“There, but for the grace of God, go I.” This is a seemingly harmless and ubiquitous saying that turns up in the case of close calls and near miss tragedies, slipping off the tongue with the intention of crediting God for the prevention of the speaker’s bad fortune and ensuing grief. Although it is usually not premeditated when spoken aloud, I think we should do our best to bury this saying. It doesn’t really say what we mean. “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” We mean well, but it’s bad theology. It sets God up for being punitive and heartless, responsible for inhumane things humans do to one another or for orchestrating natural disasters or for causing catastrophes in nature that are caused by human arrogance and irresponsibility.

God is not a cosmic puppeteer pulling strings or pulley ropes. This simple, common, roll-off-the-tongue proverb seemingly expressing humility or gratefulness for one’s good fortune is actually backing God into a human-made corner. If we credit God for steering clear the rapidly descending baby grand piano that the movers were hosting up to the fifth floor when the pulley straps broke and was heading straight for the soon to be flattened head and body of our dear old aunt Harriet thus sparing us and ours from tragedy and great suffering, does it not also suggest that there but for the disgrace of God went someone else’s dear old uncle Harold who took a direct hit on the noggin to the tune of unbelievable sadness and the note of A Flat?

Does the woman sitting in the passenger seat of a car stopped at a red light say, “There but for the grace of God go I” after the man snapped yesterday—as the news reported it— getting out of his car and shooting dead her husband in the driver’s seat who the perpetrator later told police was driving too slowly? I think not. Imagine saying aloud “There but for the grace of God go I” while standing next to dear old Harold’s heartbroken niece. Does not such a perspective automatically send her down the path of blaming God for snapped pulley ropes and for every leg, limb or life snapped like a pencil?

We must dare a theology that is not reduced to the back of a Math book that has all the answers to all the problems in the text book of life. We must resist the temptation to resort to simplistic, ultimately inadequate answers to complex, unanswerable questions—why the unspeakable travesty of the suffering of the innocent, why the horror of wars perpetuated by those who consider human beings made in the image of God collateral damage, why the greedy so often thrive and the poor are daily sentenced to survive, and why too frequently those who cheat are celebrated and rewarded and those who live honorably go unrecognized and unheralded.

The Holy One we casually call God is a mystery. To say this is not a cop-out, an evasive maneuver, a theological dodge. One of the best lessons I learned as a teacher came with experience, maturity, and the security to be able to say to inquisitive students or conversation partners whenever it was true, “I don’t know.” If some self-righteous know-it-all thinks that is a “gotcha” moment, let them think that. Why must the fact that bad things happen to good people, be laid at the “feet” of God? Our disappointment is rooted in our reduction and false conception of God whom we have shaped into the mold of our selfish and presumptuous wants and desires. Why must God be victimized by us for not godding the way we would god if we were God? Why must the agony in the garden of our lives mean that God is to blame, mean, uncaring, or unconcerned? Isn’t this the paradoxical promise of the incarnation of love: that the God embodied and pointed to by Jesus offers us new life and new possibility that are bigger than death and despair not by sparing us of our share of crosses and losses but by being with us—Emmanuel—where and when it hurts, by knowing our suffering in the willing, loving, and hopeful act of compassionate solidarity? Isn’t this why family and friends gather at the pier of ocean travelers or the bedside of the dying—not just to wave goodbye but to say bon voyage?

By all means, if by chance or good fortune we or ours are spared some grievous misfortune, feel relieved, feel lucky, feel fortunate, feel overwhelmed for catching a break, feel grateful for your life. But when our hearts stop pounding and our heads clear, I encourage us to try not to reduce the ineffable Holy One to a one-dimensional character in our script because such a view eventually will force God into a lineup as the target of all the pointing fingers laying blame for each tit and tattle and every bad, godawful thing that happens in the world.

After the shock wears off, maybe we can think “That could have been my aunt Harriet,” and say to Harold’s niece “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for your loss.” And then drive home safely (but not too slowly) and be grateful for being alive, be grateful to the One who gave us life knowing that one day we too will catch a piano in the form of some bad diagnosis or personal injustice or terribly difficult loss. Know that one day we too, like all the sinful saints and saintly sinners who have gone before us, will die. It shouldn’t take a “Spoiler Alert” to alert us to this fact. In case we never read the fine print on our birth certificate, this was the deal from the beginning. If we had been told this before time would we have chosen not to exist at all?

We know life comes with gravity and grace. We believe the grace is bigger and more enduring. We know life comes with falling pianos and flash floods and bean balls and random acts of violence and premature, avoidable, unjust deaths. But there will be a plethora of fall days attired in a festival of reds and golds and oranges-going-to yellows, there will friendships that do not merely flash but endure, there will be miraculous home runs hit by Punch-and-Judy hitters, there will be a continual run of not-so-random acts of kindness, and there will be a plentiful number of peaceful, beautiful, love-saturated, and reassuring deaths as well. AND YET, knowing bad things will continue to happen to good people and that our certain death awaits us no matter how hard we try to avoid the thought or reality of it, when we pull into our driveway after hearing on the radio of some new tragedy, our consolation is knowing that our deep sympathy and woe can lean against the shoulders of that full feeling of gratefulness and deep joy and the clear awareness of the mystery and sheer gratuitousness of this thingless thing that is pure gift, courtesy, and life.

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
~ 2 Corinthians 4: 16-18

© Dan Miller. All Rights Reserved.

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