The God of the Scriptures from Genesis through Revelation is a personal God. The God of the Israelites and the God of Jesus is a God who creates, loves, saves, chastises, forgives, punishes, and, ultimately, unites himself with his people. For our part we alternately love and ignore, obey and disobey, refuse and then seek forgiveness from that same God.

While many want to reject the God of Israel as angry, dispassionate, and vengeful, we cannot justify those images when we actually read the Old Testament in its entirety. Listen to the words of Moses to the Israelites from the First Reading: “Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live? Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, with strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors, all of which the LORD, your God, did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?”

I read recently that there are two principal reasons why millennials are leaving not just the Church, but abandoning faith in God all together. One of those reasons – actually the second in importance – is their belief that religious faith is incompatible with a scientific world view.  While this is a misconception, we cannot address this here. The second reason is the problem of evil (theodicy). If God exists, why is there evil?

We can so focus on ourselves, on our own personal needs, that we miss the bigger picture. This issue is endemic in the post-modern world that draws much of its imagination from pop psychology and the augmented sense of “I” instead of “we”.

When we look at the world around us, some people are inclined to see evil, to sense pain, despair, loneliness, the afflictions of war, and the cruelty of humanity. At the same time, others will focus on the majestic beauty of a sunset, the stillness of the forest, efforts at peace and the great strides in providing food and water to people in the most desperate and desolate locations.

This is more than the difference between the pessimist and the optimist. This is the difference in perspective from the heart of faith and the heart of disbelief. The faith-filled person is likely to find the presence of God in all things, great and small, good and “bad” alike. Where there is desperation, God calls us to act; where there is bounty, God calls us to rejoice and to celebrate. When we “find God in all things” (as St. Ignatius of Loyola challenges us) then living in a world which is redeemed though yet sinful is possible.

The atheist or agnostic demands perfection and is fundamentally incapable of finding beauty in imperfection. God speaks to us in the midst of our emptiness. God speaks to us in the gentleness of a smile. God cries out to us in the impoverished. God celebrates with us in a bountiful harvest.

Moses knew that the God who revealed himself to the Israelites on Sinai was nothing at all like the gods that the other ancient peoples needed worshiped. He did not need to be appeased; he did not need their blood to satisfy his lusts and hunger.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity – acknowledging that God has revealed himself to us as a God of mercy, of compassion, and the very embodiment of love. Those who are blinded by their own demands of who and what God is, lose the ability to experience and encounter God in their lives. We can get so busy deciding where God is not, that we miss where God is. The problem is worse when we come to the fundamental insight that God simply IS and that he calls us to be in the world what those who do not see in the world, expect God to be.

Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.