O.C. RELIGION : ON FAITH/ The Rev. EDWARD C. MARTIN : Whatever We Do, God Is With Us
In the immediate aftermath of the tornadoes in Oklahoma earlier this year, people asked, “How could God let this happen?” Interestingly, I heard no such comments after the devastating earthquake in Turkey last month. Instead, the questions centered around construction practices.
It is human nature to identify God and God’s concerns with those people who are most like us. One of the most momentous religious insights of the Bible was that God was God of all peoples, not boundby territory or even by religious orientation. Still, we fall back into the easy assumptions that God does not care for foreigners and especially for people of another faith the way God cares for us.
It would be the worst sort of blasphemy to charge God with being less than totally involved, caring for, and suffering with the people of Turkey. As people lay horribly trapped they certainly called on God, begging Allah for strength, for relief, for rescue. Just as certainly God was there with them, loving them in the midst of their suffering. God was there giving courage and hope to those who were digging in the rubble trying to free the trapped ones.
In one story that comes from the Holocaust, the tale is told of a young boy who was hanged by the Nazis. The boy was too light in weight to die quickly, and as the other prisoners watched, a man asked, “Where is God now?” The answer that bubbled up within the man telling the story: “He is there, hanging on the gallows.”
God could not prevent the Nazis from committing the horror of the Holocaust, although God certainly sought to enter their hearts and persuade them away from brutality and genocide. God could not prevent the contractors in Turkey who used shoddy building practices, but God certainly did seek to persuade them toward responsibility and honesty. God is present in every human being, constantly seeking to love us into harmony, constantly seeking to guide us toward that which is right and good.
A religious orientation that assumes God is present in every event but does not control those events is a religious orientation that leads us into a high level of personal responsibility. We are each called to seek God’s guidance, called to seek to understand God’s will in each circumstance, knowing we must make the decisions for ourselves, knowing we cannot fall back on circumstances being “God’s will.”
If we fail to take responsibility for our actions, we cannot subsequently blame God for the circumstances of life that follow from those actions. For example, it is irrational to ask how God can allow children to be shot when we, as a society, flood the streets with handguns. When we put murder and mayhem in our movies, television shows and video games, God cannot be blamed if some seek to act out what they have experienced visually.
We are responsible for our own actions and we are responsible for the society we collectively create as well. If we are not compassionate we create a world lacking in compassion. If we cheat in our businesses, we create a world in which we may well be cheated.
But even when we behave badly, God does not abandon us. God does not turn from us and cause us to reap what we have sown. Yes, there are consequences to our actions, but they do not arise because God is vengeful. No matter what we do, God is still with us, still urging us toward that which is right and good.
God is compassionate and loving toward all persons, regardless of what nation they call home, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of what faith they profess, and those of us who proclaim faith in God are called to do no less than to be imitators of God, loving all God’s children as well.
*
On Faith is a forum for Orange County clergy and others to offer their views on religious topics of general interest. Submissions, which will be published at the discretion of The Times and are subject to editing, should be delivered to Orange County religion page editor Jack Robinson.