Case Dismissed

“If we could under­stand every­thing God does, then He’d have to be a small god–small enough to fit in our lit­tle minds.”

Given my pro­fes­sion and beliefs, this story nat­u­rally caught my attention:

Nebraska state sen­a­tor sues God

Injunc­tion sought against Him for allegedly caus­ing deaths, mak­ing threats

LINCOLN, Neb. — The defen­dant in a state senator’s law­suit is accused of caus­ing untold death and hor­ror and threat­en­ing to cause more still. He can be sued in Dou­glas County, the leg­is­la­tor claims, because He’s everywhere.

State Sen. Ernie Cham­bers sued God last week. Angered by another law­suit he con­sid­ers friv­o­lous, Cham­bers says he’s try­ing to make the point that any­body can file a law­suit against anybody.

Cham­bers says in his law­suit that God has made ter­ror­ist threats against the sen­a­tor and his con­stituents, inspired fear and caused “wide­spread death, destruc­tion and ter­ror­iza­tion of mil­lions upon mil­lions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”

The Omaha sen­a­tor, who skips morn­ing prayers dur­ing the leg­isla­tive ses­sion and often crit­i­cizes Chris­tians, also says God has caused “fear­some floods … hor­ren­dous hur­ri­canes, ter­ri­fy­ing tornadoes.”

He’s seek­ing a per­ma­nent injunc­tion against the Almighty.

Suit in protest

Cham­bers said the law­suit was trig­gered by a fed­eral suit filed against a judge who recently barred words such as “rape” and “vic­tim” from a sex­ual assault trial.

The accuser in the crim­i­nal case, Tory Bowen, sued Lan­caster Dis­trict Judge Jef­frey Cheuvront, claim­ing that he vio­lated her free speech rights.

Cham­bers said Bowen’s law­suit is inap­pro­pri­ate because the Nebraska Supreme Court has already con­sid­ered the case and fed­eral courts fol­low the deci­sions of state supreme courts on state matters.

“This law­suit hav­ing been filed and being of such ques­tion­able merit cre­ates a cir­cum­stance where my law­suit is appro­pri­ately filed,” Cham­bers said. “Peo­ple might call it friv­o­lous but if they read it they’ll see there are very seri­ous issues I have raised.”

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Richard Kopf, in an order last week, expressed doubts about whether Bowen’s law­suit “has any legal basis what­so­ever” and said sanc­tions may be imposed against Bowen and her attor­neys if they fail to show cause for the lawsuit.

The Asso­ci­ated Press usu­ally does not iden­tify accusers in sex-assault cases, but Bowen has allowed her name to be used pub­licly because of the issue over the judge’s lan­guage restrictions.

Cheuvront declared a mis­trial in the sex­ual assault trial in July, say­ing pre­trial pub­lic­ity made it impos­si­ble to gather enough impar­tial jurors.

Putting aside the fact that Cham­bers is abus­ing the legal sys­tem and wast­ing the scarce tax­payer resources he was elected to pre­serve and pro­tect, his law­suit is a won­der­ful illus­tra­tion of the under­ly­ing mean­ing of this week’s quote.

First of all, note the con­tra­dic­tions. Cham­bers is said to skip leg­isla­tive prayers and ridicule Chris­tians, yet he acknowl­edges that God “is every­where,” thereby mak­ing Nebraska — or any other wordly venue — an appro­pri­ate place for his law­suit to be heard.

He also admits God’s awe­some, incom­pre­hen­si­ble power with his alle­ga­tions that God causes, among other atroc­i­ties, nat­ural dis­as­ters. But therein lies the fal­lacy in Cham­bers’ rea­son­ing, com­mon to so many believ­ers and nonbelievers.

Have you ever said, “I don’t know why God let _____ hap­pen?” Or “I don’t under­stand why God let a ter­ri­ble thing hap­pen to such won­der­ful peo­ple”? Many peo­ple con­clude that, if God is all-powerful, bad things should never hap­pen because He should step in and pre­vent them. Thus, they develop a per­cep­tion of God that is at odds with the lov­ing, car­ing Father-image many of us grew up with, and lose faith.

Why things hap­pen is a mys­tery that we can­not solve. The answers tran­scend the capac­ity of our “lit­tle minds” to rea­son and under­stand. The best we can do is rec­og­nize that there are two dis­tinct forces at work in the world: Good and evil. We are liv­ing in, as the say­ing goes, a “bro­ken” and sin­ful world.

