Going through the social media as events unfolded last week, one was wont to notice a thread of thought going through peoples' minds. Some actually stated it. If there had been no religion and no God (echoes of John Lennon?), would what happened last week in Paris have occurred at all?

The answer to that question has very little to do with God and much to do with the turbulent nature of man. God has nothing to do with war and misery; it is the machinations of man’s mind that use God to mess things up. Man can often mess up very well, without the need to throw God into the mix. Often however, God, being unseen, provides for a perfect scapegoat and we do not hold back in using him as our personal needs dictate.

How does God really figure in what happened last week? Was it a just retribution against the very leftist secular and anti-religious newspaper, as the Muslim fundamentalists wished all to think? Was it the face that the three monotheistic religions all believing in the same God, wanted us to see? Did the fanatical part of Islam that manifested this violence ever consider that their interpretation of their religion and God was anything but the accepted norm of what society, including other members of their religion, considers God to be? Is this what God wants us to perceive him as? Is religion falling short here?

What about philosophy? Does philosophy provide us with any answers that may make sense of this mayhem? Kant of course, gave us the answer to this question a long time ago. Philosophy has its limits, which limits can only be settled by theology.

What about science? Does science help us here? The answer here is again, negative, as science always tells us how things go and never tells us why they go. In the Western world, the freedom of free expression is one of the fundamental human rights, always circumscribed of course, within the prima facie ethic of responsibility. There are legal remedies when this is not done, but using violence to have one’s way forcibly is never an option, especially when innocent people are hurt and killed.

So how does God’s justice and omnipotence allow something like last week’s incidents to happen, assuming of course, as a humanist would say, that he exists at all?

The answer may not sit easy with atheists and agnostics, but what other answer is there? The God of Abraham and Isaac, the God of Hagar and Ishmael, the God of Jesus are either weak and absent Gods, as they are not able to enforce their omnipotent justice, or they are autocratic, mythical gods of man’s imagination, like those of the ancient Greeks, who jest with humanity with a cruel intent.

There is however, a third possibility. The possibility of a God, who from the depths of the Old Testament, the Koran and the New Testament, repetitively respects human freedom and out of his mercy, walks together with his people in their suffering. Suffering created by man himself or by natural disasters, both part of a creation still groaning for a final fulfilment. What if the justice of God is his empathic, compassionate mercy and solidarity with a suffering humanity?

Essentially, all human history is a work in progress where God intervenes again and again to restore suffering humanity, both through his direct action and those of his elect. God works mainly through other people, as the large masses seen in the Place de la Republique last Sunday adequately shows. He can also work directly in human history, as has also often been the case.

The one overbearing theological virtue that comes to mind in a time like this is hope. A hope never extinguished that this is not where it all ends; A hope never extinguished that things are still unfolding; A hope never extinguished that God is walking with us during this very moment in ways that we may not see or understand.

For the Christian who embraces God as a human being, this hope should manifest itself the strongest. God as one of us, alive in human form, sharing in human suffering, giving meaning to this suffering as an unfulfilled work in progress.

The end is not yet nigh, the story ever yet unfolding and constantly redeemable. The answer is yet hope in a suffering but resurrected man-God who walks with us as the light in a state of complete darkness. As we walk together during such difficult times, we have no other answer but to attach ourselves strongly to this hope.

Christians, Jews and Muslims hanging on together for the hope of a better and more perfect world. Atheists, agnostics and humanists ultimately also subconsciously hold out to this hope that takes on a physical human form, because we have really no other choice. There is very little else to hang on to, as man, during his long history, has shown over and over again, that after having tried everything else for the umpteenth time, he is solely unable to redeem himself! It is up to us today to attach ourselves to a hope which means ultimately winning through. Abandoning that hope would be our final loss.

[email protected]