Should We Fire God?: Finding Hope in God When We Don't Understand
272
Should We Fire God?: Finding Hope in God When We Don't Understand
272eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780446569156 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | FaithWords |
| Publication date: | 04/08/2010 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 345 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Should We Fire God?
Finding Hope in God When We Don't UnderstandBy Pace, Jim
FaithWords
Copyright © 2010 Pace, JimAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780446546140
PART I
The Questions Raised
1
A Surreal Day
IT WAS A PRETTY QUIET DAY. That seems such a clichéd way to start a book, but it is true. It was just very normal. I was in a coffee shop not far from Virginia Tech, from which I graduated some years ago. That day, mostly the regulars were there, mostly the normal discussions going on.
When word started coming out about a couple of shootings in Ambler Johnston, one of the larger residence halls on the campus, we weren’t even sure anything was actually going on. You know how rumors can get started. So I didn’t think there was much to it.
But we knew something was up when we heard the police sirens. Then word came in: one student killed and another wounded. Suddenly an endless stream of police cars sped past. We didn’t know it at the time, but they were headed to Norris Hall, an academic building where Seung Hui Cho committed most of his killing.
As far as we knew at that point, the shooting was over. The university had released a statement saying that a student had been killed and a young man was in custody. A terrible thing had happened, but at least that terrible thing was over. Normal life started picking up again.
Then we heard the police loudspeakers and someone in the coffee shop shouted, “Check the Web!” The front page of Virginia Tech’s Web site said something like “There is a gunman on the loose; stay indoors and away from windows.” Someone said the police had sealed the roads around campus.
Even then, it still didn’t sink in. I was sitting three feet from massive floor-to-ceiling windows in that coffee shop, one block away from a campus that had a gunman who was definitely not in custody. Still, I felt sure they would get him. They always seem to. About an hour later the police reopened the roads, and at my wife’s request, I went home. Neither one of us had a grasp on what had happened until I heard her in the next room start to cry as she watched the news coverage: “Oh no! Oh no! They are saying twenty students were killed!” I looked at the screen just as the newscaster confirmed it.
Emergency Measures
I met with my copastors about fifteen minutes later; I remember their faces looking a lot like mine. We were scared and stunned, but we had to get moving. We put some quick thoughts together and then had the rest of our staff come to my house to pray and plan.
We said some dazed prayers and as we were trying to get our feet under us, we turned to the coverage and watched in horror with the rest of the country and much of the world as the death count seemed to climb endlessly.
By this point it was getting very hard to get calls through overwhelmed cell towers. Cell phones, landlines, pagers, and IM were all overloaded as friends and family tried to make sure everyone they knew was safe. Facebook and MySpace groups were quickly put together and statuses were updated to say, “I’m okay!” or “I’m safe”—anything to get a reassuring word out.
Then the eerie math took over for those who should have heard from loved ones by then but had not. One girl later that night said to me, “You never imagine really praying that some-one is too badly injured to answer their phone. But if my friend isn’t injured, I’m too scared to even say what that means.” We later found out that her friend had been killed.
As we were meeting with our whole staff in my family room, trying to focus on what needed to be done felt almost impossible. We were stunned and overwhelmed as we watched images on TVs and computer screens of the buildings many of us had taken classes in and the grass that all of us had walked and played on. But as those images went around the world they had some pretty horrific things scrolling under them. It is chilling to see places you walk by every day with captions like “22 confirmed dead,” then “25 confirmed dead,” or “Gunman believed to have shot himself.” And all the time the body count kept rising. This tragedy was playing out about two miles from my house, but we watched it on CNN like everyone else.
I remember our team praying, crying a bit, arguing over what to do (very normal for us), and planning a response to a situation for which—we were all very aware—no playbook existed. All the while we wondered who from our church had made it home safely and who hadn’t.
Then Larry King’s people called my cell. It was decided that I would be the guy to handle most of the media stuff—I don’t think for any more reason than that I can think quickly on my feet. I knew the reason the media wanted me on their shows: they wanted a spokesman for a God who didn’t look as if he had handled things very well that day. I suddenly felt like a White House press secretary must feel when he or she walks into the pressroom to speak on behalf of an unpopular president. And honestly, it seemed as if God had some serious explaining to do.
They wanted a spokesman for a God who didn’t look as if he had handled things very well that day.
We also went on planning a vigil for that night as well as for a time when Matt Rogers, one of our other pastors, would touch base with our key leaders on campus. We had to make sure they were all right and get them ready to walk the people they work with through this situation. Keep in mind that most of our leaders are early-twenty-somethings who themselves still weren’t sure if all their friends and professors were safe. I can tell you that over the next several weeks they handled themselves like people with a lot more years of life experience under their belts.
We had absolutely no idea what we would do the next day. Our goal at this point was to just get through the night, find out who was safe and who wasn’t, and try to adjust to this new crazy reality. I remember talking to three girl students the night of the sixteenth, and one confessed, “I don’t know what to do. I am worried about my friend we cannot find, and I am also worried about my organic chemistry lab that is due in a couple of days!” That really desribed how we all felt. Normal and abnormal life had been fused together for all of us. People walked around town with the same look of utter disbelief on their faces.
Live with Larry King
About the time the vigil started, I drove into the area where all the media had set up shop. And as shocked and numbed—as frozen—as everyone from Blacksburg seemed to be, this place was the opposite. Every square inch of grass and asphalt was taken up with satellite trucks and the people who were running them. Literal fields of satellite dishes had sprouted from what had been an empty parking lot just that morning. All obscenely pointed up into the sky and to the myriad satellites waiting to receive signals with the latest nuggets of the misery we were living in.
As I walked into this swarm of instant news (or rather was swept into it), I found myself again in complete shock. Not only was I out of my element—I had no idea where my element even was.
