God's Plan Revised

In his recent interview with FOX News’s Sean Hannity (07/19/12), George Zimmerman, shooter of Trayvon Martin, suggested that "it was God's plan" that the unarmed 17 year old die that night in Florida.  People were saying similar things on Christian talk-radio shows following the recent Colorado mass gunman killings, "...it must be God's plan or things wouldn't happen like this...” 

Such notions are not new.

Augustine of Hippo’s (354-430) vision of God has framed both Roman Catholic and Protestant understanding of divine sovereignty.  This God is in control of all events, causing or allowing tragedy for some greater purpose we may never understand, or will only learn about at the End of Time.  There is an ironic comfort in such notions.  The surviving victims of tragedy can take heart that God will use the evil forced upon their loved ones for some greater good.  Believers are called to have faith in that greater, unknown good even in the face of terrible circumstances.  Although God could end evil and suffering in his sovereignty, God allows and even uses our evil for a greater good because God loves us.

This was the theology preached by missionary priests in the conversion of the Bolivian indigenous people to justify their enslavement by the Spanish conquistadors during the 18th century in order to plunder the silver mines and future of that nation. 

It was the same Christianity used by white churches in the United States to resist the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, "people of color should not complain or agitate about the conditions of their living.  Whatever life throws your way, grin and bear it because God will use it for a greater good ‘in the sweet bye and bye’."

You can understand the dilemma.  If God is both “good” and “powerful” the only rational conclusion in the face of the atrocities of history can be deferred justification.  Augustine argued that ultimately there is no such thing as “evil”, for what we experience as such will be used by God for that mysterious greater good.  Augustine would have us trust our lives to a God with the power to stop evil but who chooses not to do so out of love.

 

Most people yearn for a sense of “divinity in control”.  We use that sense to justify the capricious suffering in our lives and in the world.  For example, when we survive the car accident we say “Thank God!” as if God saved us from harm.  But in doing so are we assuming that the person(s) that died in the accident or went to the hospital were not so blessed by the same God?  Did God want, will or allow them to suffer for a greater purpose while sparing us the same?

If God is “good”, “ultimately in control” and choosing to allow the atrocities of history to happen out of “love”, what can “love” possibly mean?

To those who question such logic in the murder of an unarmed teenager, or the slaughter of movie goers or in the preventable deaths of the thousands of children each day of hunger and malnutrition related disease (UN/WFP), evil is no illusion and cannot be rationalized away by “pie-in-the-sky” theologies.

This commonly held definition of God as “all powerful” has direct Christological implications.  Does Jesus’ death on the cross buy our way into heaven?  The doctrine of substitutionary atonement makes this rationalization for a God who plans, allows and implements the death of “his only begotten son” for the ultimate greater good.  Scriptural references in both Old and New Testaments support such conclusions but not without other ways to understand who Jesus is as well.

In the gospel of John, Jesus is considered the incarnation of the God of Creation (John 1:1-18).  A good God with all-controlling power that can only be understood by believers at the End of the World would not proclaim “the Kingdom of God is at hand!” in the present tense (Mark 1:15) or suggest that the promise of God’s eschatological future has been fulfilled in his reading of the prophet Isaiah (Luke 4:16-21).  Nor would the incarnation of a God who says evil is only a tool of his benevolent deity teach “…for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

Jesus takes the hand of the dead daughter of Jairus and gives life (Mark 5:21-43).  Jesus raises a widow’s only son from death (Luke 7:11-17).  Jesus weeps at the funeral of his best friend Lazarus and then raises him from the dead (John 11:38-44).  How could this Jesus be the incarnation of a God who could look the parent of a murder victim in the eye, admitting divine authority to stop the slaughter but choosing not to do so, and say “just trust me…I love you…”?!

Maybe our definition of power is misdirected.  God doesn’t cause or allow the evil in our lives.  What if God’s “power” is not the ability to control and determine?  What if God’s power is that which lures us in each and every moment to the best possibility but does not control the results?  What if the future is open-ended rather than determined?  What if God’s love is in the power of inspiration, creativity, relationship and forgiveness…all powerful forces indeed?

