I once heard the phrase “practical Deist.” The Deist God winds up the universe and then it’s hands off and he doesn’t intervene. As a result of the modern ethos (i.e., assumptions about empiricism and progress), the average Westerner seems to default to a kind of uncritical practical deism. This shapes more of us than we might think. I find myself praying but not really expecting God to intervene. When I suddenly perceive the unmistakable hand of God in my life, it comes as a shock and a surprise. It is like being shaken awake.
I had such a moment recently. My wife needed surgery. We live within walking distance of a large and highly regarded medical center. Most of our doctors are part of that institution. In September we had several appointments that made it clear surgery was necessary. The surgery was not a matter of life and death, but things urgently needed fixing and until they were fixed life would be relatively hellish.
Several health professionals had to coordinate for the surgery to happen. Despite calling every day hoping for a date by December, we had no date and no clear word on when there would be a date. Just then I ran into a doctor who sometimes comes to educational events at the cathedral. Let’s call him Dr. Joe. He is a serious Christian layman who sees his vocation as his Christian ministry.
We have had friendly conversations about Scripture and theology. I knew his specialty was in the general area of my wife’s needs, but what I did not realize was that he was among the most accomplished and highly regarded specialists in the nation. I shared our story with him, and he replied that the problem I was describing was his specialty. I felt immediately that I was having a providential conversation, but I had a great deal of trouble trusting it. If I asked him for help and he could not fit us into his schedule, would we alienate the other doctors? I almost asked for help and then did not.
The next day I had another providential conversation with another physician friend, a retired surgeon, about my indecision. He informed me that my theology conversation partner was indeed one of the top people in the field and advised that I should immediately phone him and ask for help. I did and minutes later got a phone call from Dr. Joe asking about my wife’s condition. I described the symptoms and he told us to come in at 8:30 the next morning. We did and left three hours later with a date for the surgery nine days later, and dates arranged by his office for all the other medical signoffs that are necessary for major surgery. The surgery was pronounced a success, and my wife is recovering well.
Going to Dr. Joe’s office is a healing experience, before he practices any medicine. An alert person will spot that there are serious Christians in residence. There is no proselytizing and nothing explicit that lets you know the doctor and some of his key staff are serious Christians. If one reads some of the diplomas carefully and studies the wall art carefully, one might figure it out.
There is, moreover, a pervasive spirit of humble and generous service that one encounters in every member of the staff. My wife and I recognized it immediately as an unmistakably Christian spirit. What I had initially prayed for, a quick surgery date, was not granted. God gave us something better.
It is possible to see this chain of events as one happenstance after another that by blind luck had a happy outcome. It seems faithless to me to understand this experience other than as an act of special providence by the God who numbers the hairs of our head and does not let a sparrow fall but knows it altogether. Even the long and frustrating delay appears now as God protecting us and leading us to a better outcome.
To acknowledge the special providence of God leads immediately to deep questions of divine justice. What about prayers that are not answered? What about people who do not have distinguished physicians as friends? What about the mystery of suffering?
Recently we had Father Khaled Anatolios, chairman of theology at Notre Dame, speak at All Saints’ Cathedral in Albany about the Holy Trinity. Describing the Trinity as a mystery, he first distinguished a mystery from a problem. A problem is out there where one can work on it and solve it. We are in the middle of the mystery of the Holy Trinity and God’s relation to the world. We are living in it. Suffering is part of that mystery. We can turn the mystery into a problem and find overly easy solutions like, for instance, becoming practical Deists. We can either explicitly or implicitly deny God’s activity in the world. Nevertheless, suffering remains and so too for the eyes of faith do unmistakable experiences of God’s providence.
God’s special providence is part of the doctrinal and dogmatic tradition of the Church universal. The saints testify to God’s special intervention repeatedly. In He Leadeth Me, the late Jesuit Walter Ciszek recounts his decades of suffering in the Soviet Gulag. It is a tale of incredible privation and suffering and of God blessing him so that he could be a blessing to others. He considered the whole experience the result of God’s careful and special providence and an answer to his prayer to serve God in Russia.
What about history and the affairs of nations? Is it only in the Old Testament that God raises up one nation and casts down another? Did God put his thumb on the scale in World War II and tip events toward an Allied victory? Franklin Roosevelt prayed for this. Shall we look back on this moment of history and perceive the hand of God in our time?
In her book The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom recounted her experience of a Nazi death camp. She, her father, and her sister had hidden a Jewish family in their Amsterdam home and now faced the consequences. The family were serious Reformed Christians and Corrie’s sister took the doctrine of providence so seriously that she thanked God for everything. They were praying in the camp in a room filled with the filthy straw they slept upon, which was infested with fleas.
Corrie’s sister thanked God for the camp and for the guards and for the room and for the straw and for the fleas. Corrie was disgusted and upbraided her sister for thanking God for the fleas. It was too much. There is more to the story. The guards would not come into the room because of the fleas, and the sisters were then able to read to the other inmates from a very small New Testament they had smuggled in. Suffering is real. Injustice is real and some prayers may appear to be unanswered. But there is more to the story. That also is real.
The Very Rev. Leander S. Harding, PhD, dean of the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, New York, is in his fourth decade as a priest of the Episcopal Church. His several books include To Persevere in Love: Meditations on the Ministerial Priesthood from an Anglican Perspective (Wipf & Stock, 2013) and In the Breaking of the Bread: A User's Guide to a Service of Holy Communion in the Anglican Tradition (Wipf & Stock, 2010).
