Who sinned? This man? His parents? Our legislators? Society as a whole?

It would seem that the need to establish guilt in the wake of a tragedy is part of our basic human programming. Our media outlets opine with varying degrees of accuracy about exactly happened and why. Our politicians make statements and promise reforms. Our friends and neighbors light up Facebook with pictures and captions about what they think happened and how it (oddly enough) proves their position right on this issue or that. Meanwhile, fundamentalists inevitably blame everybody who isn’t one of their own.

The truth is, however, that the reasons are rarely as simple in their cause to effect as we or the fundamentalists would like to believe because disaster on an epic scale does not happen from a single point of failure. As much as some people would like to believe that “God being removed” from schools (as if such a thing were possible to an omnipotent and omnipresent deity) it’s impossible to prove. The rain falls on the just and unjust. Seemingly random acts of violence and disaster do as well.

Perhaps those who claim to be of Christ should ask themselves what he would do and say. I rather imagine that he would be binding up the wounds of the living, weeping at the graves of the departed, and in this season when we celebrate his birth he would be giving to those who mourn the hope of his Incarnation and Resurrection to life eternal.

These things we ought to do. Agendas and blame can wait.