“God Isn’t Fixing This,” trumpets today's headline in “The New York Daily News,” apparently in response to some politicians’ promises of prayers for the victims of the horrific shootings in San Bernardino yesterday, only the lastest in a string of mass murders.

The implication of this ridiculous and insensitive headline is one of the following:


1) God doesn’t care.

2) God isn’t willing to act.

3) Prayer is useless.

4) The politicians are insincere.

Let’s take these possibilities one by one.

1) God doesn’t care.

God cares more than we care. In fact, God cares more than we can possibly imagine. For God is all love, and so God weeps when we weep and mourns when we mourn. This morning Pope Francis talked about God as a “Father and Mother.” So we can imagine God weeping as much as a father or mother of one of the victims. Can anyone doubt this after reading the Gospel stories that describe what happens when Jesus encounters suffering? When he encounters those who are suffering in any way, his heart is “moved with pity.” The original Greek is much stronger: Jesus feels it in his guts. Jesus is moved with compassion when he sees the poor, the sick, the outcast. He weeps when his friend Lazarus dies. God cares more than we care. God is care.

2) God cannot or isn’t willing to act.

This is perhaps the worst conclusion to draw from that headline. How does God most often act? Through us. The disgust and anger and sadness that we feel over these kinds of violent acts are precisely God’s disgust and anger and sadness. This is God inspiring us, urging us, begging us to act. How else would God act in our world other than through us? This is God’s voice in us, also called our conscience. It’s up to us, however, to decide to act. Or not. In other words, it’s up to us to listen to that voice. So don’t blame God for not acting. Blame us.

3) Prayer is useless.

Another ridiculous conclusion. Prayer is a natural human impulse. In times of tragedy, is it impossible not to cry out to God in pain. And God, who is all compassion, hears and attends these prayers. Again, as a father or mother would. And then, again, God responds to these prayers not only through inner consolations, but by urging us to act. In prayer, we can hear God’s voice more clearly. And that voice says, “Do something.”

4) The politicians are insincere.

I’m not going to get into political analysis here: too many people online—on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere—have already done so. But is it too much to ask to give politicians the benefit of the doubt in a time like this? I believe them to be sincere as they grieve the deaths of these poor innocent people. What kind of monster would not grieve such events? But grief and promises of prayer are insufficient. And that is the only possible positive interpretation of what is still an insensitive headline: We must expect those who can act to act. That is, I hope that their sincere prayer urges them on to listen to God's voice. And that voice says: Act.

God isn’t fixing this?

No, we’re not listening.