by route of his very body, where there is no more of this stuff. No more death, suffering, agony. No more tears. And to get there, we have to trust him even beyond our ability to understand him. At the end of the day, that’s what faith is.
Here’s what I know. None of this would be helpful to say to grieving parents, to those facing the worst, most painful loss, the one without a name. At least not in the moment of their grief. We can only offer them our presence, our aid, our tears. Most helpfully, we can offer them our silence before the unanswerable questions. The joining of our hearts to theirs is all that’s needed. Anything beyond that, any explanation, any rationale, is pure cruelty. Don’t dream of it.
And yet. It’s important as Christians to take up the virtue of hope, even at the darkest moment. To hope on behalf of those who cannot dare to hope anymore. That’s when it’s needed most. My prayer is that you might hope with me, on behalf of those who can’t right now. Hope, like all the virtues, is something we must will to do. We must choose it, fight for it, the belief that, in spite of the facts, God is busy and at work, making everything sad come untrue. I have to ask God to help me in my unbelief at times, but I believe it tonight, as I write these words. There is a future coming, a better one, even if we can’t see it fully right now. Hope is simply the kind of life we would lead if we saw it perfectly coming our way.
May God bring hope to Texas, to you, and to me, as we once again face the terror of being human, frail and mortal and powerless. Thank God that Jesus knows how we feel, and has paved a way through it. Even if we can’t see it, let’s hope with Julian of Norwich, let’s hope with all the saints before us, that someday, somehow, “all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”
I don’t know how to wrap this up. But please pray with me for these families. Prayer is real, it matters, it affects the world we live in. God responds to prayer. God calls us to pray.
Also, if you’d like to give some to relief efforts, I recommend donating to Matthew 25 ministries. They are already on the ground in Texas, and are an excellent organization centered in Cincinatti, OH.
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