FROM THE BOUNDARY - Act of…?
Eighteen people died when the tower of Siloam fell south-east of Jerusalem (Luke 13:4-5). We don’t know the circumstances which attended its fall. Siloam was famous for its health giving pools to which Jesus sent the blind man who returned seeing (John 9:7). Its inhabitants had a bad name. They were lawless, fanatical vagabonds. ‘“Yet”, said Jesus to the disciples, “do you think they were worse offenders than all those who lived in Jerusalem? I tell you no.”’ Yes, the ‘rain falls on the just and the unjust’. In other words, he enjoined them not to explain the deaths, when the tower fell, as a divine punishment, but to look to themselves, seeking repentance, a new way of looking at themselves and the world.
In early 2005, I happened to be in Emerald City at a time when I’d been taking some services at St Philip’s church. It was shortly after the terrible Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which killed 228 000 people in 14 countries. I was fortunate to witness a conversation between two employees, a man and a woman. The man said of the tsunami, ‘You see, how can God be good if these things happen?’ The parallel with Covid Wimp is self-evident. The woman answered, ‘It’s all prophesied in the Bible.’ But then, seeing me, she gestured to the man to keep quiet because I was a priest! Well, I wasn’t wearing a collar, but actually just shorts and a ‘T’ shirt, so I supposed I was becoming notorious! It bothered me that she should have silenced the man because of me; so I told her ‘No, please, carry on. It’s good to hear you discussing it.’ So first we all chatted, and then me and the man alone. What I said to him went roughly like this.
‘You know, each of us must, as St Paul tells us, seek our own salvation in fear and trembling. Our faith, if it’s to be a lively, a questioning, faith must be informed by experience. So don’t be afraid to question. We’re not programmed robots. Like the disciples, we’re mostly very ordinary people trying to make our way with all our hopes, fear, pain, loves and tears. We have our questions. For a Christian not to question even the very existence of God, and what He’s really like, after the tsunami would be unreal, even wrong. The questions are entirely natural. They’re almost certainly unanswerable – and don’t let anyone, not even priests, tell you otherwise.’
I was glad of the encounter, to address the man’s thoughtful questions which howled at all of us after that dreadful tragedy. Then our ‘Happy New Year’s’ seemed robbed of all meaning – just as our ‘Happy Easter’s’ do now. There’s no rainbow on the horizon – yet. So we’re bound to ask ourselves why, if there is a God, He lets it all happen. Is it all a divine punishment for our sinfulness? And even if He did sit back and do nothing, why won’t He now intervene to save us? In recent days, I’ve heard all that.
Oh yes, we say that God brings us into the great stream of life, and then that He takes us from it. But on this scale: 228 000 innocents in the tsunami, 225 000 (as I write this) from Covid Wimp? Can we blame human intervention? Not for the tsunami, surely. And Wimp? Well…I suppose an earthquake – which killed 27 000 people in Bam in Iran in 2003 – is the ‘purest’ form of Act of God (as the lawyers call these things), of natural disaster. It’s pushing it a bit to speak of the face of Evil. For then, our disinterested planet has shifted in its sleep and in seconds has transformed from a benign, life sustaining and generous host into a deadly, brutal monster. And Wimp?
So yes, where is God in all this, if there is a God at all? How can the suffering and death of thousands upon thousands of innocents possibly proceed in the ‘eye’ of an omnipotent God who is all love and all goodness?
I suppose it’s the scale of it all which most horrifies us. We all know about violent death, on the roads, In aeroplanes, train crashes, as at Siloam crumbling buildings. And we know too that despite all the advances in science, humanity still has a 100% fatality rate. But it’s the scale of its terror, isn’t it?
How do we deal with it all in our ordinary lives, in terms of our faith? Well, perhaps it’s better simply to sigh and move on, even if that’s the easy way, the cosy, comfortable way. We can pray for the survivors and victims. We can thank God for our own health and happiness, and do small things, not least to ease our consciences, by contributing to special collections and performing little charitable works. If we do, are we currying favour from ‘Him up there’ for a safe ride? So many questions. Meanwhile, Wimp works his darkness and couldn’t give a monkeys’ what our motivations are. He knows that every arm raised against him is the arm of the Divine at work.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
YOU, from the boundary: ‘Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God….” (Philip James Bailey).