How many disciples did Jesus have?

Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

The Dude Abides

Home
Progressive Christian

Last updated on: January 6, 2006 at 3:01 pm by Cathleen Falsani

2006-01-06T15:01:00-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

GODSTUFF:

‘IT’S NOT AN ACT OF GOD, IT’S AN ACT OF GUYS’

Lost faith. False hope. Miracles and mistakes.

All have been on my mind as the story of tragedy — then hope — then tragedy mixed with betrayal (by the media, by the mining company, by God) unfolded this week at the Sago mine in West Virginia.

What must those good people at Sago Baptist Church have been feeling? The folks who were singing “Amazing Grace,” offering prayers of thanksgiving, and preparing a potluck to end all potlucks for a dozen coal miners trapped for nearly two days in the mine and, they were told, miraculously found alive. The folks who learned their miracle was a mistake.

A horrible, cruel mistake.

The miners weren’t coming to the church for a celebratory feast. They were never coming home. They were dead.

The video images of Anna Castro, a middle-aged woman whose cousin died in the mining accident, screaming at the television cameras, screaming at God: “We had a miracle and it was taken away from us!” are haunting. In the small Appalachian town where Christian faith is part of the fabric of the community, they “don’t even know if there is a Lord anymore,” Castro said.

She was given false hope. At least that’s what a lot of people are saying. False hope, as if someone gave her a syringe full of Kool-Aid instead of antivenom for a rattlesnake bite.

False hope. Is there such a thing?

I sat at my desk Thursday trying to decide which theologian or rabbi or priest or imam I would call to ask that question: What is false hope? What happens when miracles turn out to be mistakes?

Lots of people came to mind, good men and women gifted in all things pastoral, experienced in dealing with grief — that of others and of their own.

But I wanted something grittier. Something real-er. The truth — straight up, no twist.

So I called Studs Terkel.

He’s like Yoda. Ancient, sage, and irascible, with a deep well of irreverence and an unquenchable thirst for justice, particularly on behalf of the common man. Like migrant farmers or taxi drivers or coal miners.

Studs, who is a remarkably sprightly 93 (and a half) despite having had open-heart surgery over the summer and taking a nasty fall down the stairs in 2004 — he describes it as balletic choreography gone awry, “like Bob Fosse, kind of jazzy” — wrote a book not too long ago called Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times.

So I figured he knew a little bit about the subject at hand, even though he’d be the first to tell you he’s an enthusiastic agnostic. Still, he’s a fan of religion and some of his best friends are believers.

As I walk into his living room, Studs is sipping a Scotch on the rocks, waving a copy of the morning’s paper, where he’s circled several paragraphs of the mining disaster story in black ink, and railing about misguided media coverage.

“The message is wrong,” Studs tells me. “There’s no mention of the fact, hardly — a throw-away mention at best — that there were a couple of hundred irregulations and violations by this outfit!”

He’s talking about the 208 federal safety violations the Sago mine was cited for last year, according to U.S. Labor Department statistics. Of those violations, which included citations for high levels of combustible materials, the largest single fine was $440 and the lowest was $60, according to news reports.

“It’s not an act of God, it’s an act of guys — guys exploiting other guys!” Studs spat, righteous indignation flushing his already rosy cheeks. “Ya see, when you say, ‘false hope,’ you hope that God was on their side. And it’s not an act of God, it’s an act of man! There were a couple hundred violations and who oversees that? . . . And if they’re fined 250 bucks it’s like two cents.”

The real false hope, and Studs believes there is indeed such a thing, was not that families were told a dozen men who were already dead were alive, but the circumstances that led to their deaths in the first place.

“False hope is [believing that] the company is taking care of all the regulations. It’s man who betrayed, not God, unless you look as God as a certain force, as I do . . . God in every person. We have the potential to be brighter than we are. We have the potential to be better than we are. And that’s the God in us, to me.”

What would he say to Anna Castro if he had the chance?

“Boy, in the first place, I couldn’t. I mean, how could you because grief is so personal, as I know,” Studs says. His wife of more than 60 years, Ida, died in 1999. He still gets emotional when he talks about her. “If you believe in a God and it’s a God of love and miracles, well then, by all means. If you believe in a hereafter and you meet your beloved ones, by all means. If it gives you solace, that’s plenty good enough.

“But to say ‘false hopes,’ false hopes is that guy on TV who was saying that things for miners are much better today than they were 30 or 40 years ago. False hope is that there would be no accident such as this. . . . False hope is that all those violators would have been kicked out of business long ago, and if anything, criminally tried.”

Making sure everything possible is done to prevent tragedies like the Sago mine from happening again would be a miracle, he says.

“To see that these regulations are fulfilled and that work is easier and safer for the fathers and the sons and the brother and the uncles — I don’t know what else you can offer?”

True hope.

And the straight dope.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

January 2, 2006

Next Post

January 15, 2006

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A little happy ARCHIVED COLUMNS BECOMING FAMILY BelieberNess BREAKING NEWS! Disquiet Time DJ JEFF'S SPINTASMS falsani FILM from OCRegister From Sojo.net God Nods GODSTUFF I Take Requests incubatespirit LURKING IN THE NARTHEX On My Nightstand ONEMOMS Polling the Room PONTIFEXCELLENT Thru My Eyes TWO CENTS Uncategorized Upcoming Events VASCO VASCO'S HEART

Select a Month January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 July 2014 May 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 April 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 October 2003 March 2003 December 2002 October 2002 January 2001

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many disciples did Jesus have?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Seven One hundred Thirty Twelve