I was at a concert the other night, of Thomas Adės conducting scenes from his work ‘The
Tempest’. As I listened and watched, I began to think: ‘Where is God in this
concert hall tonight?’ Is God, as is sometimes thought, directing the forces of
this world in the same way that a conductor does a symphony orchestra? I
wondered whether God is rather in the instrumentalists, whose skills and
abilities — particularly the ability to respond — yes, and willingness,
actually give voice to the music. Such an analogy is most notable when the
instrument is the human voice, of course. Or perhaps God is in the instruments;
or perhaps the divine lies in the sound created.
The metaphor
of a harmony in the world is an ancient one: harmony of the spheres maybe, song
of the earth or dance of the stars, which from antiquity have been believed to
govern human fates. But then follows discord, even tempests.
I woke next
day to news of the Boston
marathon massacre. It falls in the class of human events that, based on hatred,
deny the harmony, the song of the world. It’s among the confrontations, alas
almost daily across the world, between an ideal harmony directed by a loving
God, and a ruthless reality imposed by violent humankind. Atheism is one
response to the devastation of life and beauty caused by such events. The
concept of God as a conductor of this symphony of disaster almost beckons
disbelief.
However
graceful such an image, the divine director guiding a perfectly fitting world
is, it seems to me, too small. God is unknowable, as Aquinas found out, but we
can see how the world is filled with human ignorance and that disregard for the
wellbeing of strangers that the ancients termed ‘hatred’. Anyone who can ignite
bombs in the midst of crowds of random individuals clearly doesn’t ‘love’
others.
If God is
in the instruments, however — both instruments of love and rescue and their
players — that might bring a closer vision. Christians believe that Jesus
Christ is the ultimate rescuer, ‘reconciling the world’ to God, as it says in
the liturgy. My own response to the tempests of human violence comes from another
part of the same liturgy: the appeal for mercy. ‘Lord have mercy, Christ have
mercy, Lord have mercy,’ we say. Thus we pray to the unknowable God: have mercy
on those who suffer, on those who do, and those who fail to do, on those who
pray and on those who do not believe. Thus we pray to the God whose ‘property
it is, always to have mercy,’ but understanding, I trust, that mercy is
conveyed from one to another only through the instrumentalists, ourselves.
