When Angels Die

Kids are killed just before they become adults.

Working hard to get to the Promised Land of independence and fulfillment, a truck doesn't stop and five dreamers die.

All girls ... all healers ... all young and beautiful ... from loving families ... with great friends ... each standing on the precipice of realizing their dreams.

All dead.

"Why do bad things happen to good people?" Rabbi Harold Kushner had the guts to ask.

The answer isn't reassuring at all.

God can't do everything.

God is defined as (1) All Loving ... (2) All Powerful ... (3) All Knowing.

At least that's what we believe.

Until you look at realities of life ... unnecessary deaths ... murderous freaks of nature and murderers too ... the suffering of cancer ... and all the "ism's" of the world ... classism ... racism ... sexism ... or as the great Prophet John Lennon concluded "ism, ism, ism."

To reconcile the reality of five Angels dying and God, Rabbi Kushner concludes ...so:

(A) Bad things happen and you can't get around that.

 (B) God is two out of three ... but not all three.

God is either all loving and all powerful but not all knowing ... or All knowing and all powerful but not all loving ... or all knowing and all loving but not all powerful.

You cannot reconcile bad things happening to good people without picking God's "two out of three."

There is a fascinating passage in the Bible ... St. Paul writes ... "creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves ..."

I take this to mean that we're all in it together.

You, me and God ... all groaning towards the completion of creation.

We can't do it without God.

God can't do it without us.

And non-participants drive trucks that slam into cars and ... as much as we wish somebody could have done something about it ...

we're not there yet.