Dear friends,

Shortly after Catholica was published yesterday there was a terrible road accident on the Great Western Highway less than 600 metres across the short valley that separates us from the highway. One person died, another is reported to be in a critical condition in Nepean Hospital, two rescue helicopters were brought in and landed on the highway to evacuate the injured and the traffic on the Highway came to a standstill for over two hours. One radio report said the traffic was banked back to Katoomba — a distance of around 18 kilometres.

We were on our way to a family 21st birthday party and couldn't get out of our street onto the highway. In the long wait for the road to be cleared many people alighted from their cars and could be seen chatting all the way up the highway.

	All of us, at some stage of our lives, become caught up in accidents like this.

All of us, at some stage of our lives, become caught up in accidents like this. Throughout the rest of yesterday and even into today my thoughts have been extended in some sense of prayer and sympathy for the victims. I don't perceive this as something uniquely Christian, or even religious. It's more some kind of natural human inclination. We can so easily self-identify with the anonymous (to us) individuals who would have been quietly "going about their business" — in this instance, more than likely, at least the occupants of one vehicle seemed to be out for a Sunday drive in the Blue Mountains. In a flash, not only are their immediate plans for the day changed, but quite often the course of their entire lives.

Just how "accidental" are "accidents"?

A continuing question that intrigues me about life is the one of just how "accidental" are these situations that erupt so suddenly and disrupt our plans so irrevocably when we happen to be the victim? I've been involved in a number of traffic accidents but never anything as devastating as what I witnessed yesterday. I have a cousin who dived into a harbour one night following a night out with friends and fractured her spin leading to an unplanned life confined to a wheelchair. I have other friends who have suffered the death of one of their children and that has a deep percussive effect that reverberates for the rest of one's life. The best way I relate to these sort of situations is through the non-physical accident that happened in my life in the early 1990s where I lost my businesses, my marriage and out of frustration or desperation I nearly took my own life. In a sense I still see myself "rebuilding" my life from those events which are now a decade and a half distant.

My own conclusion after a decade and a half musing on this sort of stuff is that none of these acts are "acts of God". God doesn't sit around deliberately facilitating accidents as some mystical means of "teaching us lessons" yet, at the same time, there is some "mystical relationship" — or should the more accurate expression be "spiritual relationship"? — between the accidents that occur in life and this Mystery at the heart of life we try to condense into the expression "God".

God putting his "great hairy arm" down into our prieval stew. How much is our imagery of God formed by artist like Michaelangelo?

God doesn't cause accidents — including tsunamis, droughts, floods and earthquakes. I honestly believe all of those things are entirely and wholely "natural" events that unfold within the laws of physics that God built into Creation. We might not understand many of those laws even today when we have seemingly discovered so much but our lack of knowledge does not given us permission to then claim because we cannot explain the cause of such and such then it must have been caused by God putting his great hairy arm down into our stew and causing it. I honestly do not believe God intervenes in his creation in any physical way that breaks any of the laws that he created. I do not believe he intervenes either for good reasons — for example, to fix up any mistakes any individual or which collectively we human beings might have made — and I don't believe he intervenes for any negative reasons — such as creating some situation that will teach either an individual, or humanity collectively, some "lesson". I honestly believe that visions of God as some interventionist in Creation where he either suspends or contradicts the fundamental laws which God created is a theologically untenable picture of God today given the knowledge that God is revealing to us about how Creation is structured.

God is not some "clockmaker architect"...

At the same time as holding all the foregoing beliefs, neither do I believe that God is merely some architect or clockmaker who set the universe, and all its laws "ticking", and he's gone back to sleep and will wake up at some point in the future to review what we did with Creation, or what Creation did with itself. I do sincerely believe God is in a dynamic relationship with Creation. God does care and God does continue to have input into how creation as a whole unfolds and how each of our lives unfolds. I don't believe though that God needs to meddle in any "magic" — or "miracles", or "signs" — to telegraph to us that He (or She) is still around. As I keep suggesting I think the single greatest "miracle" we can witness at any instant of our lives is simply to hold our own hand up in front of us and marvel at its "creation". Who "made" our own hand? Was it our parents? Was it ourselves? Was it "nature" — or the "chance" evolution of gzillions of molecules over the eons to create the genetic instructions that tell the cells in our body how to construct a human hand? I don't think so. The "human hand" — or any organ in the human body let alone the complete human body itself — is all the testimony we need to the genius and power of "the Creator of Life". Of all the "signs" we need in the universe we are the greatest "miracle" there is — and that's the case even given any sort of failing or deformity we might exhibit.

