"Oh
God! No!"
He had
fallen into the now abandoned and half full of rainwater family swimming pool
unnoticed. The pool had not been used for some time due to financial
reverses in the family company which saw them lose many of the material
acquisitions of better days now gone by. When he went missing and a search
was made for the boy, they missed him in the first check of the now muddied
swimming pool. Having run out of places to look, they looked again and
found him drowned in the murky pool.
When
they weren't looking other relatives washed the muddy hand prints all around the
water line off before the parents could see them.... That image has always
stayed with me. It also made me wonder what kind of a God could sit idly by and
watch, if one does watch, this horror unfold.
It was
another of many "Oh God! No!" moments in my ministry. Those phone calls
are tough and the initial minutes arriving at the home is usually chaos. I
have made any number of such return trips to a church family home in the
immediate hours after such unthinkable personal family losses. I have had
to restrain the arms of a parent attempting to beat on me while they screamed
"Why!!! Why us?" I learned to just hold on and the aggression
would soon turn into a total collapse into my arms of weeping at a deep deep
level most never want to discover in themselves. It is almost
primitive. Next would follow a listing of sins or faults such as knowing
they did not pray as much as they should or attend church as often as they
must. All in the name of finding a reason for two things. 1. What
bad things have I done to deserve this? 2. Why did God not protect my son
or daughter, as clearly written he would, in such a time as
this?
On one
other such horrific occasion, I had just left the home visiting before the twin
teenage girls loved by all got off from school. The Twins were the center
of moms world and even though they had a son, it was the Twins, both beautiful
and precious that seemed to get all the attention. On that visit the
thought crossed my mind, "I hope she never has to lose one of these girls for it
would be too much to bear." I drove home and arrived for the phone call
from the mom. The one Twin had been hit by a car crossing the road to get
to her Burger King job. I said I'd meet her at the hospital. When I
walked in I was greeted by a Zombie who took my hand and said she'd take me to
see her. As we walked thru the basement I realized what I had not been
told. We were going to the morgue. We walked in an there she lay in
her Burger King outfit. Beautiful and not a mark on her. She was
gone. She was dead. Those minutes seemed like hours as we just stood
there and then the typical hell broke lose in that morgue and the screams
were, "Oh God! No!" Where were you!"
I had
no answer and didn't try. I held her when she collapsed and eventually
buried her daughter in the Prom dress she had bought for the YOU prom that
weekend. It was odd to see her living exact twin standing next to her
casket. The picture kinda sticks with you... I believe the family
left the church in a short time and became Mormons.
It was
VERY COMMON for the bereaved family to LEAVE the Church to seek solace
elsewhere. VERY COMMON...almost expected. In one case that happened
under my watch but I was transferred out of the area at the same time, the
minister following finally told the family "It's been six months now. It's
time to get over it." I remember being absolutely enraged at that
fool. The family left the Church to seek actual and not non-encouraging
encouragement in short order. Can you blame them?
I have
a number more such events that all contain that element of "Oh God!
No!" With many of those behind me as pastoring went on I always thought
how ridiculous it was when someone told me how God healed them from a cold or
the flu or helped them pass a gall or kidney stone. "Luck of the draw.." I
tended to tell myself.
"Mystic
and writer Amos Komensky, who lived during the 17th century, wrote that God
assigns guardian angels to help protect children “against all dangers and
snares, pits, ambushes, traps, and temptations.” But adults get the benefit of
guardian angels’ protection, too, says the Book of Enoch, which is included in
the holy scriptures of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. 1 Enoch 100:5
declares that God will “set a guard of holy angels over all the righteous.”
The Quran says in Al Ra'd 13:11: "For each [person], there are angels in
front of him and behind him, who guard him by Allah's
command." (Whitney Hopler)
Scriptures
to skip during the funeral...
Matthew
18:10
10 “See
that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their
angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.
