There are still questions about why Cho Sueng-Hui went on his rampage – he was clearly disturbed by something, having been recommended for counseling by a creative writing teacher who was concerned about the thoughts he was expressing in writing, and especially now that a written diatribe he wrote about what he was about to do has been found. That didn’t stop people like Ken Ham and Debbie Schlussel weighing in with their takes, one doing philosophical backflips and contortions to prove that it happened because we’re not all Christians, and one trying to cover her tracks after blatant assumptions that first the gunman was a Muslim, and then that he must have been an illegal immigrant. Well, if you go to the Reuters site (it pops up on my Yahoo homepage) A. Barton Hinkle from the Times-Dispatch urges us to keep faith in the loving kindness of the God that allows this to happen:

The puny human mind looks upward and begs for an answer that doesn’t come to the question, “Why?” If everything were explicable there would be no need for faith.

AND YET coincidence, it has been said, is God’s way of staying anonymous. By coincidence this past weekend was the occasion of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Where, one might ask, was God when the Nazi henchmen were gassing the Jews in Bergen-Belsen, in Treblinka, in Auschwitz? Some of those who answer that God was nowhere to be found end up like Itzhak Zuckerman, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, who said bitterly: “If you could lick my heart, it would poison you.”

Others have said that God was there there, in the gas chambers, cradling the dying. Evidence for the latter view comes from Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, where — as Devorah Ben-David, co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum, reminds us — liberators found a scrap of paper with a prayer on it:

“Lord, remember not only the men of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted upon us. Remember rather the fruits we have brought, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown out of this. And when they come to judgment, let all the fruits we have bourne be their forgiveness.”

Those most agonizingly seared by yesterday’s massacre at Virginia Tech may be, for now, inconsolable. Let us hope their hearts eventually heal, and that someday they find solace in the fruits of their suffering.

Uh, yeah. That is offensive on a number of levels. First of all, comparing this to the Holocaust – actually, comparing just about anything to that – is a diminution of a major historical event, as well as being completely off. This was not a genocide, not a war, not an effort to gain power by a man or his political party. At this point, we don’t even know the young man’s motivation, but I can guarantee you that even if a couple of his victims were picked out in particular, this was not in any way a systematic killing of an “inferior” group of people. The comparison of every person, group, or incident to Hitler or the Holocaust is becoming so common, it may happen someday that nobody knows what really happened, or why it was important. Second, to assume that god was somehow with these dead and dying students and will now begin to magically heal the people left behind is presumptuous, simplistic, and actually may go far in allowing this type of act to occur again and again.

By leaving it at the “god works in mysterious ways” level, nothing will change. Speculating why a loving god would let this happen overshadows the more important questions – why did THIS person snap, why did nobody see it coming, how did he get a gun so easily, how can people be notified of danger more quickly and effectively, and most importantly, what can we learn from this so that it never happens again? Let’s worry about the stuff that we can actually DO something about. Let’s worry about the “Whys” that will help us prevent this kind of act. Wondering about why one particular invisible, unperceivable being allowed a bad thing to happen when he’s supposed to be so good is futile. Pretending that he was comforting the dying even as he allowed them to die is self-delusional, and does nothing to “heal”. Telling people who are grieving that god killed their loved one because of someone else’s sin, or that god must have had a reason, or that god was there comforting them while they were dying, or that god will help the survivors heal is a bunch of meaningless platitudes. Some people, believing this way themselves, will think it’s OK, but for those who don’t think that life is all about rolling with god’s punches, it’s one more kick in the head on top of what they’ve already been hit with.

Investigators will eventually find the reasons for this shooting spree by studying evidence and tracing back paperwork and establishing facts. I can guarantee that not one thing they discover will point to god (or Muslims). It will show why a young man went to the extreme of killing and wounding so many people, and how he managed to get so far with it before it ended. If we’re smart, we won’t sit tight and pray that god doesn’t let it happen again, but take action and try to predict and prevent it before it does. I would wager that more than a few people touched by this incident will take more comfort from knowing that the information gathered and analyzed stopped another mass shooting from happening than any strangers’ prayers ever would.