What Is There to Say?

Is there anyone who has not been exposed to the ghastly details of the Petit Family murders in Connecticut? The trial of the first of the two accused murderers began last week, and the news is full almost daily of new details of the horrible events three years ago that led to the near-fatal beating of Dr. William Petit and the torture and murder of his wife Jennifer and daughters Hayley and Michaela. Though it has been more than three years since the murders, making sense of any of it has not come for this writer. I doubt that it ever shall. Even when we can say that God's gracious granting of free will means that we can use that freedom for good, or evil, it does nothing to lessen the horror of the terrible deaths of three women who, by all accounts, led exemplary lives and were loved by many. The question that has haunted me, and others with whom I have spoken, is this: Where was God when those women were exposed to the most terrible abuse and then set ablaze? I recall reading Night, by Eli Wiesel, where he describes the horror of being a child in a concentration camp and watching, helplessly, as the Nazis hanged a young boy as a lesson to the other prisoners. Wiesel heard someone cry out, "Where is God?" From within himself, Wiesel heard a silent voice say, "God is there, on the gallows." One can take that to mean that God was with that child in the moment of his death. One can also understand it to mean that God died on that gallows, along with that child. I want to believe the first example, that God was there and did not allow that child to be alone. The end result? The child died an agonizing death. Jennifer, Hayley and Michaela died painful deaths, one by strangulation and two by fire and smoke inhalation. Did it make a difference to those dear souls that God was there with them? I don't know. I think that there are times when all we can do is be silent and hope, and wonder and pray. If Christian faith teaches us anything, it is that the righteous die or are murdered and it is unjust. We must admit that we work from our own ideas of justice and fairness and what is right, not God's. Since God witnessed God's own child being executed for doing nothing wrong, we can assume that God knows of our existential plight. But does that change anything? Does anyone really think that what happened to the Petit family was God's will, that, somehow, a greater good will be served by what happened in Cheshire three summers ago?
I work at an institution of higher education, and a very good one. We strive everyday to arrive at certainty about some things. This matter, though, to quote Abraham Lincoln, is "beyond our poor powers to add or detract." The perpetrators are on trial for murder and may face the death penalty. And if they are sentenced to death and the orders are someday carried out, in less horrific circumstances than those of their victims, will justice have been served? Will it change anything? The loss of the Petit family member's lives is permanent, and nothing can change that. If there is peace for them in a life beyond this one, does it make what happened to them any less terrible? No, it does not. People will continue to die at the hands of individuals, and gangs and governments, and it will never be made right in this world. So, what are people of faith to do? We can only stand in silence, and hope, and wonder and pray.