Not only was I out of my element—I had no idea where my element even was.
I remember seeing Geraldo walking very purposefully some-where. I stood behind Brian Williams, who was waiting to get some goldfish crackers, and was surprised he wasn’t taller (he always seemed taller on TV). But it really got weird when I approached a media coordinator and asked where Larry King was set up. At the very mention of that apparently magical name, two small but surprisingly strong women yanked me aside, introduced themselves with the speed of auctioneers, and asked who I was and to spell my name. All the while they were writing in their notebooks and sending e-mails on their Black-Berry devices. I quickly learned that everyone in the media business has a BlackBerry.
As I pulled away from them and started toward the location where Larry’s people were, a handler (for the media unsavvy, that’s someone in charge of getting you set up with a microphone and in front of the cameras as fast as possible) found me and started walking me over to the set. She said to her Bluetooth-equipped counterpart that she had “the pastor” and we were on our way. I started to feel very naked without a Black-Berry in my hand.
As we walked and hurdled our way to the set, she prepped me. “Pastor”—I never could get anyone on a single show to just call me Jim—“you will be on with Larry in New York and Dr. Phil from Houston. Do you know Dr. Phil?”
I responded, “I have never heard of him.”
She looked at me with a mixture of shock and what seemed to be amazement. And that is when I learned that newspeople don’t have time for nervous/sarcastic humor from pastors at times like these. (Diane Sawyer would later remind me of that as well.) So I ’fessed up that I was aware of who Dr. Phil was.
She seemed comforted that I might not be as ignorant as she feared, told me that both Dr. Phil and Larry would be piped into my earpiece, and asked if I was ready to be fitted with one. Then they checked my sound levels, double-checked the spelling of my name, and off I went. Those satellite dishes shot my face and voice up into space and then in front of the eyes of anyone who cared to watch.
I had been pretty specific with the producers. I had no desire or need to be on any show; there were plenty of much more important things for me to do. The only reason I would do interviews was if I would have a chance to answer substantial questions of faith. What I was actually able to do in that first interview was say that I was in a coffee shop and that we were doing lots of things to help everyone cope. Then Dr. Phil took over.
I heard Larry announce a break and then heard a different voice say, “Pastor is done,” and as quickly as I was attached, I was jettisoned.
As I drove back to the vigil, fuming at Larry, Dr. Phil, and a bit at God for the waste of my time, I got two calls from national morning shows asking me to be on. That’s when I started feeling like the press secretary for God. But how do you explain what you don’t fully understand? And why is it only during situations like this one that God seems to get center stage?
I started feeling like the press secretary for God.
A whole lot of people see the task of keeping the peace, or at least providing an acceptable level of protection, as one of God’s key jobs. He even refers to himself as our protector in the Scriptures we read. And we tend to feel very safe here in the United States, especially in the mountains of Blacksburg, Virginia. Even more so here on Tech’s campus.
At least we did until April 16.
What Is God Good For?
People start to wonder, If God will let that kind of thing happen, then what is he good for? In the interviews that followed the one with Larry King, questions like that came at me from not only Anderson Cooper 360 and Good Morning America, but also from members of our church, people on campus, and friends and people around the country, even overseas. A fourteen-year-old from Topeka, Kansas, e-mailed Good Morning America, saying she didn’t feel safe going to school. I was asked what I would say to her. That is a fun question to be asked on live TV.
Countless other questions came over the next days and months:
• “What does this say about God and your faith that is based on him being the most powerful, loving, present, and creative force in the universe?”
• “What do you think Jesus was doing on those final fateful moments just before and during Cho’s rampage?”
• “Does this make you doubt God?”
• “Does this make you angry at him?”
• “Should we just fire God?”
I was being asked these questions at the same time I was asking God questions of my own.
The reality is that Seung Hui Cho tore a hole in our campus and community that day that was infinitely larger than the size of the bullets used to create it. It made people scared. It made them sad, and it made many confused and angry. Some of that anger had located itself at God’s doorstep. As a result, it did seem as though I had something to answer for.
Some of that anger had located itself at God’s doorstep.
You could almost feel the growing suspicion in people’s questions and see it on their faces when they thought about God’s part in all this. To them, this type of moment was no different from the entry of Dorothy, the Tin Woodsman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow into the throne room of Oz. At first they were amazed and awed by all the sights and sounds the great Oz made. But a quick pull on a green curtain was all it took to reveal the truth. There was no almighty and great Oz at all, just a tiny man pulling levers and pushing buttons.
Did that day on the campus of Virginia Tech do the same? Did it show us the smallness of a God we used to think was so large? What about all the other horrid moments that are felt in our lives? Some are catastrophic and global; others are just as disastrous but more painfully personal.
What makes all this even worse is that bad things don’t occur in a void, do they? Life still continues—both the good and the bad parts. In the two weeks following the shootings, both of my family’s cars broke down. I distinctly remember having some direct, rather strong, conversations with God over that. If not problems with our cars, then with our kids, our classes, our money, our health, our relationships, you name it.
It was time to put my faith to the test: Was God really doing a good job?
Questions for Reflection and Discussion
1. When you think about God and the suffering we endure, what conclusions have you come to?
• God is real, powerful, and loving and is waiting to end the suffering we all experience for some larger purpose.
• God is real and powerful but not caring or involved enough to step in. Rather, he is watching it unfold with us.
• God is real and cares about our suffering yet doesn’t possess the actual power to meaningfully intervene in our suffering.
• God isn’t real.
2. Why did you buy this book?
3. What are you hoping it will provide you in this discussion of whether or not God is doing his job sufficiently enough to earn our trust and allegiance?
Continues...
Excerpted from Should We Fire God? by Pace, Jim Copyright © 2010 by Pace, Jim. Excerpted by permission.
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