Yesterday, the two little boys killed by their mother, were laid to rest in South Carolina. As I read about the service, I just had to shake my head. Some of the things people say during these times have always baffled me.
What I simply don't understand about this comment is that, if being "set free" is such a wonderful thing, why don't we encourage more parents to kill their children? Why force children to live a life in which they are not free when it is within our power to set them free?
Of course, no SANE person would encourage anyone to kill a child! (I guess I should qualify that last statement. Many supposedly sane people might not see it as such an evil act IF the child, in question, comes from a family of a different belief system or from a family of your sworn enemies. Somehow, that's "okay.")
Another comment made during the funeral service was that "Only God knows why it happened." I beg to differ. I think the person who knows why this happened better than anyone else is Shaquan Duley, their mother. She is, after all, the one who suffocated them. I'm certainly not suggesting that her decision was a well-thought out one, but she must have had SOME rationale behind her actions.
But here's the part that really blows me away.
Look, I do understand that, when senseless death occurs, people want to find some kind of meaning to make sense of it all. The belief in heaven and an afterlife provides comfort to so many people. I get that. But the praising part seems completely irrational and unjustified.
If you and I had happened to be in a position to stop this horrid crime, but we just walked away, do you think the people attending this funeral would sing our praises? Do you think they would have congratulated us for allowing these two young lives to be set free?
We would be lambasted, castigated, condemned and, possibly, threatened. We would be treated as social pariahs. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly would have a field day at our expense.
So, why does "God" get a free pass?
The service, dubbed a "Home Going Celebration," was filled with uplifting prayers and songs celebrating how the boys were now free. Friends and family members recited Scripture and asked God to help them through "times like this."In my mind's eye, the two toddlers weren't "set free," they were murdered. Slain by their mother. Two lives arbitrarily cut short.
What I simply don't understand about this comment is that, if being "set free" is such a wonderful thing, why don't we encourage more parents to kill their children? Why force children to live a life in which they are not free when it is within our power to set them free?
Of course, no SANE person would encourage anyone to kill a child! (I guess I should qualify that last statement. Many supposedly sane people might not see it as such an evil act IF the child, in question, comes from a family of a different belief system or from a family of your sworn enemies. Somehow, that's "okay.")
Another comment made during the funeral service was that "Only God knows why it happened." I beg to differ. I think the person who knows why this happened better than anyone else is Shaquan Duley, their mother. She is, after all, the one who suffocated them. I'm certainly not suggesting that her decision was a well-thought out one, but she must have had SOME rationale behind her actions.
But here's the part that really blows me away.
Church members and mourners stood in their pews, raised their hands into the air and praised God, all the while shaking their heads in disbelief and sorrow at the tragedy that brought them there.What are they praising their god for? Their all-powerful being stood by and allowed this tragic event to unfold. Though it would certainly be in his power, he did nothing to stop it. By taking a hands off approach, two little boys are dead, their mother faces life in jail (or worse) and both the rest of the family and the community have been severely traumatized. I don't see anything here that is praiseworthy!
Look, I do understand that, when senseless death occurs, people want to find some kind of meaning to make sense of it all. The belief in heaven and an afterlife provides comfort to so many people. I get that. But the praising part seems completely irrational and unjustified.
If you and I had happened to be in a position to stop this horrid crime, but we just walked away, do you think the people attending this funeral would sing our praises? Do you think they would have congratulated us for allowing these two young lives to be set free?
We would be lambasted, castigated, condemned and, possibly, threatened. We would be treated as social pariahs. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly would have a field day at our expense.
So, why does "God" get a free pass?
We sing praise to the Creator because, although brief, we have had time on the Earth. We do not praise Him because of their death, but because of their life. Because we were allowed to share time with them and that is all we can ask for in life.
ReplyDeleteOur perception of life is only time and moments will slip away regardless of how we feel during them. But we don't have to live regretting that those moments end. We can live content, if not grateful, that those moments exist.
