The Good and the Bad

There seems to have been a strange trend over the last week or so (if two things can be called a trend…) to attribute events to God’s judgment. The more recent of those is rather sad in its own way as Jade Goody has suggested that her recent miscarriage was God’s judgment on her actions on Big Brother. This makes a few assumptions, first that God watches Big Brother (an amusing concept, but I guess we all have to get our kicks somehow); that God pinpoints and punishes individuals as a direct result of particular actions; that God would do so by taking away one (arguably innocent) life in order to punish a bad action; and that God does in fact exist.

I do actually believe quite strongly in the existence of God and that he takes an interest in our lives, but I don’t believe that he is out to stamp on individual actions. No matter what Jade Goody may have done, I don’t see that God’s judgment is the reason for her miscarriage. Miscarriages happen for a whole range of reasons, not least that sometimes a pregnancy just isn’t viable, but that isn’t a reflection on anything or anyone, sometimes those things just happen. I guess sometimes we look for explanations and answers, but sometimes they just don’t exist. Pouring the wrath of God upon yourself though, doesn’t seem like the healthiest response though and not a good position from which to feel capable of moving forward.

The other instance was the Bishop of Carlisle being reported as saying that the recent floods were God’s judgment. I think some of what he said has been taken out of context* and was interpreted as meaning that the floods in Sheffield meant that the people living in Sheffield were particularly sinful – something that they were a bit miffed about. I don’t think that is actually what he was saying though. I think the Bishop was arguing that due to our actions and by living lives that are wasteful and where we don’t consider the consequences that we reap the whirlwind of that. So if we live in a disposable society where we buy a product and get rid of it when we are bored and add to the mountain of rubbish in landfill sites, if we fly thousands of miles on our holidays, if we drive too fast, if we become so insular that we don’t even know our neighbours - then there are consequences of each of those. But you actually don’t even have to bring God into it, isn’t there a law of physics that says “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. That’s Newton’s third law in case you are interested. I don’t think people particularly question Newton’s statement but if you bring God into something then people seem to get somewhat under the collar about it.

* I think he was accurately reported as stating that the increase in gay rights as one of the reasons for this, which is not particularly helpful (to say the least…)

Blaming individuals isn’t helpful but us as individuals accepting some responsibility for our own actions and considering that we might actually be able to make a *positive* difference, doesn’t actually strike me as being an unhelpful thing to point out to people. There are ways and means to say these things though, of course.