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God, Scripture and Weather Reports
By William T. Barrante, Watertown
Noel F. Ambery reminds me somewhat of the character Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar: "Too much talk of God." In his criticism of Jeff Messenger's explanation of the Holy Trinity [Mythology Gone Crazy, March 8], Mr. Ambery says that the Christian belief of one God in three persons "borders anywhere from the ridiculous to the absurd." Mr. Ambery, however, is ridiculous when he challenges the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that darkness fell upon the land at the time Jesus died on the cross. He writes that "no one—and I mean no one—anywhere in the world noticed this ‘noontime darkness.’ No one in Rome, Egypt, Greece, Persia, India or China ever recorded ‘noontime darkness.’ Why? Because this was just another product of an overactive Biblical imagination."
I suggest that Mr. Ambery watch one or more of the weather reports that appear each day during the 6 p.m. news programs on the network television stations. "Today it will be cloudy over Boston and New York, sunny in Miami and Denver." Well, apparently no one in Denver that day will report that it was cloudy. Does that mean it wasn't cloudy in New York? None of the Gospel writers claims that the whole world was dark when the darkness fell on Jerusalem. Luke claims that it was caused by an eclipse of the sun, but he was a physician, not an astronomer, and he was the only one of the Evangelists who was not there at the time. Why couldn’t dark clouds have appeared in the sky from noon to midafternoon? Because somebody in Rome or China did not write it down?
But Mr. Ambery's problem with God is more than misunderstanding the weather. He doesn't fathom how an "omnipotent" God can allow acne to exist, let alone allow people to fly planes into the World Trade Center. If there were really a God, the world would be perfect. Wrong! The world is affected by original sin and the free will that God gave to human beings. If a person is born blind or crippled, does that mean there is no God or that God is cruel? Or does that simply give human beings an opportunity to act as Jesus did? In the movie The Robe, the Roman tribune, played by Richard Burton, is told by a crippled girl that Jesus cured her. "But he left you a cripple?" The girl tells him that it would be easy for her to be happy if Jesus made her able to walk. But after Jesus came to see her, she could sing and smile, so that others in her condition would know that physical problems don't have to stand in the way of a happy life.
Mr. Ambery apparently believes that a real God would cure acne and the common cold. But there are human beings trying to do that, and that is what God wants. Did Mr. Ambery expect God to grab those four airplanes out of the sky on September 11? I do not think Noel Ambery should be putting the "ridiculous" and "absurd" labels on anyone.
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