I use the image of being caught in a tornado, to describe time, with a basket of confetti in your hand. Each piece of confetti is a moment of time or a memory. As the tornado hits, all of the pieces get swept away. What do you do? If you go chasing them, one after the other, you will be forced to choose to let some go. There is no way you are able to chase all of them and, as soon as you put them back in the basket, they are likely to blow away again. So what do you do?
What can you do except enjoy the pieces that twirl around you and take in as much as you can before the pieces dance away.
And, during all of that, do you criticize the storm for blowing them out of your hands (where you could not see them, only hold them) or do you thank it for showing you so much more?
I cannot speak for all Christians... but that is why I praise God.
Poet,
ReplyDeleteBut why praise the supposed being who brought down the tornado in the first place. Had there been no tornado, there would be no issue with the confetti.
the thing is, an omnipotent and omniscient and omnibenevolent god could have easily prevented the deaths without interfering with free will. he could have made that woman sterile, and the children born to some loving parent instead, or he could have made her inept at killing them, but the attempt public, so that child protective services would take over. god obviously doesn't protect innocent people, so what's there to celebrate?
ReplyDeletei understand celebrating someone's life, as short as that may be, but not in the context of christianity, where someone could have easily prevented tragedy, and yet did not.
In the analogy I used, God is the tornado. Either way, without the tornado the pieces would just sit in the basket and never given a second thought.
ReplyDeleteYes, God could have prevented the deaths, but all of those scenarios have their own consequences, Iktomi. If she had been sterile, she might have adopted children and the deaths would have occurred, but to different children. Or she may have killed someone else's children. Or she may not have learned something that she needed to learn from the children she never bore.
If she was inept at killing them, but tried, they could have ended up living but horribly maimed or damaged. If the attempt were public and the protective services took over, it could have started an in-depth look at what factors "could have led them to this point" which, in turn, could label others with those same factors (but no intention of killing) which, in turn, could lead to the government taking away other children who were never in any danger to begin with.
Or it could be that if the children hadn't died now, they would have died in some horrible way later on, or they may have become mass murderers themselves. Maybe God was protecting innocent people- they are just unseen by us.
Everything has a price and even allowing someone to live is no exception.
Poet,
ReplyDeleteI like that last possibility. We should celebrate every child's death because it shows that God is protecting us from future heinous crimes against humanity...NOT.
I did not say we should celebrate their death, just that there may be more to their deaths than just "God didn't protect them."
ReplyDeleteDeath is something that happens. It just does. It is part of being alive. No one says "we should be mad at nature for allowing us to die." We hate when people take control of who lives and who dies, but we want to be able to control it. Each of us wants to say "that person should not die" and have it be the result. That is the ultimate point of this post, I think. But we don't have the choice and we shouldn't. And the One who does have the choice, whether you call Him "God" or "nature" or whatever- the Author of Life is *not* a person and I think is much more capable of making that call whether or not to allow someone to live.
We have to trust that there is a reason, or live in fear of destructive chaos. I choose to live in hope and trust and love of God and of people. I do not rejoice in the way those children died, but I live in forgiveness and I trust that there is a reason for why that happened. Why is hope mistaken for foolishness?
But the ONE who made the decision in this case was their mother...unless you subscribe to the belief that she did it at God's behest. If that's the case, then she shouldn't be punished at all.
ReplyDeleteYes, all things die eventually. It's a fact of life. But some things and some people find their lives arbitrarily cut short. Most often, it is people who exercise this choice on others, not some invisible being.
For my part, if I believed in the kind of being that you do, then I WOULD live in fear of destructive chaos. From the standpoint of the human mind, it means utter chaos to live under the thumb of a capricious being who, on a whim, decides daily, "You can live for now, but that guy over there is a goner."
I don't believe it is a whim. I believe it is a plan.
ReplyDeleteFine. Let's entertain the thought that it's part of a divine plan. The problem here is that the "plan" has not been shared nor divulged to any of us. So, from our perspectives, it still comes off as appearing to be whims.
ReplyDelete