Trivializing God

Ours is a religious culture.  I get that.  That’s why God is on our money and why politicians say “God bless America” all the time (as if God yields to this kind of flattery).  It’s also why parents of kids with cancer pray to God for strength, but never wonder why their kid got cancer in the first place.  And it’s why the Holocaust didn’t reduce God’s popularity.  God does the good stuff, silly.  The bad stuff isn’t His fault.  He’s God!

This absurdity is so commonplace, I get eyerolls when I point it out.  It’s like pointing out bad grammar in pop songs.  “Of course it makes no sense.  That’s not the point, buzzkill.”  I, of course, ignore these invitations to keep quiet.  But I don’t like beating dead horses.  I give this one a kick from time to time, but there are more interesting things to talk about.

However.  Today, I witnessed the ultimate example of this silliness.  A distinguished old Jewish man who had escaped Nazi Austria gave a talk.  It began with rare footage of Hitler’s triumphant annexation of Austria, showing parades in Vienna which this man attended as a boy.  We then learned of his family’s persecution, his dad’s arrest and narrow escape from Dachau, and their eventual emigration to New York.  There were many touching moments, such as when the man returned to Vienna as a US soldier at the end of the war and was swarmed by adoring neighbors in his bombed-out old neighborhood in Vienna.  By this time, he was an American; back in New York, the family ran a grocery store.

He ended his hour-long talk by expressing disbelief and wonder at his family’s incredible good fortune.  As if out of obligation, he reminded us that 6 million of his people had perished in the Nazi gas chambers.  He then perked up and told us about going back to New York and visiting his old neighborhood.  Guess what?  His family’s old grocery store was now called The Vienna Café!  What a coincidence!  Guess what he said next?  “And if that doesn’t prove there’s a God, I don’t know what does!”  Everyone laughed heartily.

Now, I realize I’m supposed to go along and laugh.  It’s a harmless, light bit of humor.  Permit me two observations:

First, is this all God is now, the Arranger of Mild Coincidences?  Is He the Maytag Repairman, the Elevator Operator sitting on a stool asking you which floor you want?  I’m an atheist, and even I want Him to be more than that.

Second, this was a talk about escaping the Holocaust.  Throughout his talk, this loving, lovable old gentleman avoided mentioning God.  This is all to the good.  The horror and evil of what happened are best expressed with silence.   The guilt of these crimes is crushing enough to contemplate; it is just draining to indict God as well.  But, after expertly navigating this delicate terrain, this good man did mention God.  Despite respectfully remaining in the shadows until the end, God can’t leave well enough alone and sticks His Head through the curtain like a clown.

I know I was probably the only one in the room who was stunned, but I am further stunned at that fact.  The Holocaust, and suffering in general, are huge problems for God.  Nonetheless, we need to discuss them, and to do so, it sometimes helps to leave God and His guilt out of it.  I thought this speaker was going to do just that, but he couldn’t resist getting a laugh by crediting God for a triviality.

The moment was surreal.  We see God standing by, doing nothing about the Holocaust, then intervening to name a café.  This anecdote struck me like the dance number at the end of Slumdog Millionaire.  In that movie, we had seen a street urchin blinded so he would bring in more alms for his master, but hey, gotta dance!  You can say I’m making too much out of it, but it was just sad to see God, ashamed to show His face, then lunging out goofily at the last moment to prove He’s not completely irrelevant. 

In a 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour called The Lonely Place, a loyal farm wife is attacked by a hired hand while her husband sleeps.  She gets free and the farm hand leaves in their truck.  Later, she realizes her husband heard the whole thing; he pretended to sleep because he was afraid to come to her aid.  Or he was in league with the farmhand.  It’s a very squirmy, sinking moment.

If God exists, He can’t or won’t reduce our suffering.  These are the only two possibilities.  The best thing we can say about Him is that He is absent.  To keep Him around as a conjurer or clown is a humiliating demotion and places Him at the scene of the crime.