This God we Keep Forgiving
Thoughts on the second anniversary of the Humboldt Broncos disaster
It’s been two years since I wrote this piece. It’s now time to publish it.
On the 8th of April 2018, when family and friends gathered to share their grief at losing sixteen members of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team in a horrible highway accident, the local hockey arena turned into a temple dedicated to the Christian deity. Like so many religious weddings and funerals, the entire meeting was about God.
When I first turned on the live televised event on CBC, someone was singing a solo. What else? “Amazing Grace.” With such feeling, such intensity. And then that intolerable final verse that boasts only two words, “Praise God,” repeated over and over.
What does God have to do with this tragedy?
And why do they want to praise him?
Even as a devout worshipping Christian for the first two decades of my life I always wondered why that song was sung at funerals. When there’s crying, wailing, sniffling, puffy eyes, shaking heads, bowed heads, tissues dabbing faces, that song starts playing.
What does being a wretch have to do with the sudden death of sixteen innocent people? Who is being saved here? What are they being saved from? Did the singer come to the wrong meeting? Or did she invite herself in so she could use the moment of vulnerability to convert people to her religion? Does she want people to feel guilty about being wretches, instead of feeling sad about losing loved ones?
This is so confusing.
Following the song, God was apparently not satisfied. A pastor stepped behind the podium and began praising the “God of consolation” and the “God of mercy.” Then he started praying to this God, asking him for help.
A little too late, it seems.
Another Minister took her turn. She started praying, supposedly to this same God, who seemed insatiable for worship, apparently unconcerned for the victims and the victims’ families, apparently demanding all attention go to him instead.
Now it’s time for a priest to say a benediction. The prayers are not over, God needs more. More praises, more statements about this God being merciful and loving and compassionate and comforting.
Is this a revival meeting? Who is this narcissist and what right does he have to steal the show?
And when did this tyrant start being compassionate? Before the crash? Or shortly afterwards? If he has always been compassionate, where was he when the transport truck smashed into the bus?
Is this God not supposed to be omnipresent? If he was there, if he was watching it, where was his compassion?
Is this God not supposed to be all-powerful? If so, why did he not act on his compassion?
Is this God not supposed to be omniscient? If he knows everything, then he knew it was going to happen. If he is in charge of everything, why did he let it happen? Or did he plan for it to happen?
To think an omnipresent, all-powerful, omniscient, all-compassionate being just looks on while a tragedy happens is enough to make your head spin.
Meantime, the earth-bound, space-bound, partially intelligent and partially empathetic mortals who witnessed the tragedy rushed to the scene and committed their every breath to rescuing people and saving lives. The emergency professionals worked tirelessly through the night to rescue people and save lives. The medical staff did the same.
Yet the Great One who supposedly masterminded the orbits of the planets around the sun and the electrons within the atom somehow restrained himself from slowing down an 18-wheeler on a highway.
The idiocy of this charade is neither acknowledged nor addressed inside the arena where the memorial takes place. Here we are at the Humboldt vigil, giving all the praise to the one who stood by watching, unwilling to intervene in any way. And asking him for mercy and comfort to boot.
You can’t have it both ways. He’s either omnipotent or compassionate. He cannot be both.
The rebuttals flung at me from all sides are far too easy. “Laurie, he’s compassionate but we cannot know his ways. Who are we to question him? We are mere mortals.”
Mere mortals did far more for the victims of the disaster than God did. So yes, we do have a right to question “him.”
Of course, “him” does not exist. He is a figment of our twisted imaginations. The tragic thing is that we believe such a good-for-nothing exists even though it flies in the face of all common sense. If you had the power to stop a tragedy, would you not stop a tragedy? Yet you pardon this fictional God, you grant him your own infinite mercy by withholding your judgment, and choose not to condemn him for his inexcusable delinquency causing catastrophic harm.
Yes, I said causing. Again, you cannot have it both ways. According to the theists who call him merciful and compassionate, this God orchestrated and deliberately created the entire universe. Nothing arose by chance. There is no chance. Nothing falls into place or evolves. God made it all happen. He is the first cause and the current cause.
Except when he’s not. In the case of the Humboldt Broncos, he “let” the disaster happen. Don’t blame him for what happened.
What refrain will they sing when someone escapes death or heals from critical wounds?
“That was God.”
Wait, say that again? Disasters are not part of God’s plan, but the miracles afterwards are? He doesn’t “cause” disasters and nobody blames him for the deaths. But he gets credit for the survivals and healing after the disasters?
