Posted by Helen on: 12.12.2007 /
Richard Wade has posted a wonderful atheist response to the tragic shootings at a Christian ministry and church on Hemant’s blog.
I’m sorry to hear about all the victims of the shootings. I’m sorry some of this took place at New Life Church, so recently shaken by Ted Haggard’s resignation.
I do wonder about how this happened. Clearly Matthew Murray (the perpetrator) did not respond to life in the way other people do - it seems like he had mental health problems. This raises questions as well as answering them. Why didn’t he receive help for them? And even if he was ill, how did a man raised in a Christian home who went to YWAM end up hating Christians? Evidently YWAM excluded him from a missions trip and ‘kicked him out’ according to police in the news reports, because of health issues. Did they respond to his mental health problems in the best way possible? What about the other people in his life - were they there for him? Did they help? Based on my own experiences with mental health I can’t help wondering about that.
And the security guard situation makes me uncomfortable. It bothers me to think about volunteers with guns at church services. Yes, I understand she very likely saved lives. But she also took a life (or so it seemed; evidently he took his own life after she ‘took him down’). And giving God the credit - why did God stop at 3 lives lost rather than zero? I say this not to gloat but because I find this personally troubling. It’s exactly the sort of troubling question which led me to become almost an atheist. Why did God let two teenage sisters get killed? Did he like them less than everyone else at that church? I have an easier time thinking it’s senseless and random than “God is in control” when this sort of thing happens.
Maybe I just did what Richard asked people not to do. But I don’t know how not to have these sorts of thoughts when these sorts of tragedies happen.
Comment by: Stephan
1 12/12/07 7:07 AM | Comment Link |Helen, I have to say I’m a little shocked. You take a quick trip from blaming the gunman to blaming the victim to blaming God. This kind of lapse in logic is part of what causes Christians to believe that atheists do not want to believe in God, so they invent these schemes to make God and His church look bad, and thus more easily dismissed. It looks desperate and does not put you, and thereby other atheists, in a good light.
Comment by: Helen
2 12/12/07 7:26 AM | Comment Link |Stephan, I’m not ‘blaming’ God - I’m saying this way of understanding God, in which he’s someone who helped the security guard but not the three victims, doesn’t make any sense to me.
And there’s nothing ‘desperate’ about it either.
It seems like you felt I was attacking God but I wasn’t. I was simply saying “I don’t understand this view of God”. Or at least, that was my intention.
Comment by: Stephan
3 12/12/07 8:27 AM | Comment Link |That view of God is an “all-or-nothing” view that I don’t believe very many people support. “If God can save anyone, He can save everyone” (or at least He should). It’s the fundamentalist strawman that atheists seem to love knocking down. It’s quick, it’s easy and it supports your view of things.
The problem with that view is that God chooses to work through people, and people are finite and imperfect. I suppose God could have suspended free will and stopped this from happening. But He apparently chose to allow everyone involved to have free will, meaning that one person chose to try to hurt people, and another chose to try to protect people. Neither one perfectly achieved their personal goal, and maybe nobody totally lived up to what God wanted in this situation, but fewer people died than would have if that one person had not chosen to try to do the right thing, even if you and I may not agree with the way in which they did it.
Of course you are not blaming God, since you don’t believe He exists, but your implication is clear - if God exists, He could have (and should have) stopped this. It becomes a way for you to support your beliefs. That is why it looks desperate - you are using a weak argument to support what you believe, or at least to criticize what you don’t believe.
Do those two things need to be mutually exclusive?
Comment by: Helen
4 12/12/07 10:39 AM | Comment Link |For me they do.
Comment by: Stephan
5 12/12/07 11:02 AM | Comment Link |What if God’s control is more limited? More like a general of an army rather than a programmer at a computer. Or like a CEO of a company. He sets the policy and gives the orders, but it is up to others to carry them out - or not, as the case may be.
I believe McLaren posits this in “A New Kind of Christian”. It makes sense to me.
Comment by: Helen
6 12/12/07 11:11 AM | Comment Link |Stephan wrote:
Fair enough. It’s never worked for me.
Comment by: Julie Clawson
7 12/12/07 11:58 AM | Comment Link |I think some of the questions you are asking need to be asked.
I too was disturbed that a security guard at a church had a gun. That just contradicts the whole idea of the church being a welcoming place. We had a lady pull a gun on my pastor once when I was in high school. Another church member ended up tackling her, her gun wasn’t even loaded.
And there is a fine line in with the YWAM and mental health issues. There are a number of homeschooled super-conservative Christians who go off the deep end mentally (generally not this far). Is it the job of the mission organization to counsel them and tell them their upbringing was wrong? Do secular corporations provide the same services? Should the McDonald’s in Omaha have offered severance counseling to the guy they fired who then attacked the mall?
