Jeff Dunn’s “Playing God with Tornadoes,” and trying to hold to faith when filled with doubt
I have written in Existential Crisis and Despair: Loss of God and Friendship and Trying to explain the wreck of my faith to a worried husband, how my faith has been sorely tested, unlike ever before, in the aftermath of the loss of my “best friend”-turned-Judas.
In Jeff Dunn’s Playing God with Tornadoes, I read:
In the BBC production of Shadowlands—the story of C.S. Lewis and his wife—Lewis (known as “Jack” to his friends) is coming out of the church where his wife’s funeral had just finished. The parish priest is walking with him and says,
“Faith, Jack. It is faith that sustains us in times like these.”
“No, Harry,” says Lewis. “This is all one big mess, and that is all there is to it.”
For the people in Moore, Monday’s tornado doesn’t come with a gift-wrapped explanation. It is one big mess, and that’s all there is to it.
That is about the only way to describe things that otherwise make no sense. We seek to understand things that are incomprehensible when we really need to trust our God. For people like Piper and Robertson to try and reduce God to an explanation that will fit in a sound bite or a tweet is idiocy.
My friend Vic is no theologian. But he knows the God of life and death, and knows that Jesus, the creator of all things including tornadoes, holds all in his hands. Vic didn’t go to find an explanation; he went to find someone who needed help.
This was written about the Moore tornado and other tremendous tragedies. You can also apply it to emotionally devastating events in your life.
I haven’t read Job since college, when I read it after breakups as well as for class. But the lesson is the same as in the above quote: Being betrayed by my spiritual mentor, discovering his violence (also here and here) and the criminal charges against him for choking his child, is one big mess.
I just don’t understand it, how this could happen as the response to my prayer for a friend. But I’m told to trust God anyway…..