Can the hand of God stop a bullet?
After any man made tragedy the circular reflection of potential inhibitors of the calamity starts. I say circular because the logic always seems to return to the beginning and the necessity for either divine intervention or clairvoyance. This is no different with the killings at Newtown, CT. The world of Adam Lanza violently collided with the galaxy of Sandy Hook Elementary School leaving many to wonder how the trajectory of Lanza could have been bumped off course preventing the collision.
Shortly after the shooting, former Governor of Arkansas and ordained Southern Baptist pastor, Mike Huckabee speculated,
We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools,” Huckabee said on Fox News. “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?
Even though he later went on to clarify his remarks by saying:
I’m not suggesting by any stretch that if we had prayer in schools regularly as we once did that this wouldn’t have happened, because you can’t have that kind of cause and effect,” said Huckabee. “But we’ve created an atmosphere in this country where the only time you want to invoke God’s name is after the tragedy.
Where is God?
I learned late in life that God is not in the tragedy, illness or death, God is in the compassion that others show the victims and afflicted. Beyond the reaction of sympathy after the fact, what Hukcabee is possibly trying to articulate is the role of God in the life of an individual or family. Can faith alter the trajectory of a person’s life to avoid tragic consequences?
No room for God with mental illness
History has shown that those people who hold firm to faith centered on ethics can change their life. Where I depart with some religious fundamentalists is the notion that God can work miracles with the mentally ill. Any course change to Adam Lanza’s life would not have been on his own, but at the environment and support set up by his parents. Mental illness almost always chokes out the positive influences of God in a person’s life.
Armed guardian angel
So we are left with the role of God in the family and community to prevent cataclysmic collisions. Executive Vice President for the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, called for every school to have a security officer armed with a gun on each campus to prevent massacres like Sandy Hook. Regardless of the feasibility of the suggestion, it may have a thread of truth and honesty.
Weapon of compassion
Instead of arming the schools guardian angel with a gun, perhaps we need to equip communities with the weapon of compassion. Perhaps it is time that we lower the high wall of personal privacy and allow our neighbors to ask questions without feeling indignant. If God is working in your life, and you are truly putting others first, you are called upon to ask the tough questions, “How are you doing?”, “What can I do to help?”
Little nuggets of truth?
Would such compassionate intervention have stopped the errant Adam Lanza from crashing into those little blossoming worlds? I don’t know. In the spirit that everyone wants to prevent such a tragedy, I will take the thoughts of Huckabee and LaPierre and assume they were born of compassion, sympathy and frustration.
Compassion and Love over privacy and money
At this point, I have concluded that God could have stopped Newtown from happening. But it wouldn’t have been from any miracle in Adam or Nancy Lanza’s life, daily prayer in school or armed guards. Tragedies are prevented when compassion and love trump privacy and money. Every ethical God I know of calls on us to put people first and the trappings of our contrived societies a distant third. The big question is can or will we subjugate our love of privacy and money for the greater good of our children and families?
May the mystery that is God surrounds us, infect us and keep us safe.