I do not believe, how­ever, that God just sits back and allows hor­ri­ble things to hap­pen nor have I lost faith in the face of cat­a­strophic events. That does not mean, how­ever, that I don’t ques­tion, on a daily basis, God’s plan for my life and the lives of those I love.

I only half-jokingly say, “Ques­tions? You bet I have ques­tions. And when I cross over into eter­nity, I am going to con­duct the depo­si­tion to end all depo­si­tions. I know how to ask ques­tions and by God, — lit­er­ally — I am going to get some answers!”

Just for starters, I want to know why my mother spent the last few years of her life slowly slip­ping away until she finally became com­pletely unreach­able. How was “the long good-bye” we were forced to expe­ri­ence part of an over­ar­ch­ing divine plan for her life or ours? If I were to pose the inquiry using Cham­bers’ ver­nac­u­lar, I would insist that God “caused” my mother’s men­tal state to dete­ri­o­rate slowly to the point that she no longer rec­og­nized her fam­ily. She spent the last two years of her life in a com­pletely debil­i­tated state, caus­ing my sis­ter and I to sit by her bed­side on more occa­sions than I can count, look at each other and rhetor­i­cally ask, “What is the point of this?”

If I looked at the world through the veneer of Cham­bers’ ridicu­lous law­suit, I would also con­tend that my sis­ter, hav­ing endured with me the ordeal of los­ing a par­ent to Alzheimer’s dis­ease, was “caused” by God to develop can­cer and suf­fer surgery, chemother­apy and radi­a­tion. Tak­ing Cham­bers’ logic to its ulti­mately illog­i­cal con­clu­sion, I would then curse God and seek an injunc­tion against him for caus­ing but let­ting so many oth­ers suc­cumb to the same dis­ease from which my sis­ter was cured, thereby ask­ing a court to “bal­ance the equities.”

All such attempts to con­cep­tu­al­ize and char­ac­ter­ize God within a dis­tinctly human frame­work are, ulti­mately, inad­e­quate and futile. The Bible is replete with ref­er­ences to God’s awe­some power (“He is more awe­some than all who sur­round him.” Psalm 89:7), but instructs that we can­not and will not fully under­stand God’s actions until a spe­cific time:

For now we are look­ing in a mir­ror that gives only a dim (blurred) reflec­tion of real­ity as in a rid­dle or enigma, but then when per­fec­tion comes we shall see in real­ity and face to face! Now I know in part (imper­fectly), but then I shall know and under­stand fully and clearly, even in the same man­ner as I have been fully and clearly known and under­stood by God. (1 Corinthi­ans 13:12)

So unfor­tu­nately for Cham­bers, faith is not a quid pro quo (Latin mean­ing “some­thing for some­thing”) propo­si­tion. And God’s actions are not only inca­pable of human com­pre­hen­sion, they are not sus­cep­ti­ble to con­straint or the injunc­tive relief Cham­bers seeks.

There is, of course, humor in the notion of track­ing God down and serv­ing him with a civil com­plaint. (Can you imag­ine the plight of that poor process server?) As noted, the idea of depos­ing God is an attrac­tive one, but think­ing that we can hail God into a court of law and have him answer before a judge or jury for his actions is an attempt to impose human author­ity — just as Alcorn sug­gests — upon a deity clothed with infi­nite power, author­ity and glory.

Cham­bers should quit wast­ing his time — and his con­stituents’ tax dol­lars — on his friv­o­lous law­suit, but engage in seri­ous trial prepa­ra­tion. Because there will be a trial, ulti­mately, but not in rela­tion­ship to the case dis­cussed in the arti­cle above. It will be a bench, not jury, trial. Cham­bers will be a lit­i­gant, as will God, but God won’t be a defen­dant. Rather, He’ll be func­tion­ing in the same capac­ity as the indi­vid­ual who usu­ally wears a black robe — and swing­ing a very spe­cial gavel. Most objec­tions will likely be over­ruled and the court will award a rem­edy address­ing all of the things about which Cham­bers com­plains — and more.

The court will also be empow­ered, how­ever, to impose puni­tive dam­ages. And the judg­ment will be unap­peal­able as soon as this phrase is uttered: “Case dismissed.”

“In other Words” is hosted this week at Joy in the Morn­ing.

Tech­no­rati Tags: In “other” Words

On the Same Topic:

• Do You Iden­tify With and Relate to Martha or Mary? (Part Two)
• Seek the Best Result
• Be Still and Know
• In “other” Words: Faith Leads to Can­dle Moments
• In “Other” Words: Do You Iden­tify With and Relate to Martha or Mary? (Part One)