The advent of social media has allowed people to connect in a way never before possible. This connection is more intimate and far-reaching than the methods available to us just ten years ago. Through tweets and status updates, people can now open a selective window into their lives, sharing with their network everything from major life events to their nightly meal to their innermost thoughts and feelings. It is this new-found openness, perhaps, that has given me a look into how people view their world; specifically, how they view tragedy.
Tragedy is an inescapable part of life. It can take many forms, but it typically involves death and loss; the more needless the death, the more severe the tragedy. While we all have different ways of coping, the fragility of life coupled with a reminder of our own mortality is something with which we all must struggle. It is in our nature to seek answers when befallen with tragedy. Why did he shoot those people? Why did that plane crash? Why did my grandmother have cancer?
Not surprisingly, I've noticed that many people fill in the blank with God. God has a plan for everybody. God doesn't give you more than you can handle. Follow God's path and He will take care of you. These thoughts, while comforting, are entirely superficial and don't stand up to even minimal scrutiny.
I've been trying to organize my thoughts on this for a long time. I may be an asshole on occasion, but even I won't tell someone they're being irrational on their post about their cancer-stricken grandmother.
I realize that everyone views God differently, so I've broken this post into three sections that should cover almost everyone.
Possibility 1: God created the universe, the whole of mankind, and is in complete control
If you believe that God is all-powerful and in control of everything at all times, then any tragedy is, quite literally, God's fault. He decides who gets shot in a mass shooting, He decides who dies in a tornado, and He decides who gets cancer. When people who believe that God controls everything pray for victims or pray that their grandmother's cancer goes into remission, they are asking that the creator of the universe change his divine plan on their behalf. If God changes his divine plan when people get sad, then it's not a divine plan (see possibility 3). If your grandmother goes to a doctor and the treatment results in remission, thanking God would be like thanking a mechanic for fixing a problem in your car that he himself created. In fact, if your grandmother goes to a doctor at all, she has already acknowledged that she doesn't trust God to take His gift of cancer back; if she did, she wouldn't spend time or money with the doctor.
Anyone who views the world in this way is being dishonest with themselves. In their rush to be grateful for a positive outcome, people forget who put them in that position in the first place.
Possibility 2: God created the universe and the whole of mankind, but he gave humanity free will and does not interfere
Another common view of God is that he set everything in motion, but that he no longer interferes with our lives. This is more of a deist view, but I've heard plenty of Christians and Muslims state that man has free will and God can't be blamed for the vile actions of men. If we're to assume this is true, then it seems easy to dismiss the actions of a madman in a movie theater as just that. However, when these people pray for the victims or praise God for allowing the survivors to live, they're betraying their own assertions that God doesn't interfere. If God wipes his hands clean of all the evil done by man (or even by nature), then how can He be thanked for sparing the lives He didn't take? Why pray for God to watch over someone when you don't believe He interferes? To that end, why pray at all?
Possibility 3: God created the universe and the whole of mankind, and he interferes on occasion
This possibility leaves some gray area. If God interferes occasionally, then people would feel the need to pray as a sort of lottery ticket in hopes that their prayers are the ones answered. Let's assume for the sake of argument that in this view of the world, God doesn't give people cancer nor does he schedule mass shootings or earthquakes. However, we do know that people die constantly from cancer, shootings, and earthquakes. The conclusions that can be drawn from this are few: 1) God could indeed prevent the cancer, shooting, or earthquake from ever happening, but He chooses not to. This calls into question the love and compassion so often attributed to His glory. 2) God only occasionally intervenes, saving some from pain and death and willfully allowing the rest to suffer. Now, if God simply allowed only the bad people to die in these events, I could go along with it. However, unless God intentionally packed 2,996 sinners into the World Trade Center at once, then we have to admit that God can prevent tragedy from befalling good people, but does not. When your grandmother's cancer is cured, what do you say to the people in the next room? "God loves us more than He loves you!"? When you say, "Grandma is better, thank you for your prayers, God is good!" you're reminding anyone that has ever suffered a tragedy that God is not ALWAYS good. And if you take this one step further - say you find yourself in Africa having a conversation with a child that will likely not see his 8th birthday - when you say, "Grandma is better! God is good!" what are you really saying to that child?
Regardless of which view is taken, it's obvious that people can't have their communion wafer and eat it too. If God is to be thanked for life's victories, then He must also be blamed for life's tragedies. When you give God credit for the good things in your life, think about what you're saying to the mother whose child didn't survive its birth. When you say "God is good," think about what you're saying to the rape victim. When you speak of God's love, pretend you're standing in front of the village that has never even seen clean water.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who's calling the shots. Eventually, we'll all find out - but in the meantime, look in the mirror and realize that you're the one in control today. Not of everything, of course, but certainly how you react to the events of the world. If we all appreciated the fact that our actions are interconnected, we'd be far more willing to use our actions to control our world instead of shifting responsibility to an ethereal being. We can't prevent tsunamis, but we can build better roads and buildings and communications systems so they're no longer a threat.
Our lives may or may not be scripted on the back of God's napkin - but the world would be a better place if we acknowledged that we were the ones with editorial control.
