Dan

Calabrese

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February 16, 2009

Answering Heather MacDonald: Why Didn’t God Save Flight 3407?

One of the leading lights among the increasingly aggressive movement of atheist conservatives is Heather MacDonald, a fellow with the Manhattan Institute and one of the nation’s leading conservative thinkers on urban policy, which she demonstrates regularly through her contributions to her organization’s outstanding City Journal.

Ms. MacDonald should stick to urban policy. But she does not. She is also a very regular and rather strident contributor to a new blog titled Secular Right, where she frequently holds forth on the folly of belief in God – something she has termed as “oogedy-boogedy.” I think she borrowed that from Kathleen Parker, who used the term to cast aspersions on admirers of Sarah Palin.

MacDonald thinks she has something with the respective outcome of two recent airplane mishaps, and on Friday she posted a challenge to Christians. I will gladly take up the challenge. Here is MacDonald’s question, quoted in its entirety:

Will Bill O’Reilly or anyone else who saw the hand of God in the safe landing of US Airways Flight 1549 this January please explain why God chose not to save Continental Connection Flight 3407, which plunged into a house outside of Buffalo last night, killing all 49 people on board and a resident on the ground?

Among the explanations which will not be accepted: “humans cannot possibly fathom God’s mysterious ways.” Oh yes they can, apparently – when something good happens. Having found proof of God’s love in the safe conclusion of US Airways Flight 1549, believers cannot now turn around and claim that God’s ways are veiled just because something disastrous happens. If it’s legitimate to infer beneficence from a happy outcome, it is equally plausible to infer malice or at least indifference from a negative outcome. You can’t pick and choose the actions in which you find God’s will transparent.

OK. First of all, Ms. MacDonald is welcome to try to make the rules by declaring the kinds of answers she will or will not accept, but just because she won’t accept an answer doesn’t mean it can’t be the correct one.

That said, let’s consider what people mean when they say they see God’s hand at work in a situation. When people thank God for a blessing, it doesn’t mean they consider themselves better than another person who may have received a seemingly lesser blessing, or no blessing at all. Two people are up for a job. Both pray that they will get it. One does and gives thanks. By giving thanks, does the one who got the job presume that God took his side over the other poor bastard? Of course not. He merely gives thanks because he is grateful. Maybe the other guy didn’t get the job because he didn’t deserve to get it, and God saw no need to intervene in contradiction of that fact.

Of course, that’s getting turned down for a job. That’s different from a bunch of people dying in a plane crash. Did God perform a “miracle” to save the people on Flight 1549, but decline to do the same for those on Flight 3407? And if so, why?

For starters, God’s involvement in the safe landing of Flight 1549 need not amount to a supernatural event that was the only thing preventing its demise. Obviously, Flight 1549 had an exceptional pilot who did his job extremely well. But we don’t have to make an all-God or no-God choice, as Ms. MacDonald seems to insist we do. God’s providence may have been at work in the kind of man Capt. Sullenberger is, and in the fact that he was particularly focused that day. Perhaps someone on the plane prayed for Capt. Sullenberger before takeoff. Maybe no one on Flight 3407 did the equivalent. We can’t possibly know.

What we can say, however, is that Ms. MacDonald doesn’t get to make the consistency rules for God, however much she may want to. Christians understand this to be a fallen world in which, because of the power of sin, bad things happen to all kinds of people – good and bad people alike. When God spares us from harm, we are exceedingly grateful, particularly because we know he isn’t obligated to always do so, and we don’t know the reasons he chooses to intervene in some situations but not in others.

When 3,000 died in the Twin Towers, it could have been 50,000. Those who were spared should be grateful. When 100,000 died in the tsunami in Asia a few years back, many wondered why God would allow the carnage. So did I. But God is under no obligation to save anyone from anything.

And here is the answer I am sure Ms. MacDonald will never accept, but it is the most pertinent answer of all. Quite possibly, he didn’t save Flight 3407 because he just didn’t want to.

Every decision God makes is ultimately in service to him, for his glory and for his good pleasure. Not ours. He loves us, you bet, but because he is God and not human, he and only he can righteously choose to act only when it serves his interests. So it is conceivable, although we can only speculate, that it gave God more pleasure to save Flight 1549 than it would have to save Flight 3407, and while that will not be of much comfort to those on Flight 3407, that is the only reason God needs to choose as he does.

It is not surprising that we try to box God into our typically American notions of fairness, as if he is a CEO drawing up the salary scale, but God doesn’t have to follow our rules in choosing how and when to extend his loving mercy to us.

I hope that clears things up, Heather. Thanks for asking.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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