Play the Ball Where the Monkey Drops It

This has been a rough week for Americans. First, we had the bombings at the Boston Marathon, then some pretty unusual and severe weather around here, with houses blown away and roofs torn off, and to top off the week, we got word of an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas that was so severe it registered on the Richter scale. The blast was felt 40 miles away. I know because my wife felt it.

All of this was not lost on newscasters who made the point that April seemed to be a terrible month for tragedy. On April 19, 1993, ATF officers stormed the Branch Davidian compound outside of Waco and in the resulting assault and fire, over 80 people, men, women, and children, lost their lives.

Two years later, on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh filled a rented truck with fertilizer and set off a terrible explosion in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. That blast claimed the lives of 168 people including 19 children under the age of 6.

Then, on April 20, 1999, two students entered Columbine High School with semi-automatic weapons and murdered 12 students and one teacher, and injured 21 others before killing themselves. Tragedy upon tragedy.

Besides these highly publicized tragedies and sorrows, we all have our individual tragedies. We have lost loved ones, suffered financial set-backs, and fought serious injury and disease. Sometimes it’s hard to maintain our faith in the midst of such suffering.

This week, I was talking with someone about this very issue. In theology, it is known as “theodicy” which is an attempt to understand the goodness of God in the face of evil. The question posed is that God is either good or powerful, but not both. If God were both, God would eradicate evil, thereby showing both his goodness and his power. Some people claim that since evil has not been eradicated, then God must not be good—he doesn’t care, or he must not be all that powerful—he cannot overcome evil.

That’s where the title of this article comes from. I wish I had thought of it, but I didn’t. Some years ago, my cousin sent me a book with that title; it is actually a golf metaphor. Back in the days when the British ruled India, the ruling class tried to carve golf courses out of the jungle. Mostly they were successful; the grass grew well and the climate was ideal. The problem was the wildlife. They don’t have monkeys in Scotland, so the rules of golf never addressed the contingency of having your ball stolen off the green. What is a serious golfer to do? You guessed it. In India, the rules of golf state that you “play the ball where the monkey drops it.” Philosophically, you embrace the chaos. It could be a better lie or a worse one.

But what does this have to do with God, tragedy, and theodicy? If we believe that God truly is in control, and that God truly is good, then there must be some other explanation. For most theologians, from Augustine on down, it means that we have to hold these two seeming opposites in tension, understanding that we do not see the big picture. It may look like chaos and tragedy, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned, and strength to be built. Any athlete will tell you, no pain, no gain. We are building strength for eternity, and God is there to help, not hinder. We have to trust where we do not understand. So we can believe that God is both good and powerful. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive.