There’s a lot to hate about funerals. That has recently been noted in this very space. It is widely said that death is “natural,” but nothing seems more unnatural than death. Broadly speaking, it is the saddest event humans experience. It’s sadder still that we face it so often until, finally, others experience it when we die.
There is something about funerals I loathe almost as much as the loss of a dear friend, and that is the false and empty platitudes repeated when death strikes. It was mere hours into the Sandy Hook tragedy before I heard a CNN anchor ask why God would do such a thing. Last night in Newtown, President Obama said, “God has called them all home.” Ministers will say the dead are in a “better place,” all part of God’s wonderful plan. How could the grieving parents of a murdered kindergartener find one shred of comfort in that? Would you be drawn to a God who “called your child home” in a hail of gunfire? A God who uses a deranged murderer to accomplish his purpose?
I will never forget reading a few years ago in the Augusta Chronicle about the death of two small girls, killed by an unknown hit-and-run driver as they walked to the store on an errand for their mother. The minister officiating at the funeral was quoted as saying, “God looked down and saw these two beautiful flowers and He said, ‘I want those flowers for my garden.’ So he plucked them away from this earth to be with him.” And you say He is a God of love? That sounds like a cruel, selfish god to me. I refuse to believe this – Sandy Hook, Aurora, the two little girls, name your tragedy, large or small – is the handiwork of God.
The irony is that people who believe in God also presumably believe in the devil too, yet he rarely if ever gets any blame, no matter how heinous and evil the tragedy. At National Cathedral in Washington, days after September 11, Billy Graham said, “I’ve been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering.” His response? “I have to confess that I really do not know the answer.” (http://youtu.be/fnaWw1nZ34U?t=3m) He went on to say evil is “a mystery.” The subtle implication or the direct statement is that God is behind it all, no matter how impossible it is to reconcile “a God of love” with the latest tragic episode in human affairs.
I suppose this is more evidence of the salad bar approach to religion: “I believe in God. But a devil, too? That’s a relic of ancient mythology.” Or “I believe in Jesus, of course. But the Garden of Eden? Adam and Eve? Please. That’s just a fairy tale.” I’ve heard people who claim to be Christian say God created life and Darwin took it from there. But if there was no Adam and Eve, then there was no need for Jesus either. Without Adam, the most basic fabric of Christian belief unravels rather quickly.
Likewise, without Satan in the picture – with God getting the credit for everything from tulips and puppies to drunk hit-and-run drivers and kindergarten killers – the picture is very confusing indeed. Personally, I believe in God, so I have to believe in a devil too. If there is no devil, God is one sick, twisted, sadistic fiend. He would be the essence of peace and purity – and evil incarnate – all wrapped up in one neat package. I can’t believe that.
I hope I’m wrong, but I think if I attended every one of the more than two dozen funerals that will be held in a little town in Connecticut this week, I wouldn’t hear “Satan” or “the devil” mentioned at any of them. Somehow God will be implicated in all of this, but in a very positive way, of course. Or it will be shrugged off as a “mystery,” which says God is impotent and apathetic.
I disagree. No wonder I hate funerals.
To read Funerals Part I, scroll down through previous posts until you find it. It’s not far.