A Principle I Find Bewildering

This world is not as it ought to be. I think we all sense this in our bones — regardless of religious beliefs. We see injustice, war, atrocities, violence, hatred, oppression, greed, etc… and we know that it shouldn’t be this way. We should collectively “do better”. I agree. And yet, the world is how it is, not how it ought to be. And this bewilders me.

Why isn’t it as it ought to be? Or maybe it actually is as it ought to be, but we have incorrect expectations? We are dancing around some of the deepest questions humanity has been asking for millenia: why does evil exist if God is both sovereign and good? Or to put it more commonly: why do bad things happen to good people?

Photo by Liz Brown

I, of course, am a singer-songwriter/mother/worship director/podcast producer/whatever other part-time jobs I have… I have no intention of answering these questions definitively. In fact, I don't want to even attempt to answer them at all! I understand that people have canned answers to these questions, and if those canned answers satisfy your deepest aches and curiosities, then hooray for you! They fall short for me, though.

I just want to sing about my bewilderment. And, more importantly, I want to find a sliver of hope in the midst of the unknowing. What hope do I have when I can’t make sense of what’s going on around me? What hope can be found when you see people you love going through periods of prolonged suffering? What hope can be found when you ponder stories of severe injustice, and when you imagine putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and think what it must have been like to actually live through what they lived through?

I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Psalm 27.13, NASB

For me, I can hang onto a sliver of hope when I believe that goodness is still present in this world. I can’t even say that every story will have a happy ending (though I wish I could). But it does bring me hope to think that love is still present in the world; and if love is still present in the world, perhaps that points to the notion (or for me, the belief) that there is a source of love that transcends above these perplexities. And if that source of love, goodness, justice, and mercy is transcendent, then perhaps this time of confusion and bewilderment is not all there is to the story. Perhaps there is more love, goodness, justice, and mercy to come. Maybe we can seek out that source of love, goodness, justice, and mercy in a personal way right now, in the land of the living. And in that way, we can find a respite — or hiding place — in that love even though our questions persist.

Photo by Liz Brown

Holy crap that got real existential for a song that has such a peppy harmonica solo.

Go give “Hiding Place” a listen, and either join me in the melancholic philosophical questions, or just bop along. Both are equally acceptable.