Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994 TAG: 9401200022
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"It's a miracle that more people weren't killed."
"Our thoughts and prayers are with those people."
It amazes and amuses me to hear how people - even we hardened, cynical journalists - talk when disaster strikes.
The prolonged television coverage of the earthquake in Southern California last week was a prime example. Viewers of the daylong reports heard repeated references to God and blessings and miracles.
People who refuse to believe the biblical stories of miracles suddenly consider every account of someone surviving a close call with death to have been "miraculous."
Sometimes just a brush with inconvenience is reported as if only divine intervention averted disaster: "It was a miracle the pool wasn't damaged."
On one hand, I guess religious people should be thankful that an acknowledgement of public religiosity is acceptable. It's true that all too often it seems the only times we hear the word "God" outside of a church or synagogue is immediately preceding the word "damn."
The motivation of those broadcasters and the people they interviewed was positive. They WERE thankful that more people weren't hurt, that IF an earthquake had to happen it rumbled through the San Fernando Valley at a time of day when the fewest people were likely to be hurt.
It is right to be thankful for life, for the goodness of Providence. But, once again, we could see that some people don't think much about the theology they're espousing.
That brings us to the other hand. Most of the people who lost spouses and children and other family members don't feel much like thanking God that things weren't any worse.
Even those who were spared their lives but who lost a lifetime's worth of possessions may understandably hedge a little on the expressions of gratitude.
What message do they receive when they hear others essentially saying, "Thank God, it wasn't me?" I'd want to reject any faith that told me God had it in for me and that's why my family had to suffer.
There are those who would argue that indeed God does determine the fate of individuals - even down to deciding that a policeman racing to try to help others will be killed when he runs off a collapsed freeway span.
Who can argue with the notion that we cannot fully understand the mind and purposes of God? "Why?" is the great universal question. It is the root of our religious experience - the quest to find the answer to that simple question.
Yet, it is supremely unsatisfactory - to me, anyway - to suggest that God's finger pointed out a few dozen for excruciating death and their families for permanent scars, perhaps even alienation from faith.
Accidents of nature and man are just that, I believe, not necessarily evidence of the hand of God.
At the same time I insist on believing that God is interactive; that prayers - at least, some prayers - are efficacious.
I admit there is a seeming incompatibility to those beliefs, but mystery is an inherent aspect of spirituality.
Prayers for healing, for comfort, for strength, all those seem perfectly appropriate not only for earthquake victims, but for all of us. But in begging, "Please, God, don't let it be my daughter," when we know someone is dead, are we not really asking that it be someone else's daughter?
How can a just God honor such a request? It would be easy to say such a prayer is actually a hope, not a genuine prayer to the Almighty. I don't think so, though. We hear it too often in strong supplication.
My feeling is that prayer is appropriate - and may be answered - only when the prayer is noble. Nobility is an old-fashioned concept, maybe, fraught with overtones of political incorrectness, suggesting as it does that some subjectively identified purposes are higher than others.
What it also suggests, though, is a motivation other than simple selfishness.
For instance, praying that I will win the lottery this week is a purely selfish prayer - even if I promise in my prayer to do immeasurable good with the loot.
Praying for healing, I would suggest, involves a prayer for what we understand to be God's will that we be healthy. That we benefit in a selfish way, too - we feel better - remains an expression of the divine will, not merely our own.
So, I'm glad that more people were not hurt, that the earthquake happened at 4:31 a.m., but I'm not sure that exact moment was ordained by God.
What I thank God for is an Earth that follows a usually orderly set of laws - a world that sustains and nurtures life, but that is not entirely predictable and is sometimes dangerous.
by CNB