Why Does Tragedy Exist?
Exploring a core mystery of life on Earth
Why is there so much tragedy in this world?
Today I heard a story about a 2-year-old and 4-year-old—two sisters—who wandered away from home and drowned in a pond.
This account was passed on to me by someone who was troubled by the story and who was wrestling with some of the core questions of life:
Why do such senseless tragedies happen?
If God is Good, why does He allow such things to happen?
Why does Divine Intervention seem to occur in some cases, but not in others?
How could such a senseless tragedy be a part of some larger ‘Divine Plan’?
My Perspective on These Questions
These questions cut to the core of our existence on Earth, and likely no human being can provide a final answer to them.
Yet I felt a calling to share some perspectives that are helpful for me, in hopes that they might be helpful for someone else. So, here are some considerations that arise for me in relation to the overwhelming and heartbreaking amount of tragedy that we face on Earth:
Tragedy, grief, and death shock us awake. They crack our hearts open and reveal to us that earthly life is impermanent and precious.
Hearing about those little girls drowning hits me in the sanctum of my heart. Especially as a father, it opens me to a deeper cherishing of my daughter, and a greater commitment to rigorously protect her from harm. It opens me to a deeper realization that earthy life is finite and can end at any moment; thus it opens me to appreciate life more fully, actively, and earnestly. Tragic events send a ‘shockwave’ of awakening to everyone in the vicinity, snapping us out of our humdrum ‘ordinary everyday consciousness’ and opening us to a raw and real confrontation with the naked facts of life and death.Earth is not one of the easier ‘levels’ of Divine Creation. We are here to be tested.
I don’t believe life on Earth is a ‘walk in the park’ for anyone. Simply being born into this world is an experience that often includes a lot of pain, fear, or difficult emotion for mother and child. To live on this planet is to be severely tested. I believe one of the core reasons we are here is to learn the true meaning of faith. It’s easy to have faith when life is smooth, joyful, and effortless. It’s difficult to have faith when everything is falling apart—when we are confronted with tragedy, or the loss of loved ones. Such events initiate us into depths of faith, hope, and strength that we could not have accessed in any other way.Life can be seen as a Great Story being written by God. And the greatest stories are ones in which heroes must overcome tragedy, darkness, and difficulty.
Life would not be a mythic adventure without great pain and hardship. If the hero could effortlessly breeze through everything without ever needing to summon unknown inner resources, he would not be a hero. It is in the trials and the flames that the greatest lessons are learned, and our true character is revealed. Divine Creation can be seen—at least in part—as a school for the education of our souls, and as a place for God to discover His infinite possibilities through the numberless apertures of our individual lives. By creating a contrast between light and dark—between joy and tragic pain—God has rendered the entire dance of existence vastly more dynamic, revealing far more layers, intricacies, lessons, and angles. The dynamism serves as fertile soil for seeds to grow. Only in the ‘pressure cooker’ is coal transfigured into diamond.Spirituality is not about finding all the answers. It is about having faith in the Divine Mystery, and using every event in life as fuel for the fires of heart-opened awareness.
As a man who yearns to find the ‘final answers,’ I don’t like to hear this. Yet I believe it’s true. As humans we will never have all the answers. And that’s where faith comes in. Without faith, life will tend to ‘eat us alive.’ “There are no atheists in foxholes,” as the saying goes. As difficult as it is, we are wise to trust that “God works in mysterious ways,” and to kindle hope in our hearts that even the darkest occurrences may in some way be utilized for the Good of All.
And we can choose to help make this so: By approaching every tragedy or difficulty in life as an opportunity to crack our hearts open wider—as a catalyst that can galvanize us in our resolve to be better men and women; to be candles in the dark; to be peaceful warriors who take inspired action to bring light into this world—by approaching all occurrences as ‘grist for the mill,’ we become the transducers who convert lead into gold; who take the tragedy of this world and transfigure it into Fiery Love and Iron-Willed Determination to be the change: To be emissaries of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful—emissaries of a Divine Love that is able to “love thy enemies” and hold all of existence in its totalizing blaze.
Final Thoughts
Great art can inspire us in this direction as well.
I watched the second Avatar movie on the flight back to Germany yesterday, and I was weeping at a certain point in the film. It hit me so deep. The vivid tragedy depicted in the story struck my heart to the core, and as I wept, I felt myself holding space for the immense pain of life; letting this pain touch my heart; and converting this pain into a renewed commitment to make my life matter. To do my small part in furthering the mission so many of us feel in our bones—the mission to midwife the birth of “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.”
Instead of feeling helpless in the face of tragedy, we can convert pain and fear into fuel—fuel for prayer, fuel for awareness, fuel for new commitments, fuel for creativity, fuel for world-shifting action, fuel for feeling & witnessing it all, fuel for the roaring fires of the heart.
Life on Earth will probably always contain much tragedy—until, perhaps, that day I affirm and pray for; that day of total Apokatastasis when all things shall be redeemed—yet this does not need to cause us to lose hope. Instead, we can allow the darkness to cause us to hope more deeply, pray more deeply, rest in God more fully, find greater faith, and alchemize the tragedy into sheer immovable determination to take God-led action and to be Pillars of Light in this world.
Sequoia-Like Pillars of Universal Loving Light.
Humble Emissaries of The Highest Love Which Has No Opposite.
Children of the Ever Innocent Heart.
Amen.
I love you.
Take care.
With Love,
J
P.S. In saying all this, I am not trying to tell those facing unimaginable tragedy to simply ‘put their warrior face on’ and ‘alchemize the grief already, bro.’ I truly cannot fathom the pain of a parent who loses a child, or those who lose family and home due to war-bombings, or myriad other unthinkable tragedies that afflict this world. There are some scars that won’t heal in this lifetime; there is grief so deep that it destroys a person. My heart goes out to those facing such pain. Though I cannot fathom your sorrow, I am heartbroken with you. And all I can say is that your strength inspires me to be stronger, kinder, more loving, more generous, and more in service to this world.
Let us become as giant Sequoias ❤️🌳
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