Handling the hardest headlines

The most heart-wrenching stories give us the chance to reflect

Note: Thank you for reading the Sour Patch! I'm orchestrating what I am praying will be our final move and Baby Patch is happy, healthy, and growing like a weed, so I hope to write much more very soon. Enjoy!

Tonight, like many nights, I was exposed against my will to an utterly shocking, horrifying news story. I won't damage your mood with it here, but suffice it to say my appreciation for the death penalty was revivified. You know the kind the kind of story to which I refer: “Mother pleads guilty to (heinous act of violence against her own child)”. “(Unspeakable grievous bodily harm) results in death of baby”. “Forgotten siblings die in worst possible living conditions”. Always preventable. Always morally repugnant. Always heart-wrenching.

Much is made of the over-emotionalization of, well, everything in modern life, but few tools are at our disposal to handle the pain of empathizing with the victims of the worst, most unspeakable acts. It's in these moments that our society's dearth of religion is brought into sharp relief. Why did that poor baby suffer? Why did those children face abuse or starvation? We struggle to cope with these unspeakable acts and are left feeling empty and helpless.

I've lately been reflecting on how I'll choose to teach my children to cope with all the hardness in the world without becoming jaded or cynical. I think I'll tell them the following:

1. Use perspective. My religious upbringing informs me that humans are deeply flawed, fallen, and sinful. That's very hard to deny, wherever you stand on Judeo-Christian principles. The world can seem awful, evil, and harsh. In some ways, it can help to remember that it has always been hard, and not just because people fall short, either. Nature is a cruel mistress. Death seems to lurk around every corner in the animal kingdom - by force for prey, by starvation for predators. The constant pull of vital urges is always present, and for humans, we have conquered many natural barriers to human thriving, but we will always be at risk, especially at our most vulnerable. It hurts to reflect on this. Trust me, as a pro-life woman, I constantly reflect on the plight of the voiceless. But no one person can right all wrongs, so that leads me to…

2. Prayer for peace. I've thought long and hard about why people believe in prayer: We have a need to bend God's ear to causes we see needing his love. I think that's one of our better tendencies, and I firmly believe humans are made in God's image. As such, we recognize when prayer is needed (for victims) and when Hell might be deserved (for perpetrators), which leads me to my last point:

3. Prayer for justice. I suspect Christians believe in Hell not just to hold us accountable in this mortal coil, but also to soothe our God-shaped desire for ultimate justice. Rather than praying for the victim and against the perpetrator, praying for peace for the victim and justice for their sins leaves the tormented observer with greater tranquility than the discordant sound of righteous anger, which we are not equipped to apply perfectly.

When my children come to me in tears asking, for example, why such awful things happened to Corrie Ten Boom, Viktor Frankl, or the children of Cambodia, I hope to be prepared to give them three pointers - perspective, prayer for peace, and prayer for justice. There doesn't seem to be a better way to cope for our frail human hearts, because although the Bible says “Whoso sheddeth man's blood shall by man his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man“ (Gen. 9:6 KJV), it also says, “Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things to come hasten upon them’“ (Duet. 32:35).

We don't get to mete out righteously furious justice. We won't even know about much of the most heinous sin in the world. But Christians can rest assured that God does, and doesn't let it go unpunished. Sometimes that's all we have to hang on to; I think that's much better than nothing.