Managing Mosquitos

Today, our lawn was sprayed for mosquitos. Penny and I’d tried everything to solve the problem. Now, though, with this regular treatment, we’ve learned how to manage it.   We all have a mosquito problem—one more tormenting than anything that buzzes, bites, and or raises red bumps on the skin.   This mosquito problem, as I’ve long thought about it, is what theologians call theodicy, the existence of evil, pain, suffering, and death. These human realities raise the question, why does an all-good, all-loving God allow bad things to happen to good people?   Or, to put it another way, God, why are there mosquitos?   I don’t know the answer. But I do know, or believe, that God is incapable of willing evil or of sending bad things upon us and others to punish us. And he suffers with us because of them. He does not condemn those of us who might lose faith in him and in his goodness because of them. He understands us and goes on loving us and seeking us to be in a relationship with him.     For my part, despite life’s tragedies, I still believe in God and his goodness. On balance, life is more good than bad.    We humans have been asking, “Why? God. Why war? Why Covid? Why another school shooting? We’ve been asking Why since the beginning of creation; the Genesis story of the Fall is an early attempt at an answer: bad things happen because of that first human’s sin.    We’ll go on asking and discovering that there’s no adequate answer. And like Job and the Psalmist and even Jesus on the cross— “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?”—we’ll feel angry and disappointed with God. We’ll complain against him. We might even give up on God.    So, if we can never know why bad things happen to good people, in this world anyway, what if we ask instead, How? How can we live with—and through—them? How can we learn from our experience? How can we become better human beings because of it—more sensitive to the heartache of others? How can we tangibly help someone going through dark times? How might we grow in our relationship with Christ?   I can’t know exactly why God made mosquitos, but I can know how to manage them, both the ones that bite the skin and those that bite the soul.