God: Giving an unhappy impression of Himself
The Archbishop of Canterbury appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme today to talk about the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Transcript here.
Leaving aside his actual views on the conflict, which I am sure you will find of interest never-the-less, the bit that I wanted to comment on here was the exchange between the Archbishop and the interviewer Carolyn Quinn about the incongruity of war and religious belief:
CQ: … if you’ve seen the front page of the Times today, it shows Israeli soldiers taking a break from their bombardment in order to pray. How do you feel when you see a picture like that, almost showing the incongruity of war and a religious belief?
ABC: It’s sadly an incongruity which is part of a history we share. Christians do this, Muslims do this, Jews do this … it’s that unhappy impression that God is somehow content with the killing of innocents.
So God’s content with the killing of innocents is an unhappy impression? That’s as maybe, but it’s a pretty damn accurate one all the same.
Perhaps the Archbishop isn’t aware, but recently 29,000 plus people have been killed in an earthquake in China and 10,000 plus Burmese have been killed in a cyclone.
The Archbishop’s God seems pretty happy to have sat back and let those events happen.
Why would this be, I wonder, if God doesn’t feel content at the killing of innocents? Maybe His powers don’t give Him any control over the actual planet itself and therefore stopping natural disasters is beyond His remit. Or maybe He doesn’t consider the people of China and Burma to be ‘innocent’ enough for Him to bother preventing their suffering such mass-scale death, destruction and displacement?
Or perhaps it’s just that He’s a bit busy right now and has other more pressing things to attend to. After all, He only works six days a week and He presides over the whole world and everyone and everything in it - that’s a lot of work for one lone celestial being.
Or maybe He just doesn’t give a shit.
Fortunately, however, for those of us who have no God, and who recognise that we only have each other, there’s the Red Cross.
2 comments:
Reminds me of his rection to the tsunami:
"If we are to exist in an environment where we can live lives of productive work and consistent understanding - human lives as we know them - the world has to have a regular order and pattern of its own. Effects follow causes in a way that we can chart, and so can make some attempt at coping with. So there is something odd about expecting that God will constantly step in if things are getting dangerous."
In other words, it was beyond god's wit to create a life-supporting planet without tectonic plates that sometimes move violenty against each other.
Yup!
Although, the bit where he says "there is something odd about expecting that God will constantly step in if things are getting dangerous" is quite right.
There is something odd about expecting God to step in when He never has yet.
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