Where Was God in the Shootings?

The recent shooting at a back-to-school mass in Minnesota has many people asking: Where was God?

A gunman killed two children and injured eighteen others at Annunciation Catholic Church. In response, there’s a renewed call for gun reform and a dialogue about how to prevent future shootings.

Many also wonder why an allegedly omnipotent God didn’t stop this.

The killer left messages on his ammunition magazines. One message was a play on the question many are asking about God’s failure to stop the horror. The shooter’s question seems to mock believers. It said, “Where is your God?”

Good question!

God Is Everywhere?

A simple but inadequate response to “Where was God” says God is always present in every place. God is omnipresent, say most believers. I agree.

But “Where was God?” isn’t really seeking the geographical location of the divine. It’s really wondering, “Why didn’t God prevent this tragedy?” Those who ask it typically assume God has the omnipotent ability to prevent shootings like this.

“Where was God?” is another way to ask, “Why didn’t God stop this?”

God Suffers?

Another response to “Where was God?” says God suffers with victims. The Lover of us all was present in this tragic shooting and felt the pain of victims. Just as God suffered with Jesus on the cross, the Fellow Sufferer who understands was in Minnesota with those in harm’s way.

I believe God suffered with the children and suffers with all. But I don’t think saying, “God feels their pain” is enough.

The God who could stop evil but allows it in order to suffer with victims is a masochist. Masochists aren’t loving when they permit evil they could have prevented. “God suffers with us” is important, therefore, but it doesn’t answer to why an omnipotent God didn’t stop the pain in the first place.

We need more than a suffering God.

God Can’t

I believe God can’t prevent evil singlehandedly. With the Minnesota killings, God couldn’t stop the shooter all alone.

As I see it, God loves everyone and everything, and divine love never controls. Consequently, God can’t control anyone or anything, including shooters.

It’s not that God could stop evildoers but chooses not to. I’m saying God simply cannot stop evil singlehandedly. God can’t. (I explain this in God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils. See this link.)

I also affirm the long-standing view that God is a spirit without a localized divine body. God is “incorporeal,” as the tradition puts it.

That means God doesn’t have a hand to grab guns from shooters. And God doesn’t have other body parts to prevent tragedies.

Are We God’s Hands and Feet?

Those who hear me say God is a bodiless spirit often respond that we are God’s body. We creatures with bodies can act as God’s hands and feet, they say. I agree.

But we also have the freedom not to act as God’s body. We must freely choose to cooperate with the Spirit’s call. We can choose otherwise. And sometimes localized creatures aren’t in the right place and time to stop evils with their bodies.

Saying we are the hands and feet of an incorporeal God doesn’t solve the problem of evil.

A Letter from a Concerned Friend

A friend sent an insightful email not long after the shootings. She raised important questions about God’s action — and ours — in response to tragedies like the one in Minnesota.

I call her “anonymous” in the note below:

Dear Dr. Oord,

I’m writing with a heavy heart in the wake of the recent school shooting. Your work on uncontrolling love and amipotence has been on my mind as I try to process these difficult days.

Your emphasis on a divine love that relinquishes control to allow genuine freedom is deeply compelling and resonates with many of the struggles we face in daily life, our own desire to love without controlling, to respect others’ agency even when it’s hard.

But I find myself wrestling with a difficult question, in moments of profound suffering and danger, does love really mean not intervening? Imagine a parent who sees their child stepping into harm’s way but refuses to stop them out of respect for freedom, would that be love? I think not.

So I wonder, does framing God’s love as uncontrolling risk suggesting a divine passivity in the face of evil and suffering? How do we hold together the idea of a loving God who is both respectful of freedom and yet powerfully present, intervening to protect, heal, and redeem?

I appreciate the vulnerability and thoughtfulness in your approach, especially your willingness to rethink traditional attributes of divine power. Still, I’m left asking how uncontrolling love accounts for the urgent moral imperative to act against injustice and prevent harm.

Anonymous

Intervene?

I really appreciate this thoughtful letter. I wholeheartedly agree with the call to act against injustice and prevent harm!

I have three responses. First, the writer seems to assume God voluntarily relinquishes the ability to “intervene.” The writer talks about “allowing” creatures genuine freedom, as if God could choose not to allow it. The writer seems to assume God chooses not to control.

I think God must be uncontrolling. It’s not a choice. God’s nature is uncontrolling love, and God can’t change the divine nature.

This means God doesn’t choose whether to intervene or not, in the sense of controlling others. God can’t intervene, because it’s contrary to the divine nature.

Step In?

My friend rightly says a loving parent would step into harm’s way to protect a child. I’ve sometimes done so for my children and for others.

But the “step in” analogy doesn’t fit a universal Spirit without a body. An incorporeal God can’t literally step into harm’s way like we sometimes can.

I strongly support the view that we are called to use our bodies to protect. But I don’t think God has a body to do the same.

An incorporeal God can’t step in.

Act Against Injustice?

Finally, I don’t think God is passive in the face of evil and injustice. I think God always acts, and that acting is never half-hearted or half-throttle.

We have a moral imperative to use our minds and bodies to protect others. God calls us to prevent unnecessary harm like that in Minnesota. As I see it, this will involve changing gun laws. It will involve changing a culture that glorifies violence. And more.

God acts against harm and injustice and calls us to do the same.

God Needs Us

The thoughtful letter from my friend reminds us that a loving God needs us. God can’t stop violence alone. We need God for this work, because we rely upon the Spirit’s inspiration and empowering. Fortunately, we can count on God to do that uncontrolling action.

God needs our cooperation for love to win.

Where Was God?

Where was God in the Minnesota school shootings?

I believe God was present to all, suffering with victims, and calling those who harm to do otherwise. But God could not control the gunman or the circumstances. The Spirit’s love can’t control.

God is now calling each of us to make changes that prevent or at least reduce the likelihood of future shootings.

Will we respond?

(For more essays on God’s uncontrolling love, see my website: thomasjayoord.com. I’m also writing a systematic theology of love and posting chapters on Substack. For those chapters, see this link.)