Hebrews
1:14
14 Are
they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be
heirs of salvation
Psalm
91
1 Whoever
dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
3 Surely
he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
5 You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
8 You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
5 You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
8 You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.
9 If you
say, “The Lord is my
refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10 no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
12 they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10 no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
12 they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
14 “Because
he loves me,” says the Lord, “I
will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
15 He will call on me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation. ”
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
15 He will call on me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation. ”
Concepts
and Non-encouraging encouragement NOT to bring up to the family.
"God
promises not to give you more than you can bear."
Answer
to this 100% of the time. "I can't bear this...
"At
least you will see them in the Kingdom if you remain faithful"
Answer
to this 100% of the time. "I want them home tonight for dinner."
"At
least God has blessed you with other children"
Answer
to this 100% of the time. "Please
don't say that...."
"God
lost his only Son as well and understands ...."
Answer
to this 100% of the time. "No,
God knew his Son would die and be back in three short days better than
ever. That was a weekend inconvenience. My child is
DEAD!"
(Usually this can be followed by..."A sacrifice should STAY dead to be a real
sacrifice.")
"God
does not think as we do in such cases."
Answer
100% of the time. "Then don't tell me He understands what human
is!"
"God's
ways are not our ways."
Answer
100% of the time. "Then He shouldn't promise to do things the way we
understand in only our way or talk in spirit codes"
"There
is a way that SEEMS right to us, but it ends in death..."
Answer
100% of the time. "Then I don't understand this God, never will and am not
sure I want to.
Like
Job getting back ten brand spanking new children from God after the loss of the
original ten, it just seems this God doesn't understand how these things work
for humans. We generally don't want another child replace the lost
one. We want THAT ONE BACK!"
The
apologetics for God are typical in such cases.
" We
have looked at God’s sovereignty and how important that truth is. Because
if I am not convince that God is sovereign, then His promises will mean nothing
to me. In fact I might even observe that God doesn’t keep His promises
because my understanding of God is superimposed with my experience with
man. Man fails, doesn’t keep promises and really has no power to ensure that any
promise is kept. We wrongly transfer those weaknesses of man onto God, but
God is not limited as man is. He is perfect love, complete, lacking nothing. The
promises of God are identical with His character, to us as temporal beings, they
are a revelation of the character of the Most High."
(If
God promises to protect us, why doesn't He?-Crave Christian
Apologetics)
Which
being interpreted is...see above for encouragement that is not
encouraging..
And
more...
"We can
give thanks to God for his protection by angels. We never worship
angels. We worship Jesus (God). God created the angels before Adam
and Eve were made. Some of the angels did not obey God and decided to
follow the worst angel of all, Satan. He is very bad. He is a real
and powerful angel that was so bad God threw him and the bad angels (demons) out
of heaven. You have a good angel that loves and obeys God that is watching
over you. Satan, the bad angel, tries to get us to do bad things.
But since Jesus created him, Jesus is stronger than Satan (the Devil ).
Jesus will protect us and use His angels to protect us from harm because
greater
is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. (1
John 4:4)(ChildrenSermons.com Angels Watching Over Me)
It
simply isn't true or if it is true it is so in way that makes the scriptures on
such things meaningless.
I never
had a good answer for this. I had good apologetics where no matter what
the Bible actually said, it could be denied, altered or tweeked in such ways as
to absolve the author or God from it actually meaning what it said. The
Bible is like that as are humans who , no matter what, can't imagine the advice
or promise is really lame and unrealistic in real earthly experience.
Perhaps
it would be better to just admit that in life, "shit happens." How many have been dis-illusioned when the SHTF in life becasue of what seemed so quaint and nice in scripture actually proved to be of no value in reality?
Dis-ILLUSIONED is actually a good thing however painful. Reality is
actually our friend if we can face it instead of ignore it, try and end
run around it or turn around and run.
I have
buried a lot of children and young people. All flower shops smell like funeral
homes to me. Well meaning, Bible reading Christians often cause more harm than
good with their unrealistic and sometimes smug one liners of encouragement, as
if they knew. Please, please think before you open your mouth in shallow
assertions about the why of such events or think that the many Biblical
references in such cases meant to be encouraging are actually
encouraging. When push comes to shove, they seldom deliver and drive
those caught up in harsh reality further from you.
