Adding such questions to shattered lives seems almost gratuitous, just as if we had come into this room for solace at a terrible time in life, but arrived to find the chalice had been vandalized, smashed into the floor and in pieces. But, it does happen, for whatever reasons there may be. In other words, there will be parents who lost children at Columbine High School who will either find their faith stronger or find it has failed them. And there will be people in India, people who have lost family to the earthquake, and their faith will help them through their terrible suffering, or it will have failed to help and become meaningless to them. I heard a conservative Christian minister say in the days after the shootings at Columbine High School that what happened was a part of God's plan, that God had guided the bullets away from some of the kids, which left the implied statement that God had also at least allowed some other kids to be killed, that the murder of a kid was somehow part of a divine plan.
Tolerance really does take a great deal of restraint.
But the truth is, his words were comforting to some people. For others, even this not a contradiction to their faith. He arrived at a spiritual crisis when he learned that his young son would soon die. I am less sure about what I believe after I have witnessed tragic suffering. We believe because we are humans, but what I think that in the awfulness of tragic suffering, what is most helpful to remember are some strategies.