In the movie Blood Diamond, Leonardo DeCaprio plays a diamond smuggler in the bloody, war-torn terrain of Sierra Leone. When his American journalist/romantic interest counterpart asks how and why so much unconscionable violence – rape of women, mutilation of children, abduction of children as child soldiers – can arise in this part of the world, Leo coolly responds, “T.I.A. This Is Africa.”

That’s the attitude: Don’t try and figure it out, just accept it and move on. It kind of makes sense when you can go to any news site and find endless stories that make the Sierra Leone civil war fade into a blurry mosaic of bombings, massacres, and corruption. 11 die in Nigerian sectarian violence; 100,000 flee South Sudan due to bombings; Explosion in downtown Nairobi injures 29 people. It’s not just Africa, of course: Terrorism in Europe, Mexican drug violence, U.S. suicides from bullying…After enough of these stories, I just want to stop reading the news altogether.

What should our reaction be, really? We can donate our money, energy, or time, but you hear that every day and we already know the different ways to help. You know what I think? I think we are supposed to turn the news back on. I believe we each have a responsibility, if nothing else, to listen – to face the horrors that this world deals its inhabitants, and to ask the hard questions.

How did tribal disagreements turn into genocide? What is the role of wealthy countries like the U.S.? How do we stop seeing war as a solution?

Why do bad things happen in the first place?

That’s it, though, isn’t it? Those of us in the developed world don’t like that last question, because we know we can’t answer it. Especially if we believe in an all-loving, all-powerful God. That is our Achilles heal as religious people, in fact: Most of us do not have an answer when someone says, “If God loves us all and can do anything he wants, then why do such terrible things happen?” Much of it you can certainly blame on bad people doing bad things, but what about, say, natural disasters?

Since I am most unqualified to respond to such a quandary, I will simply offer two responses that different people have given in the past:

1. Rabbi Harold Kushner says, “God could have been all-powerful at the beginning, but he chose to designate two areas of life off-limits to his power: He would not arbitrarily interfere with laws of nature. And secondly, God would not take away our freedom to choose between good and evil.”

2. The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) published a short article questioning the very premise that death is bad, by simply calling it “the taking home of a child to be with God.” If death is simply going to Heaven, in other words, then it can’t be all that bad. [I guess the author didn’t think about things like rape, torture, and other times when the victims are not lucky enough to “go home” yet.]

It’s a hard question. I can’t answer it, but I think it is better to continue asking than to turn off the TV and hope the bad things go away.