In the film Bruce Almighty Jim Carrey is allowed by God to run the world for a day. He’s a nice guy and says yes to all prayers. Both he and the world quickly spiral into chaos. While the film reminds us that this is God’s world and not some human invention, trying to see how we are in fact better off with God can be bewildering in the face of unforeseen death.
Now and the hour of our death; these two moments in life are inevitably drawing closer together. For the 26 Polish pilgrims killed so tragically in a coach crash in France on their way home, the two moments unexpectedly became the same moment. The knowledge that they had been visiting the shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary at La Salette only underlined the poignancy of this sudden, unmerited death.
They will have recited the Hail Mary many times on their pilgrimage and maybe they were reciting it at the moment their coach crashed through the safety barriers; perhaps its concluding phrase was on their lips in their final agony: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” The image of good and devout people saying that prayer just before they died will be a comfort to their relatives. But in the many stages of grief their families may also experience anger with the God who allowed this to happen.
Fairly feeble piece. Of course there is no great theological problem here. Equally of course, it is a problem for those many Evangelicals who claim that God is active is everything (‘God called me’, etc.). Because if you claim that, you have difficulty with the other.
John, it is no doubt a terrible pain and loss for the families of these pilgrims and perhaps seems a terrible injustice for them to die on their way back from faithful worship of the Lord. On the other hand, we all have to die someday and that loss would have to be faced then by each of the families. They died as few of us do, likely having examined their lives and the state of their souls and having freshly come to terms with the living God with whom they and we will have to reckon for all eternity. Likely they met Him in the joy of their forgiveness and salvation instead of the horror and remorse and regret felt too late after death after a life lived in rebellion against our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as all too many now live.
They meant to go on a pilgrimage to an Earthly hallowed site.
God took them on the ultimate pilgrimage — into His Holy Presence.
I guess it’s a hard stretch for the unbeliever, natural for us to focus on this life and this world as the end-all, be-all of our existence.
But my goodness, wouldn’t we trade this place for a seat at God’s feet in a second? The world is against us, because we have set ourselves against IT.
I guess we shouldn’t be suprised when a person’s purpose here is fulfilled, in God’s own time and planning, and then called home.
I just hope I’m as ready as these folks were.
Reminds me of something a very bright man told me once: “God, is not in the smoothing out the bumps business.”
KTF!…mrb
Would that I die prayerfully, in full contemplation of Him.
I knew Dom Christopher when we were at school. He impressed me as a person of great warmth, generosity and humility – not particularly common attributes in a teenage boy.
Of course this tragic coach crash does not raise any theological question that was not raised by the Lisbon earthquake. It seems to me that Dom Christopher’s piece was however not intended as a systematic theodicy, but more to console the grief-stricken and to help those whose faith might be based more on trust than on philosophical conviction.
Perhaps those who criticize the article might like to suggest ways in which it might have been improved.
What can one say about death and misfortune in this world? I don’t know, but I thought that the Abbot’s contribution is helpful and Job useful as well. I know very few who can honestly say they understand it all.
#6: How can it be improved? By telling the truth, by letting all who care know that what happened, happens to us all, sooner or later, and that later is not always better than sooner. What was said here is not sympathetic, not kindly, because it implies a falsehood of a most serious sort. Telling the truth and being heartless are not necessarily the same the same thing. LM
#6
How can it be improved? By devising a more robust theology. LM puts it a different way but I think we’re basically in agreement.
Perhaps by rejecting the claim that God is omnipotent.
#10. John, aren’t you “putting God in too small a box”? Jesus the Son, fully God and fully man, stilled the storm by a rebuke, healed the sick, cured hopeless demoniacs, raised the dead and fed multitudes. But those signs, while demonstrating His divinity and omnipotence, where only the seal of authenticity of His real mission. To accomplish what only He could, He had to lay aside willingly all His glory and omnipotence for a time, surrender Himself to sinful men, become sin for us who knew no sin Himself, and become the final and only effective sacrifice for sin, and then rise from the dead to display unmistakably the Father’s seal of approval for His sacrifice and so we may one day rise with Him to eternal life.
You will no doubt say that the multitudes only were moved to share the food they brought with them by seeing Jesus offer the boy’s small lunch in faith. Then why did they come looking for Him they next day, hoping for another free lunch, if they already had the means to feed themselves? Jesus wanted to get their focus (and yours, would that He succeeds someday!) off of the physical and this world onto the spiritual and the next world.
John 6: 15, 22-27, 32-35, 50-51
15So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force (U)to make Him king, (V)withdrew again to (W)the mountain by Himself alone. …
22The next day the crowd that stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other small boat there, except one, and that Jesus had not entered with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples had gone away alone.
23There came other small boats from Tiberias near to the place where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks.
24So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they themselves got into the small boats, and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus.
25When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You get here?”
Words to the People
26Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.
27″Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.” …
32Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.
33″For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.”
34Then they said to Him, “Lord, always give us this bread.”
35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. …
50″This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
51″I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
How can we eat His flesh?
Matthew 26:26
26 While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
Surely you don’t deny the omnipotence of God because, for now, people, even good (humanly speaking) people, even Christian believers, still die?
1 Corinthians 15:16-23, 26
16For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised;
17and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
19If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. …
26The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
Let’s see, John Wilkins vs. Jesus, Paul and Matthew. Whose word shall we take? 😉
Milton,
I’m simply asking, if God loves life, why did these people die? Isn’t there a difference between old age and dying in a way that is needless? Or are you saying, they will come back to life again some day? Or are you saying that their death isn’t that bad a thing because there is a spiritual world? Sometimes that works, but sometime the mourners wonder. After all, why live in this world if the spiritual life afterward is so much better.
Look – Milton: I believe you. You don’t need to convince me. Its other people you need to convince, and they aren’t buying easy quotes from scripture. It sounds to them like you are avoiding suffering, ignoring it, or just being an optimist, which might, in itself, not be a bad thing.
Numbers 8 and 9: you’ve obviously got the same idea and a tremendous new theological approach up your sleeve. That’s good: please don’t keep it under wraps. Of your charity, please let’s have those most serious falsehoods properly nailed and the new more robust theology spelled out so we can all share.
Well now. John, what do you think of #13? (I am assuming that he is not being sarcastic.) ARe you as surprised as I am?
#12. There is no way of dying that is needless.
In that one sense, all dying is the same. The difference is in our response to death. This is why suicide is so unsatisfactory; its begs the question and robs death of its honor. We feel a special sorrow for the suicide, different from all other responses, perhaps especially the one whose pain is too great to be born any more. To commit suicide is like being born in a test tube or birth by caesarian section. It fails a test of a ineffable sort.
I understand that the above is not clear, but this is a subject proper to poets, not commenters on a blog. Larry
I think the answer is fairly simple: God does not cause these events. They happen. God mourns their death as we do. Whatever good comes out of these events we might attribute to the divine.