Most
people can only offer sympathy. Sympathy is imagining what others might be
going through but one has no personal experience with what they are
actually going through. Empathy is knowing what people are going through
because you have actually gone through the same thing and lived to tell about
it. Don't quote the Bible flippantly thinking it will help. It
doesn't and it won't. Or if it ever does, that time is years ahead when
the person has at least survived long enough for the memory of it all to
dull.
Conscious
human beings are sensitive to these loses. We are not animals that can discard
their dead in the bushes and walk away. Encouragement should actually be
encouraging to one who is discouraged. Often times in fundamentalism, it
is not. Wise up and hope we choose our words carefully when "Oh God!
No!" comes to call...
Dennis C. Diehl
DenniscDiehl@aol.com
DenniscDiehl@aol.com
16 comments:
"...hope we choose our words carefully when "Oh God! No!" comes to call..."
Dennis, it is hard to choose words to try to comfort those affected when something like that happens. Emotions are running high.
Quoting something from the Bible, although easy and well-intentioned, may hurt more than help.
I attended a funeral a few months ago, and the man who died had a dog he loved.
The man was not Amish, but an Amish preacher did the service since the gentleman had lived in a largely Amish community, and his brother chose the Amish minister to do the service.
The Amish preacher talked a bunch about heaven and hell, and even launched into a long thing about how pets don't go to Heaven. It was just so wrong for that moment.
Not that it's easy to find the right words for such a moment, but his words seemed downright hurtful.
But besides that, the exchanges between family and friends at the funeral were nice.
Norm
"Touched by an Angel" explained these things well in its 9 year run.
I am sorry for your loss.
The only thing that ever made any sense to me is the statement in
Ecclesiastes that time and chance happens to everyone. That book is perhaps the sanest part of the Bible, and I'm surprised that it made it into the canon.
Digging past the surface of this post, it seems the reason why this post is so true to life is because God is not really there for us, making good on the promises we read in the bible. Without that, the bible is just a book full of ancient rubbish. Nietzsche said God is dead. Other clever people come along and write after that, Nietzsche is dead, signed God. But there's only really silence. We are here alone after all. I'd rather believe the truth even if it is less pleasant then be caught up in nice comfortable lie.
Having spent more than 30 years in a position that included helping people in distressed situations; I can relate to the experiences Dennis has shared. The information presented deals with things in real life and how people react and respond to the traumatic events that happen in life. I am not sure what training those attending Ambassador College received in dealing with these issues, but I recognized very early in dealing with such experiences that people who have a distorted view of God are more vulnerable and extreme care needs to be exercised by those who are seen as spiritual advisors.
One thing I find that is important is to avoid trying to answer the question, “Why”. We do not know why and generally the person doesn’t expect an answer. Sometimes it best to say nothing or at best to say because we are human and subject suffer or experience death under the particular situation being dealt with. I also find that just being there and allowing them to ventilate their feelings with a calmness that accepts them as being normal, does more good than trying to explain the conditions that caused these feelings.
I will say that an advisor who does not have a faith and confidence in God will not be much help to those who are questioning why God didn’t intervene. This is definitely not the time to bring doubt into a person’s life, nor is it the time try to change a person’s belief system or correct the errors they have made in life. When a person is called to perform a funeral due to death under these situations there should be some positive assurance that death is as natural as birth and focus on the positive contribution the deceased person has made with the life they lived whether long or short. This is not the time promote doctrinal issues regarding life and death.
Along this line I find that people are insensitive to what people go through when facing life changing situations that deal with many religious questions as well. It is good to be truthful when dealing with these questions, but “speaking the truth in love” is the goal I attempt to achieve. I have concluded that “truth” is not as simple as we would like it to be, so it is better to admit that whatever we say is a matter of personal opinion and give others the right to their opinion.
