A Volatile Place
In our case, it has been relatively easy to handle, since our oldest son, not quite four, hasn't picked up on what's happened. Any time he wanders into the room and the TV is tuned to news coverage, we immediately change the channel if the pictures or discussion become graphic. Were he a bit older, we would certainly have much more work to do in explaining things and reassuring him.
Still, while much of the discussion has focused upon young children, I can't help but think about my days as a high school theology and government teacher. Classroom discussion often turned to current events and how we as
Catholics ought to react to things going on in the world. I can only imagine what sort of classroom conversations are happening now.
The mind of a teenager is a volatile place. Teens are obsessed with fairness, and they are engaged in a search for truth and meaning wherein authority figures are being scrutinized and put to the test. They tend to view adult viewpoints and directives with suspicion, always looking for inconsistency or hypocrisy. Ultimately, teens will apply this same scrutiny to God, the ultimate authority figure. While this may sound negative, it really isn't at all. This is the mental process necessary for teens to become adults. All their lives, they have been told what to believe. Now, as young adults, they seek to mature in their thinking, putting what they've always been told to the test. If it holds up, it becomes their own, not just something Mom and Dad told them.
(Tom & Caroline McDonald are Co-Directors of the Office of Family Life for the Archdiocese of Mobile, AL. You can email Caroline at caromcd@cs.com and Tom at cornhuskertom@cs.com.)
All Acts Have Consequences
The recent terrorist attacks are one such case that will test what teenagers have been told about God, as well as give them an opportunity to understand Him more fully. Having always been taught that God is loving and merciful, a teen may wonder why God would allow such a horrible attack to
take place. After all, it violates their sense of justice and fairness. Here these people were, living their lives just like you and me, and then their lives ended abruptly and horribly by an enemy many didn't even know we had.
How could a loving, just God permit such a thing? I can hear my former students asking these very questions; if your teen is asking you these same
things, here is a thumbnail sketch on how to respond …
Paradoxically, God permits such things to happen not in spite of His goodness and love for us, but because of it. God created no other creature to love Him in the way that we are able to. Being made in the image and likeness of God fundamentally means that we have the capacity to love God as He loves us, with our whole heart, mind, and soul. But, we do not have to love God, and that is the key. Love is a decision. The only way we can truly love God is if we have the option to reject Him. If we choose to reject Him, we sin – evil occurs. And evil can have terrible effects.
“That's fine,” my students would say, “but it was the terrorists who chose evil, not the people on the planes or in the buildings. Why should they suffer and die because of someone else's evil act?” All acts, good and evil, have consequences. If God stepped in and prevented the consequences of evil from occurring, our moral choices would be rendered meaningless.
A New Focus
We choose to do an act because we want to gain something from it, whether it be for good or ill. If only the good acts realized their consequences, our free will would be effectively stripped away from us. We would have no true choices. Ultimately, this is the price we pay for free will. While God offers us eternal, immeasurable happiness through our choices, the opposite is also available. There is no doubt that thousands of people and their families have suffered an unspeakable loss. But if we had no free will, we would have no chance at eternal bliss and union with God, and that would be the loss beyond all comprehension.
One final post script about these events: It has been suggested
by certain public figures that these attacks were somehow deserved, or that
we brought them upon ourselves by the moral decay of our society. In other
words, the inference has been that these attacks were somehow in God's plan to teach us a lesson. This is, to use a technical term, malarkey. While there is no doubt that our culture has fallen far and fast, that kind of attitude is grounded in goofy theology. In order for it to be true, it would mean that God had willed men to commit terrible sins in order for the results to occur as they did. It is never God's will for someone to sin against Him.
End of story.
We can, however, pray that this event will reorient us to what is truly important and everlasting. It seems to have awakened us out of a superficial, pop culture stupor. Let's pray that we can maintain this new focus.
