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Robert_Sock
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I contend that there are no such thing as an accident, and that God is in complete control. Are our prayers for safety all for naught?
Can God protect us from 'accidents' if our world contains chance?
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Bob_Crowley
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I don’t know about you, but I’m always a bit of a fatalist when it comes to prayer for safety, healing etc. I suppose in that respect my expectation lines up with that of the Moslems viz. “God willing”.
On the other hand, we also make decisions which may lead to accidents.
The other day I was feeling a bit morbid, and did a little bit of googling on local shark attacks, as there’s been a couple in Northern NSW lately.
I was reminded of a fatal attack on a girl at Amity Point on Stradbroke Island, in 2006. Now she was part of a church group of all things, and she and some others were swimming not very far off shore (15 metres according to the following text lifted from the link), and in water only waist deep.
smh.com.au/news/general/beaches-closed-after-shark-attack/2006/01/08/1136655075548.html
It was quite an horrific accident.
Now I’ve got no doubt whatsoever that the church and / or the group members would have prayed for a safe trip or weekend or whatever. But it turned into tragedy.
What are we to make of it?
I suppose the first thing to note is that there was a free decision to swim in water where sharks are frequently nearby.
From Wikipedia -
Now I’ve been swimming in the same water, but didn’t get attacked. There’s only been two recorded attacks there, and this was one of them.
We know sharks sometimes attack people, but we also know that we have to be in their environment. On the other hand, the group would have prayed for a safe trip.
Didn’t God hear them?
I think He did, but He also allowed nature to take its course, and in most cases He doesn’t interfere, or doesn’t seem to. Had they chosen to swim somewhere safer, then the accident would not have happened. We can push our luck by doing things that are unsafe.
If I took up parachuting, and at the same time prayed for personal safety, I’d be trying to have it both ways, by putting myself in a potentially dangerous situation, but expecting God to deliver me from my own free choice.
Yet I think we are still expected to pray.
As with a lot of things in the Christian life, God’s will is a mystery.
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SyroMalankara
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What about free will and personal responsibility?
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GEddie
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He can, but for reasons of His own, often does not.
IIUC!!!
ICXC NIKA
IIUC!!!
ICXC NIKA
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Rhubarb
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I mean, I’m no theologian. I did my Lutheran confirmation classes, and have read independently. But I don’t think God contradicts accidents. (Granting God, for the sake of argument) I think that God can create the world, allow for free will, and he lets the cards fall where they may - except when he wants to get involved more actively. Now, is that how it went down? I don’t know. But that doesn’t seem contradictory to me.
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tonyrey
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No! Miracles occur but it is impossible to know the precise number because we are not omniscient and many of them have intangible results. To think they are rare is to underestimate God’s power and love for us. Accidents are inevitable in an immensely complex universe where countless events occur at every moment but it is within the divine framework of order and regularity; otherwise it would be impossible to predict anything, let alone survive “all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”.
There is no reason - apart from natural causes - why earthquakes occur in inhabited regions like Nepal. They are permitted by God because a constant spate of miracles would defeat the purpose of creating a world in which we can take precautions to avoid danger. Mexico City, for example, is a disaster waiting to happen. To build skyscrapers in such an unstable environment is lunacy for which there is no excuse. To blame God is absurd when human greed and selfishness overcome common sense and consideration for others.
Even though there is an element of chance life is not entirely unpredictable. To that extent we alone are responsible for most of the needless suffering on this planet. The rest is due to the interplay of the very conditions necessary for life. We cannot expect to have everything for nothing. Every advantage has a corresponding disadvantage, regardless of whether we like it or refuse to admit it. Believing in heaven doesn’t mean we are not down to earth! In fact the reverse is true. An earth without heaven is an inexplicable phenomenon given the reality of truth, goodness and love…
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tonyrey
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First class!
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Robert_Sock
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I’m confused that God would ordain chance in our world and then perform miracles to control it. Why not just assume that God always has absolute control, as many Jews believe? Note that these Jews also believe in free will.
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openmind77
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Accidents are not all by chance, but many can be. And sometimes you put yourself in a situation where the chance of an accident is higher.
Protecting you against accidents is the job of your guardian angel. However, the guardian angel can not be with you all the time (he takes care of multiple humans). Your prayers will alert him to the fact that you may be in a situation where such protection may be needed.
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tonyrey
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God has absolute control but usually He works through the laws of nature. Otherwise we would never know what to expect next! There has to be a limit to the number of miracles if we are to lead a rational existence.
God doesn’t ordain Chance; He permits misfortunes to occur because they are inevitable. How could everyone always be in the right place at the right time? Sooner or later some one is bound to be killed by an earthquake or hurricane because Nature is no respecter of persons! She doesn’t distinguish living organisms from inanimate objects when they are in danger of death or injury. The law of the jungle operates at every level of existence apart from human society and even that is not without unnecessary suffering and bloodshed. A physical universe cannot be perfect because of its intrinsic defects, failures and limitations. Constant success is a fantasy that exists only in the minds of sceptics who imagine they know how Utopia could be created even though they have never produced a feasible blueprint or simulation of their pipe dream.
Religion is often attacked as wishful thinking but it is not absurd like the hypothetical alternative where nothing ever goes wrong and **everyone **lives happily ever after in perfect harmony. Logical possibilities are worthless if they disregard the element of Chance. It is ironic that on the one hand it is proposed as the primary cause of our appearance on earth and on the other it is supposed to be superfluous in a world created by God! From one absurd extreme to the other… The blind Goddess is either omnipotent or impotent! What has she done to deserve this fate?
