The loss of seven young lives in the Mangatepopo Stream in April 2008 raised many questions about why such tragedies occur, and how we cope with them when they do.
The stories and pictures shook us to the core. Six student lives and the life of a young teacher lost in a raging torrent of water that subsided as quickly as it arose. We all felt the pain, knowing they could have been our kids or our schoolmates. Tragically for the families of Elim Christian College in Auckland, they were.
With all the questions this tragedy has raised, there were some extra ones insofar as Elim is a school with a Christian foundation. Why did God allow this to happen? Was it God’s will? Why did God not intervene? What difference does faith make in the midst of such a loss? Does a belief in life after death ease the pain?
Christian responses vary, but I believe that as human beings we are all subject to the changes and chances of life on earth. Whether Christians or atheists, humanists or agnostics, illness and tragedy, good fortune and bad, are our common lot. Some bad things we bring upon ourselves, and some we inflict on others, but random strikes such as at Mangatepopo are part of natural forces which impact upon us all.
Similar questions arose at the time of the Asian tsunami in 2004. Was it a sign of judgment? Was God angry with the people? Not in my book. My God is a God of love who does not visit judgment or punishment upon the human family.
So while we cannot blame God for the loss, yet we may still feel very angry and want to rage at the elements, or bang figuratively on the gates of heaven. This is healthy, and has good biblical precedent. In the Old Testament, Job suffers huge family losses and curses the day of his birth. His comforters suggest there must be some hidden sin God is punishing him for. But Job knows God better than this, and after much anguish and reflection accepts there is no answer to the cause of his suffering, and renews his trust in God.
The questions of how this tragedy could happen to people so young, so talented, so loving and loved, remain. The words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke suggest that we should …try to love the questions themselves. Don’t search for the answers… Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. At one level not knowing the answers can be distressing, but at a deeper level there is a mystery about life and death which is something else. In mystery there is a warmth and an assurance that does not depend on understanding.
Faith, then, is not a guarantee of protection from life’s disasters, but it is an assurance that God is with us as we go through them. Theologian Matthew Fox has written that when we are faced with tragedy and loss, the only way out is through, but God is with us as we encounter the dark.
The pictures from Elim College spoke also of another aspect of faith, and that is the reality of love. Staff, students and families held each other as they shed their tears, and felt the love that each offers the other in coping with a shared grief. Love is in the warm and caring presence of friends, and of strangers also who come out of the woodwork to stand with us at such times. Nor is such love just for a day, or a week, but it continues in the long periods of pain that follow the loss of those closest to us.
Christian faith sees human love as an expression of the greater and all-encompassing love of God. The spirituality of the ancient Celts was not lived out in the rituals of churches and cathedrals, in prayer books or in creeds. Theirs was an awareness that perceived God as the spirit of love and of life that flowed through the whole of creation. In times when we are most alone, and the darkness is darkest, to open ourselves to that spirit, or wairua, and allow God’s love to flow through us and sustain us, can bring glimmers of light and hope for the days ahead.
The Mangatepopo tragedy also raised questions about life after death. Christians have different ways of understanding life beyond the grave. Many years ago I came across the words of an American theologian, Henry Nelson Wieman, who spoke of life after death in terms of “hope without prediction”. He meant by this that it was not possible for us as humans to predict the details of what lay the other side of death, and that it was idle to speculate.
But Wieman was firm in his conviction of Christian hope which is not just a vague kind of wish, but a robust confidence in the presence of God who transcends the boundary between life and death. As St Paul writes, “in life and in death we are the Lord’s”.
Celtic spirituality has a similar understanding. On the windswept island of Iona, St Columba founded a monastery in the 4th century which became the centre of Celtic Christianity. In 1938 the Rev George MacLeod, a Scottish minister, founded the Iona community. In one of his prayers, MacLeod wrote that “only a veil, thin as gossamer, divides us from our loved ones”. Faith has this sense of a continuing communion with those who have gone before us.
Such convictions do not quickly or easily remove the raw pain of the loss of those we love dearly. But in the midst of grief there is assurance expressed in the oft-quoted words of the 14th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich: “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well”. For Julian these were not words of superficial comfort, and had no sense of an overnight quick fix. Rather they express a trust that in the fullness of time new life can rise out of death, and hope overcome despair.
To Discuss
- What great losses have you experienced in life, and what feelings have you had at such times?
- What faith perspectives have helped you in the midst of grief?
