You start to forget...

"... that this is really happening." Or at least so go the first few lines of the Al Gore documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," which we watched this weekend. It has really been one of those weekends where life seems so idyllic out here in the fun and the sun of San Diego, but is so menacing everywhere else.

First, the film. I am developing a growing interest in climate change. The data is, quite frankly, pretty horrifying. As the level of CO2 in our atmosphere climbs further and further into uncharted territory, our summers get hotter, storms get fiercer, droughts get fiercer... and this is just the beginning. I find myself really fired up to do something about this, even if it means in the short term just reducing our carbon output. Longer term, I think it would be great to target clean technologies for post-MBA employment. Its a pretty hot (no pun) topic around UCSD. I think there will be lots of opportunities there.

Yet, on Saturday night with friends at a Beach BBQ in Encinitas it is easy to forget that such environmental horrors loom, as we bask in nature's splendor on a rather chilly evening at the beach.


Kathryn, with Sara and Katie

Humans seem much better at dealing with imminent, immediate threats, as opposed to longer-term, slower-developing threats. I wonder when we will collectively realize we can't be just "business as usual" about climate change?

And this horrible news from Virginia Tech, and to a lesser though still chilling extent, the NASA command in Texas. Back in San Diego, I watch the kids run around on the lawn after church and shake my head at the thought that any kid could grow up to do what the gunman in Blacksburg did.

Yet it happened... and will undoubtedly happen again. Its interesting how our reactions to such a tragedy are so varied. I read a recount of the violence and felt... anger. I felt that sense of bile rising in my throat, as my thoughts flickered to somehow delivering vengeance. Kat said that she felt a wave of grief, followed by just sadness.

The presence of evil in our world is one of those most uncomfortable things, for both Christian and secular humanist alike. For the humanist, it seriously undermines their theory that all people are really good, and just need the right circumstances to show this. The college educated shooter seemed to have the advantages and opportunities necessary for success, yet was trapped in such darkness. For the Christian, the question we must ask is how a loving and supposedly sovereign God would allow such an event to occur.

Our pastor preachd on this subject this evening, from Romans 9:9-22, when Paul writes of how God's power and glory are shown most clearly when His wrath will be delivered to the evil. "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord."

So back to my reaction. I realize how foolish it is for me to steam about such things. God is a just judge, and this gunman in Virginia will experience the awful consequences of justice. And God is a great god, who can use even something as dark and dreadful as a mass murder, to show his glory and power to a world which, if nothing else, for at least one news cycle has been reminded of how little we truly control our own lives and how blessed we are to have faith in a sovereign God who does.