Where is God?

 

The lift-out section in my Saturday morning newspaper had a two-page spread telling the story of an amazing woman who narrowly survived a terrorist attack.  Gill Hicks was going to work on the London underground on July 7th 2005.  She and other passengers were unaware that a terrorist with a backpack of explosive had also entered their compartment.  On that train twenty-six people were killed that morning... in London’s worst terrorist attack.  The detonation was triggered just metres away from Hicks.  It seriously damaged her voice, lungs and hearing – she also lost both legs just below the knees.  The story was an inspiring story of grit and determination.  Gill Hick not only survived the explosion but, as an artist, has gone on to produce a show called, “Still Alive and Kicking”.

My Saturday paper regularly features similar human interest stories.  The week before it was a story about the rescue of a team of men trapped in a collapsed tunnel in India.  And the week before that it had a three-page article about the late Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.  I don’t remember the details of many more such human interest stories that regularly feature in my Saturday paper.  However one thing I’ve noticed is that there is a fairly common pattern: I find week by week that I search in vain for any references to God.  Okay, I have no idea where Gill Hicks is at when it comes to faith in God but Navalny, who was once a militant atheist, had undergone a Christian conversion and was very outspoken about his faith and that it was his Christian world and life view that drove his opposition to President Putin.  None of that rated a mention in the article.

What has puzzled and amazed me in these stories I’ve been reading is that someone can experience all the horrors of something like a train bombing and the months and years of rehabilitation without any apparent reference to God or even spirituality.  I need to be cautious of course.  Maybe the issue is not with the victim but with the reporter who wrote the story.  Perhaps the “godless” nature of these stories is more a reflection of the writer than the person being written about – and that’s certainly true of the Navalny story.

In this regard I can’t help though but notice a rather stark contrast.  One of Australia’s most prominent atheists, Phillip Adams, also writes a weekly column in the Weekend Magazine of The Australian.  But Adams regularly gives God a mention – although never an honourable mention, I should add.  So why can’t other writers tell us whether the horror of getting caught up in a terrorist attack brings someone closer to God or drives them away from Him.  For me that would be an interesting factor in such survival stories.  However all I got to read about Gill Hicks was the writer’s comment that the resources for her recovery had been “drawn from a bottomless well of courage”.  The times when God or faith were mentioned in these human interest stories have been extremely rare – while God rates a mention with Adams every other month or so.

I do have a theory as to why God is either ignored or lampooned by most journalists.  We have a generation of journalist who have been brought up to believe that evolution (science?) disproves God.  Of course it does nothing of the kind.  But it does mean that a generation of journalist have been brought up in a context where we no longer need God to explain some of the more troubling aspects of life.  We’re, supposedly, just living in a purely materialistic world where everything can be explained in terms of time plus chance.  We’re the product of time plus chance.  And Gill Hicks “just happened” to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We Christians still insist in believing in a Creator God.  Not only that but we also believe in a God who sovereignly overseas all the details of our daily life – who even numbers the hairs of our head and who permitted the evil of that terrorist bombing and who enabled Gill Hicks to make such an amazing recovery.  Since there are people who still believe all that, I can understand why then the likes of Phillip Adams feel that they need to have yet another shot at God and at those who believe in Him.  Well, he’s going to be in for a rude shock one day!

John Westendorp
2MaxFM 2/3/2025

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dads

Image
  Recently two young men I know were both unexpectedly taken from this life.   Both had taken their roles as husbands and fathers seriously.   Both had young children still in primary school.   To say that their departures left a huge gap in their respective families would be a massive understatement.   It traumatised not only their immediate families.   Their wider families too were devastated by the loss of a brother, an uncle, a son.   So were the churches in which they had been seriously involved. My heart goes out to their widows.   Being a single mum is not for the faint-hearted – as some of you well know from experience.   I sympathise too with these children who will grow up without a Dad at home.   In such situations it’s always a blessing when an uncle or Granddad or some other significant male steps into the breach.   Of course what helps too is that in both instances this happened in Christian families and Christian ...
Read more

Work

Image
  Two recent experiences with tradesmen brought home two valuable lessons when it comes to our work ethic. Our kitchen sink had become blocked – again.   It was only a little over a year since that had previously happened.   I found myself wondering whether we had a structural problem with our plumbing that caused frequent blockages or whether the previous plumber had not done a very good job in clearing on the previous ocassion.   This plumber asked me, “John, do you want a cheap quick fix or do you want to try and deal with the cause of the problem – which will take a little longer and cost you a little more?”   That was a no brainer for me.   I wasn’t looking forward to annual visits from a plumber, just to keep our kitchen wastewater flowing into the sewers.   So we bit the bullet.   I found it absolutely staggering to see the gunk that our plumber pulled out of our wastewater drain.   Obviously the previous plumber had merely poked...
Read more

Lament...?!?

Image
You don’t need to read much of the Bible’s Psalms to appreciate the raw emotions portrayed by its song-writers.   There’s the whole gamut of emotions – from ecstatic joy, wonder and praise right through to profound sadness, grief and despair. For the former you only have to read the final Psalm which has a whole orchestra, complete with bells and whistles, to express the glorious praises of our God.   The final words from the Psalms are pertinent: “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.   Hallelujah.” For the latter, just begin with Psalm 3.   King David, persecuted by his own son, Absalom, laments: “Lord, how my foes increase!   There are many who attack me.”   Or what about the terrible sadness of Psalm 22?   It begins with words Jesus took on His lips as He suffered hellish agony on the cross, ”My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.” Speaking to one of my daughters recently, we agreed that these days we don’t do laments very well. ...
Read more