Adam, Where art Thou?

JMJ

So many people ask, ” if God is all good, all powerful, all loving, why is there evil in the world? Why does God allow evil? Why does God allow men, women, and children to suffer, to go homeless, to die without care. He doesn’t. WE do.

We act as though we have not been given the means to feed the hungry; to bring water to the thirsty; to clothe the naked; to shelter the homeless, and so forth. . . We have in our capacity, in the vast abundance God has given to man, to do all these things and more.

Adam, Where art Thou?

Man, with his science, continues to feast on the fruit of knowledge and in his quest to be God-like to decide what is good and what is evil. Man decides in his societies, economies, and industries upon whom to bestow blessings and who to damn. Man, as individual, greatest affirmation has become, “This is mine.” He devours his brothers and sisters, eating their flesh, as surly as if he had butchered them himself, claiming their bodies to feed his desire for ever more possessions; he becomes wealthy depriving them of food as coins clink in his coffers and rivers of money flow through him into banks, houses, cars, t’v’s, baubles, widgets, trinkets, and what-have-yous. Success is buying large houses having so many rooms that if one liked one could sleep in a different bed every night of the week and never leave the house. These houses are, ideally, arranged to keep the neighbors far away so as to never have to look upon them or hear their annoying laughs ring out through the evening air.

Bodies pile up in American dumpsters, and garbage cans. Piles of food wasted; each ounce, each pound a denial of flesh to a hungry person. Each dollar spent on frivolity a theft of sustenance from a hungry human being. We grow larger, wider; our cars larger, wider; our houses larger, wider; our t’v’s larger, wider; our baubles, widgets, and trinkets larger, wide. Double beds become twins. We devour more. I can’t buy larger so I buy two. I can’t buy wider, but I can buy new. Trash in piles, in heaps, in hills, in mountains. More and more. Those shoes are out of style. My sleeves are a little rough on the cuffs. I like my shirts crisp and these are. . .well. . .getting old. That half a chicken has been in the fridge for a week-throw it out. The piece of pizza is two days old, must be stale by now-in the rubbish bin. My computer has only five tetra-bytes storage and quad-core processor-man you’re living in the stone age.

Adam, Where art Thou?

No wonder we deny God. No wonder we hide ourselves from Him. We were given to be stewards of His creation, to care for His Garden, to Love one another as He loves us, and what do we do? We coin cliche’s like: “I’m looking out for number one” and “Charity begins at home.” Pope Francis reminds us in the newly ordained Eighth Corporeal Work of Mercy, Care for our Common Home, that perhaps charity does begin at home, but home is our common home, Mother Earth. We are all family descended from a common ancestor. We are all brothers and sisters, children of Adam and Eve. We are all inheritors of this beautiful planet called Earth. We are all charged with her care and the care of all creation from the most despicable sea slug and roach to the mighty house cat and man.

We have split the atom, walked on the moon, and played with radio controlled cars on the surface of mars. We have wrapped the Earth in a world wide web that ideas can be transmitted at the speed of light to the other side of the globe by pretty much anyone, anywhere if they have a computer and an up-link and somehow we can not figure out how to get so much as a sandwich into the hands of a starving man in downtown New York. We can, however, make billions of dollars selling planes and bombs to Saudi Arabia so that a nation like Yemen, starving to death to satiate the ravenous hunger of geo-politics and profit, might, rather than food, have a thunderstorm of death and destruction rained upon it from a F-15 Eagle, made in the USA with Chinese parts. The Eagle and apt symbol of the United States being both predator and scavenger, violent and despicable.

Adam, Where art Thou?

So when God comes, when Jesus returns and He will, where will you hide? Behind what bush? In what room of your house? What crisp clean shirt and shiny shoe? Will you drive away in your white Ford 350 crew cab with jacked up wheels and a chrome deer grille guard? Behind which corpse will you cringe? Which victim of your greed? or perhaps mine? Where will you hide Adam, when the Lord walks through your garden in the cool evening breeze and asks, “Adam, Where art Thou?'”

(C) Copyright 24 August 2020