Elizabeth Edwards and God
I found these excerpts from an MSNBC interview with Elizabeth Edwards intriguing (she’s being interviewed by Jonathan Alter, a cancer survivor and ESCR-supporting liberal… just for some context here.).
You’ve kept God out of the public discussion of your situation. Why?
I had to think about a God who would not save my son. Wade was—and I have lots of evidence; it’s not just his mother saying it—a gentle and good boy. He reached out to people who were misfits and outcasts all the time. He could not stand for people to say nasty things about other people; he just didn’t want it. For a 16-year-old boy, he was really extraordinary in this regard. I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t. You’d think that if God was going to protect somebody, he’d protect that boy. But not only did he not protect him, the wind blew him from the road. The hand of God blew him from the road. So I had to think, “What kind of God do I have that doesn’t intervene—in fact, may even participate—in the death of this good boy?” I talk about it in the book, that I had to accept that my God was a God who promised enlightenment and salvation. And that’s all. Didn’t promise us protection. I’ve had to come to grips with a God that fits my own experience, which is, my God could not be offering protection and not have protected my boy.
You didn’t lose your faith, you changed your faith? Or did you lose it for a time?
I’m not praying for God to save me from cancer. I’m not. God will enlighten me when the time comes. And if I’ve done the right thing, I will be enlightened. And if I believe, I’ll be saved. And that’s all he promises me.
Well, like I said, some interesting points. Let’s take them:
- “A God who would not save her son.” While the loss is tragic, she’s not the only mother to have a lost a good child. What about all the mothers and fathers who are losing their toddlers, their seven year olds, their young babies to cancer? These innocent lives being lost day after day are surely in the same league as her son’s death in a car accident. It’s not that God wouldn’t save her son. “My ways are not your ways,” “As far as the heavens are above the earth / so high above our ways / the ways of the Lord.”
- God loves us. He “holds us in the palm of his hand.” “All the hairs on your head are counted.” These bible verses, the verses of comfort that we have all heard so often, do not jive with her talking about God not protecting her son. Of course God protected him. He protects all of us. Just because someone dies tragically doesn’t mean they weren’t protected. If that was true then God must not protect a whole lot of us. I am sure that some of this is grief talking, and as we know, grief is not the most rational thing. But at the same time, all Christian groups espouse the idea that God loves us and takes care of all of us. Death isn’t something that only happens to the bad (see my previous post, “Gethsemane and the problem of pain”). Just because you die tragically doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love you.
- “If I believe, I’ll be saved”: We’ll leave aside the theological quibbles (cf James 2) on this one. But it sounds like we’ve got a bit of cafeteria faith here. Now far be it from us to know. But if she’s changed her faith, then what does she believe? In “enlightenment?” What’s that?
I always find thinking about these things interesting, especially when the idea of suffering and death are involved. Does that make me morbid? I hope not–I hope it makes me more human. As Doestoevksy said, “I am studying what it means to be a human being.”
