[Holwick – I disagree with his view, which is similar to Rabbi Kushner’s, but think this is a good discussion-starter on the issue of chance and random tragedy. It was inspired by a storm which dropped a tree on a car and killed a small child.]
SOMETIMES GOD MAKES NO SENSE
If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Who cares? How about a more meaningful question, like, say, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
That one I know the answer to: Sometimes, they all do, leaving the world an unprotected place, a place where trees make terrible sounds when they fall and crush one of God’s children. And, while we’re at it, how strong is the Lord, anyway, this God who numbers the hairs on our heads and sets the universe spinning? There are days when he seems old to me, as deaf and brittle as a wooden idol carved from a mighty oak. And about as useful.
UNSEEN DANGERS
A Glen Ridge mother puts her 2-year-old son in his seat in the back of the family van. She straps him in because she wants him to be safe from fools and unseen dangers. Maybe she kisses him as she turns to walk to the front door of the car.
And in that moment, that moment and no other, the wind blows and a tree falls, and crushes Jesse Cosantino to death. Thirty seconds either way and he’d be playing tonight, never having fully learned that old, frightening prayer, “I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And should I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
We’ve all had near-misses and close calls in our lives. And every time we cheat death by dumb luck or good timing, we chalk it up to the hand of God or the flutter of angels’ wings.
“God still has something left for me to do,” the faithful say. But, going down that road leaves the devout committed to some cold, cruel propositions; for instance, “A 2-year-old can apparently outlive his usefulness to God’s master plan.”
GUARDIAN ANGELS
And when the guardian angels split for the coast and God’s hand is stuck in his pocket, we find comfort in the trite and banal. “Well, the child is in a better place,” someone will say. Presumably, the child resides now in heaven, where the wind always is gentle and the trees never fall down. But I believe, whatever the delights of Paradise, that the best place for a 2-year-old is in his mother’s arms.
It’s always easier when tragedy is long ago or far away. I think of those survivors of Hiroshima who packed up and moved to Nagasaki and were bombed all over again just days later. That kind of bad luck either makes you laugh or drives you crazy.
In the here and now, distance brings solace. Not a week seems to go by without a report from Malaysia or somewhere of some horrific loss of life. That’s not real to us. We don’t know any Malaysians. Thank God that, in most cases, we can chalk up tragedy to human stupidity or the dark, evil heart of people. An innocent bystander shot in a drive-by, a whole city living on top of a place where the earth moves like a drunk walking home at closing time, and God’s off the hook.
Except sometimes.
I’m a minister of the Gospel of Christ, but tonight I feel like a mob lawyer, expected to get the guilty off on technicalities, character references, and the Fifth Amendment. “It rains on the just and the unjust,” ain’t gonna sway a jury.
To live with God, to love him still, means to stand in the rain and weep for little boys and girls, who, for no good reason, had no angels watching over them.
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MICHAEL RILEY is a columnist for Gannett New Jersey newspapers. He can be reached at the Daily Record, 800 Jefferson Road, Parsippany, N.J. 07054.