wfn.org | Littleton pastor: 'God did not do this'

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

April 26, 1999        News media contact: Tim
Tanton*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.     10-21-71BP{225}

NOTE: A photograph is available with this story.

By Joshua Lewis*

LITTLETON, Colo. (UMNS) -- God does not put his finger around the triggers
of guns, the pastor of Columbine United Church said during worship services
on the first Sunday following the massacre at a local high school.

Two teen-age boys killed 13 people and wounded 23 others before taking their
own lives April 20 at Columbine High School in Littleton.

"The message I want to get to the world is that God did not do this," the
Rev. Steve Poos-Benson said.

A Presbyterian, Poos-Benson leads the ecumenical church, which is a shared
ministry of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Methodist Church
and the United Church of Christ.

One member of Columbine United Church was seriously injured during the
school shooting. Patrick Ireland is by now well-known as the young man who,
despite a gunshot wound to the head and paralysis on the right half of his
body, struggled his way to safety out of a second-story window at the high
school. Columbine has many other members who are students at the school,
including 28 who are active in the church's youth group.

Four other United Methodist churches were directly affected by the tragedy,
said Terry Benedett-Farmer, district superintendent for the denomination's
Denver Area. 

Two students with ties to St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Highlands
Ranch were killed in the rampage. Funeral services were held April 26 for
Lauren Townsend, the daughter of members Rick and Sue Townsend. Services for
Stephen Curnow, the nephew of members Bill and Kathy Curnow, are set for
April 28. 

Heritage, Littleton and St. Andrew United Methodist churches also have
members who are students at Columbine.

The tragedy has left many in the community echoing the ages-old question:
How could God let something this horrific happen?

Poos-Benson's answer is swift and without hesitation: God didn't.

After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, he heard a prominent evangelist
asked the question, "How could God let this happen?" The evangelist said, "I
don't know." 

That response made Poos-Benson angry, and he never forgot it.

"What do you mean, 'You don't know?' The answer is, 'God didn't do this,' "
the pastor said. "And so, from Wednesday on, I felt a torch placed in my
hand not to let anybody think God did this. And that God was with us in the
middle of it. ... God is helping us work our way through it."

Poos-Benson takes issue with theologies that suggest God might have allowed
or caused the shooting to take place for some unknown good or higher
purpose. "That makes God out to be a real jerk, and I don't believe God is a
jerk."

He recalls the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger as the first time
these issues began to hit home for him. Some people were calling the
disaster God's way of telling humans that their technology was flawed, he
said. "And I thought, 'Who ... wants that God that would blow up a space
shuttle?'" 

He draws back his thumb and extends his forefinger into the shape of a
pistol, aims down and makes a noise - "Porgkrrrr" - like a shot being fired.
"You know, that's what that idea is. If God's that way, then God went to
Columbine High School and went...." He makes the imaginary pistol again and
fires. "And it doesn't work that way."

Is the implication, then, that God is not all-powerful in this world?

"It's one of the sermons that I'll probably preach next week. It is that we
have to make a choice: Is God all-loving or is God all-powerful - or maybe
really not all-powerful but all-controlling. Because, you see, I believe
all-loving is really, truly all-powerful. But people want God to be
all-controlling....God is not all-controlling. God has chosen to self-limit
God's actions in the world. 

"God cannot keep a kid from rushing into a school and blowing it up. God
cannot stop that. That's not the way this world has been created.

"So what can God do? God can work with you to prevent these things, God can
work with you in the middle of these things; God can work with you after
these events have happened."

And it's in people's responses to the tragedy at Columbine that Poos-Benson
has seen God at work: in kids supporting each other in prayer; in the
outpouring of help his church and others throughout the community have
received; in Patrick Ireland himself, who sustained his injuries while
trying to stop the bleeding of a friend who'd been shot in the leg. That
friend has since been released from the hospital.

Poos-Benson was one of the first people at the school after the shooting
broke out. His wife was at a nearby bagel shop when a Columbine student
called the store from a cell phone. In turn, his wife used her cell phone to
call him at the church. He left for the school immediately, with Holly
Freeman, the church's youth minister, and Michael Hayes, the music director,
in tow. Together, they helped direct the hordes of terrified kids running
from the school to safe places even as bullets whizzed audibly around them.
Poos-Benson was instrumental in organizing the local library as a place
where parents and kids could find each other amidst the chaos of the
situation.

Later, in his April 25 sermon, Poos-Benson said, "This is a different
Sunday. This Sunday is the first Sunday of forever, if you will. 

"How do we go on from here? I'm not quite sure how we're going to go on from
here.... Some day - soon, I hope - all the radio and the trucks and the news
people from all over the world will start leaving, and we'll be left here.
And how do we continue on? How do we get home again? How do we get back to
that sense of who we were? 

"Know what? We're not. We'll never get back to who we were. We'll have to
become something different. And I don't know what that something different
is, to be honest. But I do know something: and that is that God will provide
for us."
 
# # #

*Lewis is a free-lance writer and communication consultant based in Baton
Rouge, La. 

______________
United Methodist News Service
http://www.umc.org/umns/
newsdesk@umcom.umc.org
(615)742-5472