Comment by: Karen
8 12/12/07 12:22 PM | Comment Link |The shooter in Omaha got extensive mental health counseling for the years when he was declared a ward of the state (at age 13) up until he turned 17, at which point the state declared him a lost cause and stopped treating him. The mental health chief was quoted in the NY Times over the weekend “regretting” that choice. (I would say so.)
The guy in Colorado had a history of making extremely disturbing posts on various blogs and websites, including an ex-Pentecostal forum. It’s unclear, from what I know, whether his family had gotten counseling or other mental health treatment for him.
Comment by: Karen
9 12/12/07 12:30 PM | Comment Link |It troubles me also, because it seems terribly insensitive to the people whose beloved children were killed so brutally. I try to put myself in the place of the parents whose teenagers were mowed down in the prime of their lives.
I don’t think I’d feel very good about the people who rush to thank god for limiting the carnage. I’d be asking why he didn’t stop it before it started.
Comment by: Stephan
10 12/12/07 1:05 PM | Comment Link |The two shootings this week have hit close to home for my family. Two of my wife’s brothers live in Omaha, just a 5 minute drive from the mall where the shooting took place. I used to live in Colorado Springs, and my former next door neighbor, Rob Brendle, is the associate pastor at New Life Church.
What is so hard about free will that atheists as a whole group don’t seem to get it?
Comment by: Eliza
11 12/12/07 3:09 PM | Comment Link |Stephan, I’m sorry the 2 shootings this week have hit close to home (but glad, of course, that noone in your family was harmed or otherwise directly involved).
I have 2 questions:
How does mental illness fit in with the idea of Free Will?
Carrying the idea of Free Will to an extreme, why weren’t more people at the church (and the mall) carrying guns? If one’s vision of things is that people all have Free Will, and God won’t intervene in the fine-tuning, wouldn’t it make sense to do take whatever steps you deem necessary to protect yourself? (”Free Will” seems to come close to “Social Darwinism”, in that model…)
Comment by: Karen
12 12/12/07 5:01 PM | Comment Link |Free will doesn’t seem to fit in this case. If god could intervene and have the security guard fire at the shooter in Colorado without jeopardizing anyone’s free will, why couldn’t he intervene earlier?
Maybe the guy could have had a car accident on the way to the church. Or, even better, he could have been taken down by someone outside the YWAM complex before he killed anyone.
His free will would still be protected, but god could have stopped any carnage - and maybe even gotten this guy help before he acted out with a gun.
Do you see the logical inconsistency of thanking god for the security guard at the church limiting the killing, but not expecting him to have done something to prevent the killing entirely?
Comment by: Eliza
13 12/12/07 10:39 PM | Comment Link |Karen, I don’t think Stephan is saying that God should be thanked for causing the security guard to limit the killing (though others might be saying that). Stephan said:
Comment by: benjamin ady
14 12/12/07 11:19 PM | Comment Link |Helen,
I’m with you on the giving God the credit thing. I see this *all* the time in the church. Christians are encourage/expected to give God credit for the good stuff, but they mustn’t blame her for the bad stuff. I don’t get that at all. It’s either both or neither for me. And I’ve more or less opted for neither. I mean it goes *way* past 2 teenage sisters getting killed. What about 200 civilians a week getting violently killed in Iraq, including, every week, little children?
Of course that skates off onto the whole subject of whether it’s sensible to try to stop violence with violence, which is a whole different matter.
Here’s a bit of a shocking question. How many of the people who were at New Life on Sunday morning voted for Bush in 2004? Do those who did get any credit for 200 violent civilian deaths in Iraq every week?
Comment by: Helen
15 12/13/07 5:34 AM | Comment Link |Stephan wrote:
This is what’s hard about it. Would you stand by and watch someone shoot your child because it would be wrong to mess with the free will of the gunman? Most humans step in at that point and as far as it lays in their power they will try to prevent the gunman exercising his free will and shooting people. Just like the security guard did, in fact.
It IS hard for me to understand why God, if he exists, does not not similarly intervene.
I feel very sad for the family who lost two daughters and I have to think they might be having a hard time understanding this too. Even if God’s way to intervene was through a security guard why did he not do it BEFORE their daughters died?
I think these are hard questions. I wouldn’t be surprised if those parents struggle with them for years now. I have a friend whose sister and her husband struggled for years after their teenage daughter died on the operating table because the doctors made a mistake which cost her her life. (The doctors admitted this to the family; it’s not just speculation).
Comment by: Helen
16 12/13/07 5:38 AM | Comment Link |Benjamin, I think it’s human nature to care more about deaths of people we know/love than the deaths of strangers. I understand why it frustrates you when a huge fuss is made over a few deaths in the US but deaths overseas (related to US involvement) don’t receive similar attention. There’s definitely a big ‘it could have been MY child’ factor which comes in when something happens here, which freaks people out and they want answers and to feel assured it won’t happen to them next week.