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Richca
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No, they are not for naught otherwise prayer would be useless and God wouldn’t be as a Father to us. Just about the entire bible is filled with prayers and stories about God protecting those who hope, trust, and pray to Him. We also believe in the providence of God which the CCC devotes a few pages or chapter too in explaining it. Jesus also taught it when he said that all the hairs of our head are counted and not one sparrow falls to the ground without our father’s knowledge. Nothing happens in the world outside of God’s providence, knowledge, and will.
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TK421
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St Alphonsus Liguori’s “A Short Treatise on Prayer” will do you good in gaining a fuller understanding of prayer.
When Jesus says, “Ask whatever you want, and you shall receive”, he is being completely literal. We have the infinite Power of Heaven at our fingertips, as if we ourselves were God, but this needs to be taken into the context of, 1) Who God is, and 2) Who we are.
Praying for temporal goods, such as protection from accidents, or material & family success, are not unclean petitions to ask, but we must accept that these are earthly things and that - just like Job - we might instead be subject to trials that cause us suffering and pruning. Moreover, we might be subject to suffering not merely for our own sake, but for the sake of another, as St Monica shed many tears for her son Augustine before his eventual conversion. These tears were earthly instruments used in softening Augustine’s heart.
In order for a prayer to be a true prayer, it must be three things:
When Jesus says, “Ask whatever you want, and you shall receive”, he is being completely literal. We have the infinite Power of Heaven at our fingertips, as if we ourselves were God, but this needs to be taken into the context of, 1) Who God is, and 2) Who we are.
- God is perfectly benevolent: he cannot but desire our sanctification and ultimately our entry into Heaven as his eternal lover & Bride.
- We are created to be loved infinitely. The meaning of our life is to pass the veil and enter into our home, where in our new life, our marriage with Christ will be both permanent and indissoluble.
Praying for temporal goods, such as protection from accidents, or material & family success, are not unclean petitions to ask, but we must accept that these are earthly things and that - just like Job - we might instead be subject to trials that cause us suffering and pruning. Moreover, we might be subject to suffering not merely for our own sake, but for the sake of another, as St Monica shed many tears for her son Augustine before his eventual conversion. These tears were earthly instruments used in softening Augustine’s heart.
In order for a prayer to be a true prayer, it must be three things:
- It must be in perseverance, or “without ceasing”. This is easily done simply through a daily prayer, but more deeply, our life becomes a living prayer, in which we are constantly in communion with God, in thanksgiving, petition, or through intercession in the family of Heaven. We call God “Abba”, Father. A child cannot have a living relationship with their father through one moment of speech. It is an ongoing thing.
- You must be obedient to God’s will. To obstinately refuse to conform to God’s holy doctrines, and yet pray to God for his succor, is the equivalent of a man who has wronged his prince and is going to him for help, and all the while he has no intention whatsoever in ceasing his wrongs against him. If anything, it only further offends the prince because of the man’s insolence. If we picture this happening in real life, it sounds absurd, and it sounds no less absurd in Heaven when an obstinate sinner petitions to God. God hears the prayers of contrite sinners.
- It must be prayed in faith, in the confidence that God is the author & master of life and creation.
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Robert_Sock
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“And I saw that truly nothing happens by accident or luck, but everything by God’s wise providence. If it seems to be accident or luck from our point of view, our blindness and lack of foreknowledge is the cause; for matters that have been in God’s foreseeing wisdom since before time began befall us suddenly, all unawares; and so in our blindness and ignorance we say that this is accident or luck, but to our Lord God it is not so.”
― Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
― Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
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tonyrey
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That is perfectly true but it doesn’t follow that God **directly wills **accidents.The term “accident” is still meaningful, as the term “befall” suggests, and so is the term “coincidence”. There is no **reason **why an earthquake occurs in an inhabited area like Nepal. God doesn’t intend it to maim and kill living creatures. He permits it because **unplanned **coincidences are an intrinsic feature of any complex physical system. It is impossible for no one ever to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As Bob pointed out, we can “push our luck” by doing things that are unsafe but we don’t always know when we are in danger. The laws of nature are not infallible and neither are we!
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Robert_Sock
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I would love to see you argue this out with an Orthodox Jew! I think that such a debate would likely shed great light.
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Michael19682
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I dare say that if we had no knowledge of the rising of Christ and the purpose of the cross in retrospect – no gospel teachings that is, the death of the Lord would have likely been absorbed into the quicksand of “just another example of ill fate” for those who witnessed it. The widely various non true interpretations that the crucifixion and gospel suffers from in the world’s understanding all stem from a leaning toward one type of chance’s likelihood over another. This can be said for anything that seems without purpose until it is explained.
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Richca
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Good quote! This is in agreement with what St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas say:
Things are said to be fortuitous as regards some particular cause from the order of which they escape. But as to the order of divine providence, nothing in the world happens by chance, as Augustine declares (ST, Part I, q. 103, art. 7, reply to obj.2).
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tonyrey
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There was a Jewish contributor to this forum. I think his user name is “melzerboy” but I can’t find any of his posts.
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tonyrey
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That is the outstanding difficulty of the Chance hypothesis. Why do we imagine some events are purposeful if there aren’t any? And if our thinking isn’t purposeful does it make sense to believe in anything?
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Robert_Sock
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He’s not an Orthodox Jew per se, but reform if I remember correctly. However his views may lead to greater insight.
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