Back to that “answer” hurled at me earlier. “Who are we to question God, Laurie? We don’t know why he allowed this disaster to happen.”
So no questions allowed there. What happens afterwards when someone the doctors say is not expected to live miraculously pulls through and survives? You state with full confidence that was God. God is showing his love and mercy. Really? What happened to not questioning God? Who are we to say why that good thing happened?
And then, like the scraggly ringer yanked into a hockey playoff game at the last minute, another apology drools into the conversation. “If he intervened in our affairs, God would violate our free will. You can’t have that. Each of us has to make our own choices, and that includes the truck driver.”
Free will. This phrase pops up when nothing else works. It is presented as a holy grail, a sacred untouchable, accompanied by choirs of angels and heavenly light. Apparently the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth has a profound eternal awe for this thing called free will, and dare not touch it for fear he will be struck by his own lightning. “I’d really like to save sixteen people’s lives this afternoon, but I can’t! I would be violating the principle of free will! You gotta let people be, let them do what they decide to do. Who am I to intervene in the affairs of mortals?”
Like every other apology for the God notion, the free will ringer is used in very selective contexts. When disasters happen, it’s because God respects free will. Won’t touch it. However, when disasters are thinly averted, it’s because God intervened.
When bad people do bad things, it’s because God respects free will. Won’t touch it. However, when good people do good things, or when good things happen that you might not expect to happen, things you might call extraordinary or “miraculous,” it’s because of God’s hand. He intervened. Free will wasn’t an issue.
Free will as a defense strategy contradicts itself. It suggests that humans have an amazing power over God — the power to determine what happens on Earth, to overturn God’s plans, to introduce events that he (God) never thought of before they happened, while he (God) sits by and watches, feeling that anguish of being completely helpless to do anything because he dare not violate that most sacred thing, free will. It’s ludicrous.
It’s also inexcusable. If you could interfere in free will and save sixteen lives of people you yourself created, would you not do it? You most certainly would. Yet you are a mere mortal, a sinner, a wretch deserving of everlasting damnation.
Logical fallacies have a field day when you are trying to exonerate a felon who is obviously guilty as charged, whom any jury would convict, but who also happens to be called God.
As I watch this Humboldt vigil, I am struck by what is not being acknowledged — the big woolly mammoth in the room. “Lord,” they dare not say aloud in this nationally-televised memorial, “we understand and accept that you could have prevented this tragedy from happening and you did not. We understand you let it happen. And we accept it, even though we do not see the wisdom in your decision. We do not pretend to see things from your perspective, but since you are God, we believe you had some reason to let it happen. And that’s okay, because after all, you are the Boss. Who are we to question you? Or be angry with you? We are, as the song drums into our ears at every funeral, nothing more than guilty wretches who deserve eternal hellfire.”
“But Lord, now that you have allowed this awful thing to happen, can you help us deal with the loss, the heartbreak and the anguish? Please? You are full of mercy, remember?”
Mercy is compassion shown towards an offender or enemy. It is the discretionary power of a judge to pardon someone who is guilty. Grace is a synonym. So who is God pardoning? Who is guilty? And what on earth does this have to do with sixteen innocent people and their grieving family and friends?
I have no clue. And neither does anyone else at the Humboldt arena, including the clerical professionals who proclaim the words from the microphones, confident nobody will question them or be offended, because the heartbreak is far too intense.
I do see infinite mercy here. But it’s not God’s infinite mercy. It’s the believer’s infinite mercy to continue forgiving God, from time immemorial to now, for his flagrant acts of negligence, for abandoning the creatures he supposedly brought into existence because he was too busy doing other things. He is guilty of the most heinous crimes against humanity, and believers choose to pardon him over and over again.
This Invisible Fictional Distraction we call God stole the show at the Humboldt arena. It has no place at a vigil to commemorate my fellow humans. A vigil is a precious moment to grieve freely together and focus on these special people, their lives lived and the love that survives them. Nobody and nothing has the right to steal that moment from us — least of all those thoughts in our head that conjure up a mean-spirited, conceited, narcissistic, cruel voyeur.
And then that soft voice pipes up. “Laurie, leave them alone. They find comfort in this God they believe in. It’s all they have.”
That was my voice, of course. If believers are touchy on any given Sunday, they would be deeply hurt by someone challenging their beliefs during moments of personal anguish and loss. In those moments it is far more important for all of us to join together, rather than articulate our differences.
Which is why I waited two years to publish this article that I wrote on the evening of the vigil. Unlike the priests’ God, and like everyone attending the Humboldt Broncos memorial, I am endowed with a normal dose of kindness and compassion.