Comment by: Stephan
17 12/13/07 7:35 AM | Comment Link |Let me preface by saying I do not consider myself to have all theological and philosophical knowledge and wisdom. My viewpoints are mine alone, and subject to change when I get new information. I also make wide right-hand turns from time to time, and frequently stop at train tracks. Please stay back at least 100 feet.
Eliza asked:
I’ll answer that with the observation that Jesus treated people as victims of sin, not so much as perpetrators of sin. I would guess that, just as we make allowances for young children who don’t know better, God makes allowances for those who are unclear of mind.
Eliza also asked:
There is a whole lot here we don’t know. Several of the comments here seem to presuppose that God knows the future. I don’t think He does. I think He knows probabilities, and He knows tendencies, but the future is not there until it happens. It is possible that God was trying to stop the violence through others, and those people failed. Maybe God wanted someone at YWAM to take better care and notice this young man before the situation became violent, and they failed. Maybe God wanted his family to do something different, and they didn’t follow His will. Maybe there was someone in the parking lot at New Life Church that God was urging to reach out to this man the moment he got out of his car, and that person resisted the urge. Maybe God had been trying, through His people, to reach this young man for years, and the people through whom He was working all failed. Or maybe they succeeded in limiting the carnage, but not stopping it entirely.
I think it is possible that, in the Church Age, God has limited His power to work mainly through His people, rather than directly intervening. That does not mean, in my opinion, that miracles cannot happen, but that they are far more rare than some people would like. And if people are allowed to fail, that means bad things will happen.
Like most of you, I am also uncomfortable with giving God credit, particularly for killing someone. I’m more likely to be thankful that more people weren’t hurt, and sad that one person was so damaged and disturbed that they needed to lash out, and that they did not receive the help that they needed.
Helen asked:
Here’s another scenario. What if you knew someone was going to shoot your child, but you could not be there to stop it? Maybe you would send someone else. But maybe you couldn’t tell that person all of the details, just that they should be there and be ready to act. Maybe you knew that person might fail, but it was the best option you had.
Maybe that is what happened.
Comment by: Helen
18 12/13/07 9:41 AM | Comment Link |Stephan wrote:
Thanks Stephan - that really helps me understand how you view God.
I definitely like this God much more than the God who arbitrarily gets very involved in some peoples’ situations and not others (so it seems, based on what he gets credit for doing).
So…God, the way you understand God, is a victim of free will - because he only gets what he wants if people choose to act the way he’d like them to…
I’m not sure I can get my head around God being like that…
I see how that lines up with what you already wrote.
Interestingly the oldest and wisest beings in His Dark Materials (the trilogy The Golden Compass belongs to) are like this. They can help to a limited extent; they will not interfere with free will because ‘the point’ is not to take away free will. They do their best to assist the heroes in the story, particularly the two human children. But it is up to the heroes to make choices that will result in all worlds being saved rather than destroyed.
I know you don’t want to read it; I just think it’s fascinating how close the worlds Pullman created come to some Christian thinking, in some ways.
Comment by: Karen
19 12/13/07 9:57 AM | Comment Link |Thanks for explaining your theology Stephan. I understand how the scenario you laid out makes sense, though I don’t think most/any of the Christians I went to church with would agree with your viewpoint on god.
benj wrote:
Good question, particularly when it was Bush in 2004 who caved to the gun lobby and let the assault weapons ban lapse after 10 years (after he’d promised to renew it in 2000). Both the Omaha and the Colorado shooters were armed with assault rifles.
The NY Times yesterday recommended that the candidates’ debates ought to focus more on how we can deal with the prevalence of guns and violence in our society; and less on who believes every word of the bible or whether Jesus was the son of god or the brother of the devil.
Comment by: Stephan
20 12/13/07 10:42 AM | Comment Link |Helen said:
For the most part, that’s how I see it. I still reserve the right to believe in miracles, but I do no claim to fully understand how and when they work, and why they usually don’t. To be honest, this is one of my faith struggles (but not a faith-killer). I also believe that ultimately God’s will will prevail, although I don’t claim to know how that will happen.
I’m not personally threatened by His Dark Materials, I’m just not interested. I suppose that could change (the interested part, not the threatened part). From what I understand, the so-called “god” that is being killed is not at all like the God I follow, so it does not bother me. It would be sort of like somebody writing a book about an evil guy named Ken (my dad’s name) who had no resemblance to my dad - interesting, but irrelevant.
Comment by: Helen
21 12/13/07 11:58 AM | Comment Link |Stephan wrote:
Fair enough.