The list of do’s and don’t that put a doubt on the biblical principles is unnecessary if we avoid trying to reduce the grief by giving personal advice whether it is good or bad. Of course this is all just my personal opinion.
Albert B.
I only found that if we ever got the real answer to "why" we'd end up saying "Why that!"
Even Mother Theresa said her lifetime crisis of faith was that God was silent to her prayers.
What I've discovered over a period of years, and this is a general observation regarding Armstrongism, is that there are certain key elements which are downplayed, deemphasized, or disempowered by the basic Armstrong theology. An open minded person discovers by the absence of these things what the true value of them would be in basic day to day Christian life.
How many times have we heard "teachers" decry that love is overemphasized by mainstream Christianity, or spout cliches at inappropriate times, such as "let the dead bury the dead", or, "the day of a person's death is more joyous than the day of his birth"?
Also, robbing the Holy Spirit of personhood, or the capability of being interactive and personal really diminishes the whole Christian spiritual experience and reduces it to a series of legalistic dos and don'ts.
We begin to understand from such blindness what is missing, and the value of what was actually taught by Jesus Christ and the apostles throughout the New Testament.
Having said all of that, properly assisting a grieving, bereaved person still remains very difficult, as does being bereaved in the first person. This is another area, though, that classic old school WCG really made things much worse than they needed to be.
BB
BB, I understand your position but it is not a WCG thing and if anything, the WCG perspectives offered a lot more hope than most other ideas of what happens after death.
One problem is that fundamentalists believe that the "encouragement" in the Bible in such cases, must somehow still be true. That is why many blindly quote it not thinking it through. The bottom line seems to be that many of the scriptures promising that God and that Angels really do watch over us/them/kids/saints. It simply does not translate into any real experience in the real world even of the faithful and sincere.
I have had any number of baptist and religious clients who have suffered these losses, and to the man or woman, they all say their church was of little or no help in its encouragent or even its support
Not that the church, their friends and pastor did not try. It is just that there is no comfort in the words. There seems to be no comfort at all. Just a grinding waiting life out and a scar that never actually heals and a wound that can be ripped open easily for the rest of life.
I asked a minister who, at the Feast, gave his amazing God protected a child in his church story, if he noticed a number of people leaving. He didn't but I assurred him they were the people who could not stomach the happy story and were dying of "why did God not do that for me?" He needed to know his audience better and use a bit more wisdom in such sermons. He just looked at me..
In time, most seem to question the whole idea of God's love and the child protection program.
I am sure there are exceptions
Damned nice article Dennis. Cuts right to the point.
The Armstrongist ministers are cold and cruel fools who never knew compassion, never understood love, and never had a lick of wisdom.
If there was a hell it would be fitting that they be cast into it. The bastards!
I have met so many ministers, both COG types and a mix of many other denoms that seem to lack not only wisdom in such things but common sense.
There is a compulsion to seek out what the Bible says and then to assume that if spoken in the right order or the encouragment contains the appropriate proof texts, that should do it.
While those who can sympathize mean well, it is those who can empathize that help the most.
Those who overcame addictions help better than those that have never had to worry about it. Those who have lost children are the most help to others who have also but are futher in the healing/accepting cycle. It takes years.
Makes you wonder just why we feel we have to listen to single men in the NT about such things as marriage, relationship, sexuality and childrearing. Even as a kid i wondered why anyone would go to a catholic priest on such topics, as if he knew.
Jesus in the text was never married, though that may have been written out of the story. He could sympathize but not empathize . No kids, no wife, no intimate relationships, no reality just as the 12 disciples and Paul could only address these things with scripture. Paul gave boatloads of horrible "time is short," advice and shows no remorse out of the carnage he must have caused to real people. Of course the Bible gives no real insite into relationships between humans.
I told Joe Jr. the church needed to give all perspective ministers a personality profile test or survey and have it gone over with them by a third, neutral party, like a trained psychologist. Well...that idea didn't get past dessert!!!
