In my meditation on the loss of my daughter I referred to her death as “senseless.” It occurred to me at the time that while no one would likely say anything given the personal nature of what I was writing about, many reformed Christians might take issue with such a statement, thinking that it somehow impinged on the view that God is sovereign. I disagree. There are things in this world that are senseless. That is not to say meaningless (in the ultimate sense), for surely the death of my daughter has profound meaning, but it is nevertheless senseless.
The reason I believe this is the case is because my daughter’s death was evil. In fact death itself is evil. God uses death; it is the curse on mankind for sin and indeed at times it is meted out as judgment. Nevertheless, death, particularly the death of persons (who are made in the image of God) is evil. This is a profound mystery. Somehow God allows death, and even ordains the deaths of His saints while at the same time hating death and vowing to destroy it.
But to return to the point, death, as a manifestation of evil is senseless. My dictionary defines senseless as a) “without discernible meaning or purpose” and b) “lacking common sense; wildly foolish.” Both of these apply in a limited sense to the death of my daughter. There is no discernible purpose for her death. It does little good to point out that God has a reason. I’m sure He does but it is one of the secret things that belong to Him. I am a man and I am called to think as a man. That means that I am not expected to sit back and coolly reflect on my daughter’s death as an event that has a purpose (though indiscernible to me). Rather, I am to experience it in all the fullness of what it means to be human. Jesus did not reflectively quip from the cross, “Father, I know that all things have a purpose in your sovereign plan.” He screamed, “Father, Why have you forsaken me?”
Further, to take up the second definition, “lacking common sense; wildly foolish,” I find that this fits as well. What is more foolish than evil. If we balk at this perhaps it betrays a tacit belief that God is the author of evil, or at least some evil (like natural catastrophes or the death of infants, that are clearly not the fault of a particular person or persons) inasmuch as we view calling these things foolish as an implicit criticism of God. But God agrees that death is wildly foolish. It is the foolish evil that results from foolishness and one day God will expose it for the foolishness that it is when he destroys it along with pain and suffering and wickedness. Further, the death of a newborn saint surely lacks common sense. Common sense, which is part of the image of God–our common ability to judge what is fitting and appropriate in any given situation–tells us that babies are not supposed to die in their mothers’ arms. Common sense tells us that we are meant for life and fellowship and relationship with God. This is why it is the fool who says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’
So this is why the death of my daughter and so many tragedies like it are senseless. First, because we are humans and we are called to assess things from a human standpoint (using the wisdom and insight God has provided in His word to be sure), and from a human standpoint there is no discernible purpose or reason that I watched my daughter die. And second, because it was a result of the foolishness of evil that turns all things on their heads and rejects what is sensible favoring senseless opposition to God and all that is good. Were it not for evil and its intrusion into God’s good creation, my daughter would be with me right now and we would be in the presence of God himself.
Finally, I found some help in thinking through this in Chris Wright’s recent book “The God I Don’t Understand“ which I think is worth quoting at length:
Evil Makes “No Sense”
It is a fundamental human drive to understand things. The creation narrative shows that we have been put into our created environment to master and subdue it, which implies gaining understanding of it. To be human is to be charged with ruling creation, and that demands ever-growing breadth and depth of understanding the created reality that surrounds us. The simple picture in Genesis 2 of the primal human naming of the rest of the animals is an indication of this exercise of rational recognition and classification. Our rationality is in itself a dimension of being made in the image of God. We were created to think! We just have to investigate, understand explain; it is a quintessentially human trait that manifests itself from our earliest months of life.
So then to understand things means to integrate them into their proper place in the universe, to provide a justified, legitimate, and truthful place within creation for everthing we encounter. We instinctively seek to establish order, to make sense, to find reasons and purposes, to validate things and thus explain them. As human beings made in God’s image for this very purpose, we have an innate drive, an insatiable desire, and an almost infinite ability to organize and order the world in the process of understanding it.
Thus, true to form, when we encounter this phenomenon of evil, we struggle to apply to it all the rational skill– philosophical, practical, and problem-solving–that we so profusely and successfully deploy on everything else. We are driven to try to understand and explain evil. But it doesn’t work. Why not?
God with his infinite perspective, and for reasons known only to himself, knows that we finite human beings cannot, indeed must not, “make sense” of evil. For the final truth is that evil does not make sense. “Sense” is part of our rationality that in itself is part of God’s good creation and God’s image in us. So evil can have no sense, since sense itself is a good thing.
Evil has no proper place within creation. It has no validity, no truth, no integrity. It does not intrinsically belong to the creation as God originally made it nor will it belong to creation as God will ultimately redeem it. It cannot and must not be integrated into the universe as a rational, legitimated, justified part of reality. Evil is not there to be understood, but to be resisted and ultimately expelled. Evil was and remains an intruder, an alien presence that has made itself almost (but not finally) inextricably “at home.” Evil is beyond our understanding because it is not part of the ultimate reality that God in his perfect wisdom and utter truthfulness intends us to understand. So God has withheld its secrets from his own revelation and our research.
Personally, I have come to accept this as a providentially good thing. Indeed, as I have wrestled with this thought about evil, it brings a certain degree of relief. And I think it carries the implication that whenever we are confronted with something utterly and dreadfully evil, appallingly wicked, or just plain tragic, we should resist the temptation that is wrapped up in the cry, “Where’s the sense in that?” It’s not that we getno answer. We get silence. And that silence is the answer to our question. There is no sense. And that is a good thing too.
Can I understand that ?
No.
Do I want to understand that?
Probably not, if God has decided it is better that I don’t.
So I am willing to live with the understanding that the God I don’t understand has chosen not to explain the origin of evil, but rather wants to concentrate my attention on what he has done to defeat and destroy it.
Now this may seem a lame response to evil. Are we merely to gag our desperate questions, accept that it’s a mystery, and shut up? Surely we do far more than that? Yes indeed.
We grieve.
We weep.
We lament.
We protest.
We scream in pain and anger.
We cry out, “How long must this kind of thing go on?”
And that brings us to our second major biblical response. For when we do such things, the Bible says to us, “That’s OK. Go right ahead. And here are some words that you may like to use when you feel that way.” But for that, we must turn to our next chapter.
Many of you may know that my wife and I are going with a group from our church, 
Our beautiful baby girl, Esther Elise Donathan: Born July 9, 2009 - Died July 11, 2009.
