CrossCurrents

CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D.

Twixt Al Qaeda and Katrina

Four years ago this past week my wife and I boarded a plane to return home to Boston after installing our youngest child on campus for his freshman year in college. Flying over the East Coast, I was feeling how strange it was that, after 25 years of daily active parenting, we were returning home to an empty nest. It seemed life was about to become less worrisome, less burdensome, or perhaps just duller.

Little did we know.

Before long we were over Manhattan, and the clear night gave us a crystal-clear view of the whole island, bejeweled in lights ringing the dark core of Central Park. From our height, most everything seemed flat, except for the twin World Trade Center towers spiking up toward us, tall enough to overshadow the Hudson River and its New Jersey shore.

Two weeks later, those towers were gone, and the world entered an era of anxiety and helpless frustration that was, for me, altogether too reminiscent of the time between finishing high school in 1966 and becoming a father in 1976. So the “empty nest” serenity which that flight promised proved short-lived indeed.

As it turned out, our flight was doubly ironic: it marked both the last time we saw the Twin Towers and the first time we saw New Orleans, where our son was in school. We returned there again this past May for his graduation, and now, less than four months later, that school, like the city around it, is shut down until further notice.

So between Al Qaeda and Katrina, these four years have dashed all hopes that my kids would mature in a gentler world than mine. Their generation, like ours, must live with war and fear and disaster and even the haunting shadow of slavery. They too must find puzzling irony in the claim that such cruelty and harshness could be the creation of a loving God.

Will their spirits be up to the challenge of believing in love in such a world?

Evil’s challenge to faith is hardly new, of course, but I cringe at how too many Christians meet that challenge. Too often, they offer a fraudulent faith that simultaneously fails to meet the challenge and distorts Christianity itself.

Here’s a timely example. My weekly column stirs up fair amounts of distressed feedback, and a few weeks ago this item hit my inbox, with the title “Why God allowed 9/11”:

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" (regarding the attacks on Sept. 11). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

With all due respect to the Graham family, this response is far from profound. In fact, is a crock of pseudo-Christian baloney.

The problem of evil, whether human evil like 9/11 or natural destruction like Katrina, always touches on Christian beliefs in Grace and Freedom. Grace is the power God offers to save us, and Freedom is our own capacity to say “yes” or “no.”

Now, authentic Christian faith has always held that Grace flows from God’s unconditional love. As the evangelist John tells us, “God is love.” He loves us not because we deserve it, nor because we please him, nor even because we respond as he wishes, but because that is just God being God.

In short, God is not “a gentleman” at all. God is a persistent, even relentless lover, and if we do not respond, God acts like any unrequited lover: pursuing us, hounding us, sending as flowers every spring and bringing the sun up every day and calling us over and over even when we don’t pick up.

That’s why the famous theologian Karl Barth called Grace the “Amorous Attack” of God, and why the great Jesuit Bernard Lonergan called it “the Undertow of God in our lives.” God’s love may not be irresistible (if it were, we could not be free), but it is unceasing. Our God never “backs out.” We can spend every breath telling God to go away, yet God’s love goes on. We can no more turn off God’s love that we can hold back the tides.

So God’s “blessing and protection” doesn’t depend on us. We only expect “blessing and protection” because we believe in the God Jesus revealed to us, and what that God does is love, no matter what we do.

If God ever did become “a gentleman” who allowed human behavior to dictate divine behavior, God would no longer be God at all, and God’s grace would be no better than fickle human affection. Such Grace would hardly measure up to its most famous hymn:

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.

I know many Christians are upset about many troubles besides Al Qaeda and Katrina. They lament the loss of public school prayer, the demise of strict “family values,” the end of Christian dominance over American culture. They fear, in short, that faith is losing ground.

But that is no excuse for falsifying our faith.

Even if such Christians were right on every point, and even if it did mean that “we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, get out of our government, and to get out of our lives”—still that is no excuse for faithful Christians to claim that God “has calmly backed out.” Such a claim exaggerates our power while belittling God’s love, and it topples the Christian idea of divine grace as surely as 9/11 toppled the Twin Towers.

Besides, if Christians are afraid faith is losing ground, they actually defeat their own purpose by falsifying that faith. We’ll never save the faith by denying God’s love.

In trying tragic times like these, we need our faith more than ever – not some counterfeit.

Accept no substitutes!

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com