Over the next few posts, I want to look at how we twist the truth when we suffer tragedy and loss. This is an especially tricky topic because if you aren’t careful with how you read the Bible, it’s very easy to be led astray. Let me show you what I mean.

Where Was God's Protection?

In the Bible, we read the words of King David, who said to God:

You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. Psalm 32:7

Then God said about David:

“Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. Psalm 91:14

It’s verses like these that train us to expect God to protect us. And my guess is that most prayers to God have to do with asking for his protection: from soldiers in a foxhole, to teachers in a classroom, to parents praying for their kids as they send them off each day.

Near Misses

I’m sure we’ve all heard stories from people telling us about near misses where God protected them from death or harm. These stories confirm our biblical bias that God will indeed protect us. Just the other day a friend of mine told me how his daughter had a life-threatening accident and through a series of miraculous “coincidences,” she was rescued and lived to tell about it. My friend is sure that God was behind that rescue. I have to agree.

When Tragedy and Loss Strike

So, as people of faith, we live in a narrative (a story) that sees God at work in a dynamic, personal way, intervening in our lives. That’s a good thing. But here is where things can get twisted. What happens when tragedy and loss strike? What happens when someone isn’t spared? You have a miscarriage, your brother is hit by a drunk driver and dies, your mother is diagnosed with aggressive cancer, your grandfather gets Alzheimer's, or as happened in our congregation this year: someone dies in a terrible accident. How do we explain that? How does that fit into our narrative?

That’s a problem. Many of us don’t have a theology for tragedy. And that is when truth gets twisted. 

The Questions That Follow Tragedy and Loss

When tragedy and loss happen it fills us with questions:

• Does that mean that God dropped the ball?

• Does it mean God orchestrated these things to happen?

• Does it mean he doesn’t care, or worse yet...that he doesn’t exist? That we’ve fabricated a religion just to make us feel good about ourselves?

• Or is it our fault? Do bad things happen because we sinned in some way?

These are the kind of thoughts that run through our mind and so I just want to be honest and admit that when bad things happen, many of us don’t know how to think.

Tragedy and Loss Happen to Other People, Not Us

We’ve trained ourselves to assume that bad things won’t happen. Tragedy only happens to other people. Not us. Or if bad things do happen, there’s an obvious reason for it, like someone sinned. This is when truth gets twisted.

And so I want to jump in here and say, Time out. Let’s think this through. It’s bad enough that a tragedy happened, but it’s doubly bad if we mishandle the tragedy with twisted thinking. The impact could make our lives even worse in the long run.

Join me over the next few posts as I explore the nature of tragedy and loss and how we can untwist our thinking and make sense of who God is and where he is in our pain.

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