One of the challenges that seems to be facing all the major religions these days is a disjunction between sectors of the population who hunger for miracles and signs — who seem to want constant reassurance that God is "there" (or "here") and God does care — and an increasingly enlarging sector of the human family who have "moved past all that" and who are searching for a more "holistic" theology or picture of God which better accords with the perceptions of Creation that modern human beings are slowly picking up from their study of the nature of that which was created. I submit, our knowledge of the fundamental laws of creation does, over time, cause us to have to change our theologies and our understanding of the mind of the Creator God.

I don't believe the institutional Catholic Church has gone anywhere remotely close to even examining the question, let alone coming up with answers, to this great divide that seems to be emerging in the perceptions of the human family about this "base nature" of God. The big question to me is: how do we move from a theology which seems grounded in the imagery of a "God of miracles, signs and interventions" to some new imaging of God where God is not perceived to be "asleep or disinterested" but who is still perceived to be in a dynamic and loving relationship with both the whole of Creation and with each individual that makes it up, but who doesn't physically intervene and break or suspend any of the laws of creation?

Those who run around trying to constantly prove their "goodness" by their loyalty to the teachings of the Church will, of course, have moved over the last paragraph without the essential question even registering. I think it will register for many others though — and it is those whom I am endeavouring to address.

I think a theology is possible that does remain wholely consistent with that great body of accumulated wisdom and Revelation the Church is supposed to be the guardian of and which, at the same time, is also wholely consistent with the new understandings that seem to be emerging in society seeking an understanding of God that sits more comfortably with the new "perceived realities" of existence that modern science forces upon us.

I honestly do believe God does intervene in Creation. I in fact believe God's interventions happen a heck of a lot more often, and in far greater measure, than under any view of God that is even remotely possible under the "God of miracles" type theology that I was brought up on. To move to this new understanding of God's relationship to us I believe we need to drop our own psychological addictions to a "God of physical miracles and physical interventions". I believe the chief (in fact "only" but I wouldn't push that too strongly in the present climate) means by which God intervenes in Creation is through the power of — wait for it — "the Word". It is through the power of thought and ideas. Like a farmer planting seed in the parched soils of outback New South Wales a few weeks ago, God is unceasing in "planting the seeds of ideas" in the parched, incompetent minds of his human family. God is "talking" to us all the time. Where else do "the brilliant thoughts" we come up with at times come from?

The challenge we face as human beings I think is two-fold. The first is one of "stilling ourselves" sufficiently in order to be able to even "hear" God's suggestions. The second is one of basically "stilling our egos and insecurities" so that they do not "drown out with doubt" the course of action we each need to take "to follow the will of the Father" (as Jesus labelled it).

Coming back to the accident story that began this commentary...

I honestly think these sorts of events, like the one I witnessed yesterday, are truly accidents. Now and again some suicidal person may deliberately drive their vehicle into oncoming traffic without regard to the safety of others in order to take their own lives, but even for the innocent victims in those sorts of situations, in a wider theological perspective these events are properly and truly described as "accidents". The big question for each of us when these sorts of accidents occurs is how we respond to them. I broadly think we have two choices: we can try to battle though them on our own psychological and spiritual sources — perhaps aided by the similar resources of friends — or we can seek "God's guidance": God's spiritual source.

One sees many people who become crushed not just physically but emotionally and spiritually by "life's accidents". I think all of us from our web of life experience can also point to individuals whose lives literally do become "transformed" by these "accidents in life". That becomes the point where their life literally does begin to take on "new meaning" and they become individuals "transformed in spirit" even if they still bear physical scars of their accident.

Do you have a view on any of the substantive issues I have raised in this commentary? Would you like to share them with us in our forum? The principal objective of the Catholica endeavour is to be bringing a community together who can discuss issues like this in intelligent and conversational ways. It is not so much that we are seeking to get "our own rocks off" about some issue but that we hope our experiences of life might in some way be beneficial to others who are today having to travel some pathway we have already travelled.

UPDATE: A report subsequently appeared in the Blue Mountains Gazette on 9th May 2007 confirming that one person died in the accident. You can read the Gazette report HERE.

Blessings, Brian

Brian Coyne is the editor and publisher of Catholica Australia.

We welcome your thoughts in response to this commentary in our forum.

Brian Coyne can be contacted at: Brian Coyne <editor@catholica.com.au>

©2007 Brian Coyne

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