For what it’s worth, I read it for the story, not because of the themes. I’d heard it was good. As it turned out I found the themes fascinating as well as liking the story.
Comment by: Meg
22 12/13/07 4:16 PM | Comment Link |Helen, I SO relate to what you’re saying here. It frightens me - I have two daughters, of infinite value to Bens and me, yet there’s a world out there which doesn’t necessarily treat people as being valuable. I wonder where God’s love fits into all the senseless, seemingly random violence and abuse?
Comment by: Elaine
23 12/14/07 10:03 AM | Comment Link |life happens - the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is about how I chose to respond to it. For me that is how “free will” operates.
As Americans, we too have freedom and it comes with it’s own set of limitations and responsibilities.
I had not heard this on the news - but there was a shooting earlier that morning (12:30am) at Arvada missionary - 2 people were killed and 2 were wounded. This is the YWAM camp, 70 miles from the church.
The police were at Matthew Murray’s house in connection with that shooting when he was at the New Life Church.
It saddens me to hear of all violent deaths.
The reports I have read indicate that people were trying to help Matthew - however, Matthew was 24 years old. Even his parents could no longer exercise any authority over his person. The law is very limiting in dealing with the mentally ill.
As I understand it, the police can’t do anything until the person “does” something to violate the law. Is that accurate?
Maybe the people in Matthew’s life did all they could legally do.
Where is God in all of this? I think he is weeping with us.
Comment by: joe
24 12/17/07 4:49 AM | Comment Link |Two things:
First, this is clearly a personal disaster for those families affected.
Second, if we have to blame someone, I’d suggest blaming ourselves.
Apparently, there was once a famous mayor who had the power to sit as a judge. One day he decided to preside in court. One case was of an old woman who had been court stealing bread.
Sighing, the mayor said that there was no case to answer and fined the woman 10 dollars. He then took off his hat, threw in 10 dollars from his own wallet, and then stated that he was fining everyone else in the room a dollar for living in a world where an old woman has to steal bread to feed her children. The woman went out of the court with more money than she had when she went in.
I don’t know if it is true, and I have probably misquoted it. But the truth is that we all share responsibility for living in a world where firearms are easily obtainable, where children in Iraq have few life chances, where the people of Gaza are labelled as ‘terrorists’ and then left to rot, where our daily actions and inactions have effects on people that barely register on our own consciences.
I cannot answer for God, I’ve no idea how he explains his actions and inactions. However, I can answer for me, and I can refuse to accept that these are all problems caused by someone else.
Comment by: Mark Stephens
25 03/3/08 10:22 PM | Comment Link |Things like this happen and appear to be completely random because we are able to cause random catastrophes by our actions. This being said, we cannot dismiss God’s control over the earth because he does allow these things to happen. We don’t know how often he prevents things like this from happening but when he does allow them it’s not because he likes those people less but rather because of what will bring about his overall purpose of bringing people into his eternal kingdom to worship him and sing of his glory from every tribe, tounge and nation. It’s a fact of life that catastrophe has caused people to seek God more than they would of had they not had such happenings. We think from such a self-centered mentality that we forget that we were made for his pleasure and we have to fit into his plans and not the other way around.
It is unfortanate that such evils happen but it is not God that causes them but evil men. But God in his patience allows some of this evil and will judge it severely. We must all seek his grace for all of our sins. He is waiting for us. Let us throw off this foolishness of blaming God as if we are better or wiser than him. His goodness is so evident through what he has made that we are without excuse. Even those that are the closest to God will eventually hurt someone and we must forgive them just as God in Christ has forgiven us if we have trusted in him. Perhaps these three were allowed to die in order to bring you to Christ Jesus for salvation. There is no treasure greater. Take him now that he may take you as his own.
Comment by: David H
26 03/3/08 11:41 PM | Comment Link |The capricious entity you describe is the very reason some of the posters here have problems with the Christian God. He doesn’t cause, but he does allow some terrible things, according to you. How does it make him better that he protects some and not others? Please don’t tell the parent of a child with Tay-Sachs that God allows their infant to suffer in order to bring them to Jesus. Don’t tell them God withheld his blessing for some greater purpose or maybe just because they didn’t have enough faith. A great shame on “Christians” is that many simply don’t know when to shut up.
Comment by: Helen
27 03/4/08 6:11 AM | Comment Link |Mark Stephens wrote:
Mark, if God knows everything I’m sure he also knows that such a strategy would only make me think him a monster and not want anything to do with him.
If those peoples’ lives are so cheap to God that he lets them be thrown away why would I trust God with my life?
Comment by: Jim Henderson
28 03/4/08 8:23 AM | Comment Link |as a follower of Jesus I’m compelled to apologize for this statement and obligated to distance myself from it.
Beliefism has hijacked the true message of Jesus and left us with this kind of circular thinking.