Did God kill my friend?

Okay…you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I’m generally not one to engage in small talk so let’s ponder the mysteries of life together, shall we?

I had a friend pass away this week unexpectedly. The initial shock was overwhelming – I didn’t cry for a couple of days until I overcame the numbness. This guy was older than me and has been influential in my understanding of the Christian faith as well as what is appropriate within a ministerial setting and what may not be.  For that reason, I looked up to him alot. Sometimes when people pass away unexpectedly and they were particularly “good” people, you feel like the planet was robbed in some way – like we’re all gonna be worse for his absence and, in many ways, the town I live in will be.

However, in the course of all the eulogies and funeral stuff, there are bound to be people asking questions about why such a saintly man would pass away, someone who seemd to be significantly impacting his community for God. Most people assume that God in his omnicausal deterministic theocentric bliss - if he didn’t cause the tragedy - certainly allowed it for reasons unknown to the rest of us. As a pastor I used to have a sick feeling in my stomach as I attempted to explain why God didn’t save someone’s life. Honestly, theology has not produced any satisfactory answers and any answer I supplied a family member would have logical “holes” that they would discover if they thought long enough about it.

Some theolgians believe that God is his sovereignty has ordained every single detail of life (including the bad parts) for his mysterious purposes. I know, I know…even writing it down makes it look ridiculous. That viewpoint is quite laughable and never makes any practical sense to anyone.  All it does is make people hate God silently when honestly they probably would fare better by hating him out loud. Peripatetic influence upon Christianity certainly played a large role in defining the attributes of God, but honestly, what strikes me about such a position is that it runs cross-grain to the supposed goodness of God. If God is good, why does he cause or indirectly sanction evil? Others endorse the free-will model yet still believe that God “knows” everything that will occur in the future.  Atheists (for good reason) say, “If God knows about bad stuff but still lets it happen, where’s the love in that?” Good point – I certainly don’t blame them for asking. Process theologians emphasize the dependence of God upon humanity to the point where God is basically helpless in the face of potential tragedy. Obviously that belittles the sovereignty of God, which is not acceptable either.  Open theism attempts to rid Christianity of its Hellenistic presuppositions but still allow God to “be God.” It’s probably the healthiest theodicy available, but it takes too long to explain to people when they are crying in your office.

So, what do you do? I think the best thing to do is to tell them you don’t know the answer. Because no one really has the answer. Wrangling over compatibilism or levels of omniscience does jack squat for everyday people.  As much as I would like for them to care, they just don’t. I’m finding myself, after seriously studying methods of theodicy, adopting the same position.  There’s something refreshing about saying, “I don’t know.” In the particular case of my friend, there were circumstances of free-will that led to his demise. Why were they not cancelled out by some other natural complexity within temporality? Beats the heck out of me! If God didn’t ordain the event, why didn’t he respond to prayers of loved ones for protection “quick enough” to save his life?  I have no clue. Sometimes, it’s appropriate to say, “It wasn’t the devil, and it wasn’t God, it was (in this case) a traffic accident and that’s all.” In previous years I would have shied away from that comment because I would not have defended God in saying it. But God really doesn’t need me to defend him, does he? Idiots who say stuff like, “Hey, if God will prove his existence to me by levitating this table” are experts in missing the point. 

All theology (including atheism) is speculative and informed by the personal experiences of the theologian. Once you determine that theology doesn’t have to be objective in order to be valid, you’re well on your way to finding answers to some difficult questions. Chances are that in the process, you’ll agressively pursue God to understand your relationship with him as well. And the answers lie in a relationship, not in a system.