A World Without Accidents

"a world in which accidents do not happen would be so different from the actual world as to be unrecognisable. If all air crashes were miraculously soft ones, there would scarcely be any need for runways; if all aircraft engines were divine guaranteed against fault there would be no need to service them. And if planes flew on after their engines or wings failed or fell off, there would be no need for engines or wings in the first place. The performance of one tiny miracle, provided it could be relied on, would so destroy the underlying principle of causality as to transform the world into a completely irrational state. What need or possibility would there then be for human intelligence? What chance, even, of appreciating the occasional miracle?"

James Jones, Why Do People Suffer? The Scandal of Pain in God's World (Oxford: Lion Publishing, 1993), 58, citing "a religious columnist for London's The Times".

Whose Side Is God On?

"Recently I was talking to a young couple who walked away unscathed from their car which was completely written-off in a road accident. They were understandably greatly relieved:

'Guess God was watching out for us,' they said.

It's good to be able to join in the sense of relief and thanksgiving. The only problem with this view is that if God is with those people who escape a tragedy, what does that say to those people who don't escape? Does it mean that God has taken side against those who suffer?

One Saturday evening in March 1987 a car ferry, The Herald of Free Enterprise, was leaving the port of Zeebrugge, off the coast of Belgium. It capsized in the darkness. nearly two hundred passengers were drowned.

The following day an able-seaman was interviewed on television. because of a change in rotas he had not been on duty the previous night. He was devastated by the death of so many of his mates and overwhelmed with relief that through a last-minute change in the rotas he had escaped the tragedy.

Trying to find words to describe his sense of relief and good fortune he added,

'I guess God was on my side.'

But if God was on the side of this seaman, does that mean that he took sides against those who drowned and died?"

James Jones, Why Do People Suffer? The Scandal of Pain in God's World (Oxford: Lion Publishing, 1993), 52-53.