Q
uestion
137
Is God “in control”? If so, does that mean
God made (insert horrible thing here) happen
to pull off a greater plan? Why doesn’t God
intervene in a disaster?
Gary Peluso-Verdend
Who is...
?
Gary Peluso-Verdend
When I was young and could handle the calories, I could eat a
bag of peanut-butter sandwich cookies that I dipped into Hi-C.A.
When I was a sophomore in college, four of my high school class-
mates attended a party during Christmas break. There was drink-
ing. I don’t remember all the details anymore. But, as I remember
the story, they left the party, got into the one car they’d driven to the party, and
started home.
The driver fell asleep. Their car moved into cross traffi c and was struck
twice, and the second vehicle set the car with my classmates in it on fi re. It was
about 1 a.m. A man in a nearby house was playing cards with his wife when
he heard the accident. That man ran outside and saw the burning car. He
opened the driver’s side door, burning his own hands. He thought the driver
was dead. The only other person he could reach was the passenger in the
backseat, behind the driver.
At grave risk to his own life, the man pulled the backseat passenger from
the car. Very soon after the man and the boy in his arms were clear, the car
exploded. The remaining three boys died. The one whom the man pulled out
was badly burned but lived.
I attended three funerals that break, and made visits with friends to the
boy in the hospital, head swollen from the heat and fi ngers no longer all intact.
I listened to ministers try to explain why God had called these boys “home.”
I could not buy that theology. In reading I did for class and leisure after that
experience, I attended closely to what theologians call “theodicy,” which refers
to the questions of how to think about God as a just and compassionate God,
taking into account the suffering in the world.
Is God in control? For a whole lot of reasons, no. Was God “in control”
when those boys died? No. However, was God acting through the man who