How do we make sense of the dreadful events unfolding in Ukraine at the moment? In one sense, that’s easy enough: they are the direct result of an egocentric, misguided megalomaniac who wishes to impose his will not just on his own people but on a much wider orbit around Russia. But if we’re looking for a deeper reason – a spiritual reason – as though all this is somehow part of God’s purpose, then I’m afraid we will search in vain. God, I would venture, is as dismayed, as horrified, as we are by the naked aggression and mindless slaughter taking place. We will not find a reason, but what we may find, what we have to find, is some way of finding and creating good even in the apparently irredeemable awfulness of the current situation. In a much wider context, that’s the theme of the following reflection, which I wrote for my recent book Seize the Day.
‘Everything happens for a reason,’ they say
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
Epicurus
Doubt everything.
Find your own light.
The Buddha
Why, O Lord, are you so distant?
Why do you hide yourself
from me in my hour of need?
Why are you so far from helping me,
from heeding my groans?
I cry to you by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but gain no respite.
Psalm 10:1; 22:1, 2
‘Everything happens for a reason,’ they say.
A reason!
Are they kidding?
A reason for the millions shipped brutally into slavery,
for the children slaughtered in the gas chambers,
for the multitudes who perished in the gulags?
A reason for the genocide,
the massacre,
the murder?
A reason for the earthquake,
tsunami,
flood
and famine?
For the cancer,
multiple sclerosis,
heart defect,
dementia?
For the stillborn child,
the cot death,
the sexual abuse?
Don’t tell me there’s a reason for these,
some overarching purpose that gives meaning to it all,
for if there is,
if there’s something or someone out there pulling the strings,
then they’re out of control –
devilish,
diabolical,
far removed from the benign and loving purpose some claim:
the message being grounds not for reassurance
but for consternation,
for dismay rather than good cheer.
No, don’t look for a reason,
for you will find none,
but look instead for a way to turn sorrow into joy,
and tears into laughter;
to find light in the darkest of moments,
hope in the depths of despair,
such that, whatever trials we may face,
they need not, finally, all be for nothing.
A reason?
No.
But the conviction that even the bleakest moments of life
can somehow be turned to good –
to that,
despite everything,
a resounding yes!