Like a loving parent teaching the child not to touch the hot stove, God doesn’t make the child touch the stove but in teaching the child not to do so out of love gives the child the freedom to choose and face the consequences for good or ill.

Then the freedom into which we are created is really free.  And the evil of the world is really evil.  And the God of love that dies incarnate on the cross shares our lot in life (I John 4:8).  Then the God of creation is real love, and not the charade of some promised future to which believers must adhere in order to belong.

Hierarchy of Tragedy?

12 are shot dead, 58 are wounded by a lone gunman in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater on July 20, 2012.  It is front page, breaking news:  "A nation mourns the gun violence of yet another mass killing."  Vigils are held.  Debate over gun control continues.  President Obama orders the nation's flags at half-mast.

During their Sunday worship on August 5, 2012, 6 Sikh men and women in Oak Creek, Wisconsin are murdered by a “skinhead” who also wounds 3 others including 2 policemen who heroically confront the gunman and treat the wounded.  The nation is shocked.  Vigils are held.  The President shares his and the nation’s grief.  The Attorney General of the United States is assigned to represent the President at the Memorial Service. 

14 men, women and children die and 11 are seriously injured in an overcrowded pick-up truck accident, 90 miles outside of San Antonio, Texas on July 22, 2012.  It is suspected they are undocumented workers in the United States illegally.  The reports are in the back pages of the news.  There are no national vigils or debates.  The President orders no flags flown half-mast.

Why not?  Is there a hierarchy of tragedy?

There were 11,493 gun murders in the United States in 2009. (Census)

There were 35,900 auto accident deaths in the United States in 2009. (Census)

There are tragic losses to be sure in both situations, gun murder or car accident, yet why the attention, the nationwide mourning, over mass shootings by a lone gunman?  How is it that auto accident deaths, three times the number of gun related deaths, are not the occasion for national mourning?

Half of all gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides (FBI).  Suicides are barely mentioned beyond the local newspaper. 

Every day on average in the United States 10 people unintentionally drown (over 3,600 each year).  Of those who drown, 20% are people under the age of 14.  Drowning is the fifth leading cause of unintentional death in the U.S., yet unless we are directly affected, we rarely even hear about it when someone drowns (CDC).

Are some lives more worthwhile than others, more deserving of our attention, our mourning?  Is the capricious vulnerability of mass shooting victims our worst nightmare?  Is it because the Aurora, Colorado victims...or the Tucson, Arizona victims (6 dead, 13 injured including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, 01/08/11)...or the Columbine, Colorado High School victims (13 dead, 21 injured, 04/20/99)...these victims are like "us," part of the dominant culture, middle class folk?  Is it because the victims are folks we can relate to, folks we would see at the movies?

Not "illegals" crammed into a truck.  No national mourning for them.

Is there a special grief for the innocent, as if the families of undocumented workers are guilty?

Then why don’t we mourn the over the 30,000 women and children who will die today of malnutrition related disease (UN/WFP)?  There’s rarely a headline about them.

Jesus has a bewildering word to say about tragic death, found only in the gospel of Luke:

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.  Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’ (Luke 13:1-5)

In a culture which assumed that God punished the sinner and rewarded the righteous these words must have been puzzling indeed.  Jesus is suggesting that we all, sinner or righteous, stand in equal need of forgiveness and grace.  He seems to be suggesting that there are times when bad things happen to good people without any reason at all.

Is there a hierarchy of tragedy?

Jesus would seem to be saying "no."  Any life taken outside the natural order of things is an affront to the God who creates life and who wants nothing more than for each of God's children to have life abundantly (John 10:10).

Was President Obama correct to lower the flags to half-mast for the innocent deaths of movie-goers in Colorado?  In extending recognition usually reserved for those who serve our nation in uniform or office, does this gesture suggest an even larger national unity?

When the innocent suffer we all suffer.  When any of our community is lessened, we all lose.  And if that be the case, how could the boundaries of nation, race or class ever define the limits of our compassion? 

Jesus would seem to be suggesting that they don’t.