Maybe It's God's Fault?

     If you haven't been wondering over the past few months what God has against us, you're probably one of the few.  With so much devastation and death wreaked on our world and this country by the virus and sheer self-serving political incompetency, only the most calloused could claim it is all part of God's good and loving plan for us.

     You may have never thought of yourself as a theologian, but you actually are.  Any time you sit and wonder about the nature of God (or what in the world God is up to), you are doing theology.  If you're having trouble reconciling what you see going on in the world around you now — the death, the hateful behavior toward others, the corruption — with a good and loving God, you're not alone.  It's nice to let ourselves off the hook by blaming everything on God, unfortunately, that's bad theology, a rookie mistake. 

     No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one… Do not be deceived, my beloved.   Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.   — James 1:13, 16, 17

     It's understandable we bring God into the picture when faced with a reality that seems beyond comprehension right now.  God is, after all, pretty much incomprehensible no matter how many words we try to put around God.  Human beings, being what they are, try to make sense out of things.  We look for patterns.  This is why we see shapes and faces in cloud formations.  Unfortunately, this is also why without sufficient information, people tend to default to conspiracy theories.  We're just trying to make sense of everything, and to be fair, it's pretty tough right now making sense of what is going on in our world.

     There is an old Episcopal preacher story that goes like this: A terrible hurricane hit an island in the Caribbean.  A newspaper reporter was interviewing religious leaders for their take on why this happened.  She interviewed the evangelical preacher who said, "This is God's wrath being visited upon us for our sins!"  Next, she interviewed the Roman Catholic Bishop of the island who said, "It is God testing the faith of his people."  Finally, she went to the Episcopal Bishop.  When asked why this terrible event occurred to the island, the Bishop thought for a moment, but then shrugged and said, "It's hurricane season."

     Episcopalians tend to be pretty practical about this stuff.  Humans have evolved alongside viruses for millennia.  Right now, there's a bad one out there we are fighting.  That doesn't mean God is responsible for the hurricane.  But what we are responsible for is our reaction.  We are responsible for how we love and care for one another during this difficult time.

     While God does not cause evil, God seems to have a knack for bringing good out of the worst situations.  Think of the passion for racial equality and reform that has risen from the death of George Floyd.  Think of the humanity and witness of the diary that a young girl, Anne Frank, kept during the Nazi occupation.  Think of the thousands of nurses and doctors serving selflessly and at much personal risk every day during this pandemic.

     No, the hand of God is not in the hurricane, but we can have courage. The hand of God is in us...  how you and I care for one another, our kindness even toward strangers, and how we step forward to help heal this broken world.

It’s the End of the World (of course)

“… the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. “  — Mark 13

     So, with the very justified fear of the Covid-19 virus, the disruption in our lives, the loss of jobs, and the over 200,000 deaths worldwide, it is beginning to feel a little bit like the end of the world.  And of course, it is… just not quite in the way modern doomsday prophets tend to think of it.  

     Did you know there have been 173 formal public predictions of the end of the world since Jesus left?  On average, the end has been predicted every eleven or twelve years since the first century.  More religious leaders than you can count have predicted the date of the end, including Martin Luther, the Shakers, Wesley (the founder of the Methodist Church), the Millerites (they predicted it four different times), the Jehovah's Witnesses (twice), Pat Robertson (twice), and Jerry Falwell (twice.)

     One of my personal favorites has to be Mary Bateman who lived in Leeds, England.  In 1806, a hen of hers began laying eggs on which the phrase "Christ is coming" was written.  Eventually, it was discovered Mary had written on the eggs in a corrosive ink so as to etch the eggs, and then reinserted the eggs back into the hen's oviduct.  Yikes!

     Of course, the all-time winner of this bizarre competition has to be the late Harold Camping.  He predicted the end of the world on six different dates: Three times in 1984, once in 1985, and in both May and October of 2011.

     Despite all these predictions, this old world, and the little spiral galaxy we call home, and the universe itself continues on its course.  Spring follows winter; the autumn harvest is brought in.

     The Jews knew what it was like to have their entire world changed overnight, destroyed.  Their nation was destroyed and they were taken captive into Babylon around 423 BCE.  That is why the apocalyptic language Jesus used in Mark 13 was so well known.  It had been used by their greatest prophet Isaiah and by those prophets they knew well: Ezekiel, Daniel, and Joel.  When you lose everything; when your entire world is destroyed, it can feel like the sun and moon have been darkened, stars are falling from the sky, and earthquakes are shaking the whole world.  That is how it feels for so many right now.

     But if we stop and think for a moment, this is not the first time the world has ended for many of us.  Most of us have lived through the end of the world as we knew it at least once; some of us have lived through it a number of times.  Maybe it was because you lost a job or lost a relationship.  Maybe the end of the world came when you lost your home in a fire.  Maybe your world ended when you lost the dearest person on earth to you.  Suddenly, the world you had to go into was nothing like anything you knew, and you found yourself wandering as a stranger in a strange land with no familiar landmarks.  You were lost.  In my case, it has happened three times: The first time was at age eighteen; The second when I was thirty-two; and the latest time was when I was forty-nine.

So, how do you keep walking?  How do you keep hoping when it feels like the world is coming down around your ears?

     Oscar Romero, the Roman Catholic archbishop in El Salvador who was martyred for his stand for the poor and for peace in that violent and corrupt country once said,

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision…  We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.  Nothing we do is complete...  No statement says all that could be said.  No prayer fully expresses our faith.  No confession brings perfection.  No pastoral visit brings wholeness.  No program accomplishes the Church’s mission… This is what we are about: we plant seeds that one day will grow.  We water seeds already planted, knowing they hold future promise.  We lay foundations that will need further development… We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.  This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.  It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.  We may never see the end results...  We are prophets of a future not our own."

     How do you keep going?  How do you keep hoping when it feels like the world is ending?  For people of faith, and for people of no faith, I think the answer is the same:  We accept not everything is about us.  Like Oscar Romero, we accept that we are limited… our time on this earth is limited.  So, we do what we can today, and recognize much of the meaning and joy in life is found in serving others in our own day, and those in the distant future we will never meet. 

     If right now, it is feeling to you like the stars are falling from the sky and the earth underneath you is shifting, that is ok.  You are just human.  So as a limited human being, we do what we can in our time.  We can do our dishes; we can take care of ourselves and others; and maybe, just maybe, we can plant seeds of hope and kindness and justice.  Some of those seeds may grow quickly, but many will lie dormant, ready to bloom in some far-off better world.