Miracles
The recent mine explosion and the deaths and heartache it caused has made me think a lot about the nature of certain aspects of faith. I blogged the other day about the impotency of prayer, for example. Another topic that’s come to mind has been the popular understanding of miracles. Many have suggested that the survival of Randy McCloy is a miracle. I suppose that in a twisted way, you can call this a miracle. I say twisted because it seems certainly a mixed blessing that anyone should survive with probable brain damage. What’s so miraculous or great about someone’s surviving to remain a vegetable or a shadow of himself? What kind of blessing will it be for McCloy’s wife and children to have (if this turns out to be the case, and let’s hope it doesn’t) an invalid to care for over the next 40 - 50 years?
The notion that any miracle has happened here seems even stranger when you consider the bigger picture. Twelve fucking people died in the mine! How can you label “miracle” a situation in which the alleged miracle-inducing agent allowed twelve to die while half-saving one? It would take a demented god to produce a people that can see a miracle in this situation. And it would take a demented god to permit a situation like this to begin with.
Of course the reason people see miracles in such situations is that they’ve been told for their whole lives that God is merciful and omnibenevolent, etc. And it’s hard to let go of deep cultural conditioning like that, especially when clinging to it in spite of reason somehow actually does help you to get through tough situations. To reconcile pain and suffering with an omnibenevolent god, the religious must always be on the lookout for a silver lining to attribute to the god, nevermind that he’s the author of the much more substantial thundercloud itself and should thus be vilified rather than praised (think of it in human terms: if a person killed a dozen people but only maimed one, we wouldn’t praise him for maiming the one while writing the twelve off as the reasonable product of mysterious designs). I can understand the emotional gymnastics people have to go through in order to negotiate this reconciliation, but viewing it from outside the funhouse mirror room of faith is sure maddening.
Mike said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
I think you are missing the real story here… for 90 minutes the company let the families think the 12 were alive while the fact checked the error… i mean that all I hear about this, how evil the company was for “sitting” on this information… not that it isn’t an expected response… “what, we heard they were alive… their dead… oh shit… double check this because i don’t want to announce 12 dead after we though they were alive and find out some are alive” That would seem too reasonable, no the comapny is evil and did it on purpose.
Why are these 90 minutes news, yet no one is covering the conditions that led to the disaster in the first place? Have we made no technology advances that could be used to prevent this? Have they been made, and are just not in use? It just seems hard to buy that these mines are run the same as they were 60 years ago. Why ask those questions though, there is a miralce to cover! I think I see the virgin mary’s face in my boot print…
leah said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
Actually, against all odds- randy managed to somehow stay alive. I think that does constitute a miracle. I mean, there was nothing really in the favor of ANY of those miners to survive- and yet one did. As far as him being a vegetable for the rest of his life, no one knows that yet. The doctors don’t have any idea what the extent of his injuries will be…
In response to your bitterness toward God, I’m sorry that something or someone somewhere in your life has hurt you so deeply. And I know that it is hard for many people to believe that God can be loving and merciful when so many terrible things happen in our world. The thing is, we live in a world full of sin- whether it is our own sin or someone else’s. And the consequences of sin is bad things happening, sometimes to people who don’t seem to deserve it at all. And I really think that God cries with us when those terrible things happen, and I think that he gets angry right along with us too- angry at the sin that has caused so much turmoil.
One of those miners was a family member of mine, and it is a painful experience to be sure, but getting mad at God doesn’t make it any better. At some point, everyone has to die. Death is part of life.
I hope that you are able to find healing and happiness. Bitterness has a way of eating you alive. I know, I’ve been there before and it took several years for me to stop hurting. It’s no way to live.
Jonathan said,
July 15, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
God is crying with us? Come on… have you seen him recently. God is for people that are too afraid of the alternative… ie. there is nothing but us here. People endure a lifetime of suffering and put up with their raw deal in the faith that the afterlife is better. People blow themselves up for the promise of eternal life. If those same people focused on the hear and now and truly made the world a better place then I for one would have more faith in human nature.
Bear in mind the concept of god was thought up when people thought the world was flat and believed in mystical creatures and witches.