It’s been a shocking and mournful couple of weeks for our country. Not that it’s a close comparison, but with the recent tragedy in Virginia, I’ve found myself remembering my freshman year at A&M when the bonfire collapsed, killing a dozen fellow students. I remember how the campus of 50,000 was nearly silent for weeks and eerily solemn for months to follow. It’s around this time that I’m sure a small piece of reality is just starting to set in for the student body and families. The most striking difference between that horrible accident and this most recent incident is the presence of evil…the malicious intent behind the horrible result.

I have coincidentally been reading through Genesis the last few weeks and, when I heard about the shooting, I recalled reading certain passages before God flooded the earth.

“The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air – for I am grieved that I have made them.” Gen 6:5-7

God saw not only the external goings-on of a hateful people, but also their evil hearts. He saw their pain and anger that yielded still more pain, wickedness and violence. He saw and felt all this and was so pained that He decided to clean house.

How it must tear His heart out to see his children kill one another. I sometimes wonder if this all-knowing God wanted so badly for Cain to have an honest, innocent answer to His simple question: “Where is your brother?” Instead, He heard the crying out of innocent, spilt blood.

On days like last Monday, it’s hard not to want to say, “I understand why you wanted a clean slate…doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.” But I think it’s harder still to comprehend the type of God that would be grieved to the point of decimating 99% of His creation and then, after finishing the job, saying, “Okay, let’s start over, even though you’ll do it again.”

“’Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood…’” Gen 8:21

He displayed His inherent intolerance for evil, while in the next breath promising unconditionally never to dole out the same brand of punishment…perhaps foreshadowing a similar event where His hunger for justice would be as ravenous as his inclination for mercy toward His creation.