You shouldn’t cover up a fatal accident and a shooting with quick Christian one-liners

‘Believing is a hassle.’ Words from Pastor Paul Visser during a service in our church, six months ago. During this service we considered the question: how can God’s love be reconciled with our suffering? Some believers are a bit off-putting. Always trying to make sense of God’s love and suffering. Great if you can do that. I don’t have that talent. I actually get confused by statements and sentences like (sorry Da Costa) ‘at the bottom of all questions lies the world’s guilt of sin’.

Paul Visser took a different approach and read Romans 8: that creation is subject to meaninglessness. “No reason and no purpose,” he said. ‘Pointless. So not: ‘God wants to say something with it’. No. Pointless, the land grab wars with all their deaths. Pointless, the Alblasserdam events on May 6, 2022.’

Paul Visser referred to the shooting at the care farm and the traffic accident in which two girls lost their lives. Four young defenseless dead in one day. Plus a number of injured and traumatized people. He labeled these horrible tragedies ‘senseless’. “Well, indeed!” I heard the woman sitting next to me whisper passionately. I didn’t know her, but her soul was so completely in that grim flu..