Many of the lack common sense WCG minister types could have been tagged early instead of just transferring the misery around to the next congregation when the last one was in near riot over his foolish and simplistic ways of encouraging real life situations.
All the current one man shows are exactly the ones who caused nothing but problems in the lives of their congregants. The dictators and foolish seem to have taken over and many good men and women who did have the heart for ministry simply faded away and dropped out of the picture.
Ministers are people just like the rest of humanity. There are some good as well as bad. To make general statements putting them all down is a disservice to those who are honest and really try to help others.
To put God down is really wrong for it was mankind that put God out of their lives.
As for Dennis I discern from reading his many finely written articles, that he is hurting really bad and needs to step back and stop fighting God until He grants him the wisdom to see the big picture.
I know that this sounds simplistic, but its the truth of the matter.
Very soon the heavens will roll back as a scroll, and all those that deserve punishment, ministers and non-ministers alike, will get their reward.
Some to everlasting life and others to permanent death.
Wait for it, its all going to be played out.
John
Dennis, you're right on the money when you say: "Like Job getting back ten brand spanking new children from God after the loss of the original ten, it just seems this God doesn't understand how these things work for humans." Job is one of the most tedious and worst-structured works I have ever read. However, its worst feature is its inhumane value system; you have put your finger on a key passage expressing it.
And while I'm at it, I now have more insight into why Allen C. Dexter's comments are consistently full of insight and reason. Anybody who recognizes the excellence of Ecclesiastes is almost bound to be uncommonly perceptive about life in general.
Job is a strange book at times and even the ending where it all is good again because Job gets all his stuff back is shallow to me. If a man's life consists not in the abundance of things he possesses, then why does this Deity think that everything is fine again after Job was reduced to silence and then got all his crap back more than ever?
Many wonderfully spiritual never had or wanted much material stuff and a good Buddhist outshines Job anyday.
I also now wonder at all the "do you know where the treasuries of the snow are?" or how animals are born etc. Well actually yes we do, thanks to good science truly so called. We have made some progress in these Bronze age God issues ...
Another damn good post by Dennis Diehl. Dennis makes us all think, and ask the very tough questions where the Bible simply doesn't have all the answers (well that statement will certainly get me thrown in the Lake of Fire if all the past statements I have made doesn't do it).
I agree with Allen C. Dexter's comment regarding the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Richard
I've been thinking about Dennis's Sabbath message post periodically throughout the day today. I have concluded that: 1) life is short and life is hard; 2) Shit happens; and 3) there is a time and season for eveything thing under the sun; i.e. a time to be born and a time to die; a time to sow and a time to reap; a time to give and a time to take; a time to pick your friends and a time to pick your nose (sorry, I just couldn't resist throwing that one in).
My conclusion sure beats some pie in the sky dream of a wonderful world tomorrow that never comes -always around the corner in another 3 to 5 years FOR AN ENTIRE LIFETIME!
Richard
Hey Dennis,
Great post as usual. Timely for me as I attended a memorial service for my 31 year old son this weekend. He had a wife and 2 little girls. He was a wonderful person and a wonderful son.
He had a heart attack. No prior history. Not overweight. He was not feeling well all that week.
Does it make me feel better when people give my bible stories? No. It is easier for me to NOT believe in a god and that as Richard said...sort of ;) it just happened. That makes it much easier than trying to figure out why a "loving" god could think it would be a benefit to let a 31 year old man die and leave a grieving wife and 2 beautiful girls. There is no comfort in the story of Job Dennis, you are right. I don't want a replacement for my son, I want HIM!
I miss my son deeply. I wish I could still hear his funny stories and call him with mine...
I was in WCG in the 80's and 90's and until this fall in Rotten Ronnie's group.(cog-pkg) I am all done with any god....
I cannot believe that this is punishment for ME to bring me back to god, as some will say...what did his wife or daughters do? What GOOD is it to anyone? So...no. I do not believe there is a god. Because if there IS a god...he is a prick.
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