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The cold-blooded attack on innocent bystanders at the Boston Marathon didn't come out of nowhere. It's one of many tragedies that should give us pause and cause us to contemplate several lessons about life.
Strange as it may sound, on April 15, 2013, the lives of hundreds of Bostonians were forever changed because a long-dead Chechen warlord had been determined to withstand incursions from a long-dead Russian czar who sent waves of slaughter across a land of those who would not yield to anyone.
As happened on the streets of Boston, scenes of mindless terror often originate among peoples and circumstances far beyond what we know, imagine or care about. Seeds of hate and evil find fertile ground and sprout where bitter winds of war and terror blow them-and today no one can give a clear understanding of why.
When two nail- and shrapnel-laden bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, three lives were snuffed out and more than a hundred bystanders were maimed, some grievously. Four days later, after the bombers murdered another man, one of them was killed and the second was captured while hiding in a boat parked in a suburban backyard.
If we delve into the heart of this drama, we begin to see that what ended in Boston on a bright spring day began in key respects in the darkest mountains of the Caucasus hundreds of years ago.
The bloody conflict that occurred then between Russian rulers and their unyielding Muslim opponents would, over time, nourish a centuries-long hostility that eventually boiled over in the deadly plotting of two young brothers of Chechen descent who took out their grievances on innocent bystanders watching a race on a sunny spring day in Boston.
These were not the first acts of terror, and they certainly won't be the last. Each of these moments of horror is the fruit of thousands of years of a conflict-ridden world. And the American author Thomas Wolfe wrote with great insight, "Every moment is a window on all time."
I have had a different reaction to this latest terrorist act-one unlike how I've felt about any previous attack. My paraphrase above of Thomas Wolfe's opening lines from his novel Look Homeward Angel sums up how I feel, and it comes a little closer to a biblical understanding that gives more comfort than anything else I've read-or likely will ever read.
Today's journalists, pundits and observers frankly miss the mark in trying to give coherent analysis of why such insane acts continually mutate in our modern world. Indiscriminate killing in the name of religion or political ideology has long been with us-as it always will be until the return of Jesus Christ. And always until then people will ask, "How can such unspeakable evil exist in the world?" and "Why do the innocent suffer at the hands of such vile people?"
The Boston victims included a restaurant manager, a graduate student, a police officer and an 8-year-old boy who was standing at the finish line of the race to cheer on his dad. All were innocent victims forever linked by this one moment of evil.
They didn't know each other and likely never would have crossed paths in this life. They were attending a world-renowned event, oblivious to any notion that the air around them would be shattered by the blast wave of a crude but deadly weapon assembled in someone's kitchen-without any remorse or shame for the grief, agony and bloody chaos they hoped to create.
So if this moment is "a window on all time," then what are we to learn? How are we to understand this? As much as the pundits and "experts" can contribute to the discussion, even they, in the middle of the cold dark night, admit they have no real answers.
I once read the conclusions of a criminal psychiatrist who, after hundreds of prison interviews with cold-blooded killers of all stripes, admitted he had to go against the "wisdom" of his profession and admit that evil existed in this world and that there's no other way to explain the horror committed by one human being upon another. Another writer who has witnessed firsthand the human effect of such violence seems to admit the questions are endless and almost unknowable.
That's why in the face of this event I turned to another writer who faced the same issues and questions in a long-ago time and place. He saw the futility of life when tranquility was shattered by random acts of human nature or even nature itself. He concluded that "one thing happens to all"-that evil and madness occur and then all go to the grave. The righteous and the evil all must face the same end of life, and before it occurs much of what takes place is subject to events beyond one's control.
The writer is King Solomon of ancient Israel, and his great writing on this theme is the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. Much about this book is misunderstood. I prefer to read it as the journal of a king who spent his life searching for the same answers you and I seek today.
The king looked around and saw evil and suffering, righteousness and pleasure. He participated in all of it just to find out what worked best for him. He had enough money to buy and build whatever he desired. He searched for the wisdom of his day, compiled and studied it, and was considered by all his peers to be the wisest of all.
Listen to what he said: "Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; and this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11).
This may sound pessimistic, but hold off for a minute. It's actually one of the most profound bits of wisdom you and I can learn, and we'll see how it fits into a workable, realistic and hopeful assessment of what this world and human life is all about.
Solomon writes of a life that wove in and out just about every religion, philosophy and lifestyle available. He says he sampled everything: "Whatever my eye desired I did not keep from them." As he recorded his observations, his prose is laced with observations on how others lived and learned. His view of God is not atheistic or agnostic but that of a man who knew the divine reason for life yet had to go out to test and try everything and "see for himself."
I think Solomon even witnessed in his day actions of violence and unexplainable natural catastrophe that took countless lives. No one had answers, not even he the king. Why evil? Why suffering? These are the questions of the ages. "Live joyfully with the wife whom you love," Solomon observed (Ecclesiastes 9:9). "Eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart" (Ecclesiastes 9:7). "For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing," he dryly commented (Ecclesiastes 9:5).
And in one cold but clear admission he concluded: "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. For man also does not know his time: Like fish taken in a cruel net, like birds caught in a snare, so the sons of men are snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them" (Ecclesiastes 9:11-12).
Accept it or reject it, believe it or scoff-this statement is real, and it gives understanding beyond the headlines and events of this life. Events of life beyond our control occur, and we are caught in a net like the fish or the birds-life perhaps even extinguished and seemingly without meaning.
And yet, there is meaning. God is in ultimate control. Nothing that happens is beyond His sovereign choice to allow it to happen or not. As Solomon declared right before, "For I considered all this in my heart, so that I could declare it all: that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God" (verse 1). God is working out a great plan, which time and chance will not thwart.
And there is hope in Solomon's conclusion about the affairs of all life in this realm called earth: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
Yes, there is a God, and His judgment is a fact of life. Judgment is part of the hope of this life, for without it there is no hope of justice. It is when life is darkest and despair the sharpest that the hope of God's justice-which ultimately includes setting the world right-offers a glimmer of light to pierce the gloom. That is what Solomon concluded after a lifetime of reflection.
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