3 Year-Old Boy Lost for Two Days Found Safe – Just Don’t Call it a Miracle
I read this morning in the newspaper about a little boy lost for two days in Missouri. They finally found 3 year-old Joshua Childers alive and well, albeit tired and a bit scared, in the woods not far from where he disappeared.
It’s hard to read the story and not get teary-eyed.
My mom heard the good news and said, “Isn’t he resilient?”
I agreed.
“What a tough little kid!” I said.
Then she added, “God must have a plan for him.”
That’s when I step back and let the nutty train drive on without me. Why is it necessary to bring God into it? If God has a plan for this little boy, are we to believe that God didn’t have jack shit for the the millions of other kids who’ve died recently?
“Hmmm,” I said. “What about the three month-old thrown from a car this week? His battered little body splattered all over the highway? No plan for him?”
“Where was his mother?” she asked.
“The same place Joshua’s mom was,” I remarked. “But maybe God saved this one because he’s white?”
I’m just asking.
If we are going to credit God with saving this boy, shouldn’t we blame God for ignoring all the others? If that sounds ridiculous to you, maybe we should get together and have lunch. Because the notion of an all-powerful God saving some and smiting others makes me want to fucking puke.
“Well, it’s not for us to question. God didn’t say he’d give us all the answers in this life. We have to have faith and if we are deserving, we’ll get the answers in the next life.”
Well, isn’t that goddamn convenient? I’ve been hearing this my whole life – the suggestion that curiosity, anger, and intellect should hide behind the veil of ignorance disguised as faith.
What an absolute insult to grieving parents everywhere.
“God was with me!” “It’s a miracle!” “The good Lord saved him!”
If you were a parent of a dead child, what would you think? Maybe some have to come to this conclusion: My baby was called home. God has a plan. God is with me. Others might just suffer in silence and realize the universe is often cruel and life can be painful.
With no answers of any kind.
I’m telling you – if God’s involved, then when I die, I’m going to demand some kind of goddamn explanation. Letting some suffer and some survive is sometimes unacceptable.
Until then, I’m going to say the kid is resilient.
And leave it at that.
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Catherine Durkin Robinson
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Kate, this is tough one for me. Being a mother who came very very close to losing a child, I am not sure what to think. Everyone told me it was an “act of God”, a “Christmas Miracle”.
Not sure why he lived and Natashia Richardson is dead. We got him to the hospital faster?
Its been over 4 years and I still am not sure. I want to think it was an act of God that saved him. I guess it makes me feel better to think that way. But then I, like you, think about all the children and people who didn’t survive. Who knows. But we can have lunch and discuss it if you would like….but there have to be drinks too.
You’re right. There is no rhyme nor reason to who stays and who goes. It’s taken me some time to come to terms with this idea in general. i.e. why all kinds of people suffer unjustly all over the world everyday? Are they all bad people?
I had to challenge within my own mind, maybe there is no validity to “Everything happens for a reason” and life is just random and oft times cruel. What I’ve come to understand is that half of faith is just a way for us to comfort ourselves. It makes things a little easier to wrap our minds around, makes us feel less alone and lost. So, if it makes the mother of this child feel better to believe, than I do not begrudge her that. Yet, I bet the next time something negative happens in her life she will be looking for someone to blame, unfortunately, there is no one. It’s just life and it’s indiscriminate.
That’s what’s missing from the God discussion most of the time, some fucking honesty.
Thank you Bethe and Tam for providing it.
I’m okay with, “this gives me comfort” or “this helps me make some sense of tragedy” – but I’m not okay with the bullshit that this IS the way it IS and hellfire for anyone who disagrees or questions.
It isn’t the truth unless it’s simply the truth for YOU. And that’s the most that any of us know for sure.
So I think the people who thank God publicly should keep their traps shut and show some goddamn respect.
Kate, I sure hope to meet you some day.
You are certainly a study in absolute contradictions. On one hand you rail against God having anything to do with choice, yet you are very willing to ask him to damn convenience and explanations among many other objects of your affection. I find it objectionable that you won’t ask Him to bless yet are more than willing to actively ask Him to damn.
And for someone who has always been willing to at least consider two sides of an arguement, why, when it comes to God, you are stiff-necked and close-minded. Have you thought about writing for Bill O’Reilly?
I think folks say what your discussing here for their own comfort. My guess is a true christian would think the boy that was thrown from the car was the saved one as most christians are trying to get to heaven. The boy who was found, stayed on earth and didn’t get to go “home”
I suppose it all depends on one’s conceptualization of God.
I do think it’s interesting that you say “It isn’t the truth unless it’s simply the truth for YOU.” Evidently, it was indeed the truth for the woman who found her son and for whatever reason she expressed that. She didn’t say, “God has a plan for him…and that plan is the total domination of all other religions which he shall crush under his blessed heal because Our Lord Jesus Christ Died On The Cross For Our Sins.”
Which, incidentally, makes an excellent thing to say after reading a fortune cookie if you get tired of adding ‘…in bed’ all the time.
While we don’t know for sure (she may have just been blowing off nervous steam), it seems safe to assume she holds a belief. It also seems safe to say that, had he not been found, she would have said something along the lines of, “God called him home because he loved him so much he couldn’t be apart from him,” or something similar. It’s her belief and her truth and is it always required that one preface a statement of belief with a disclaimer or end it with a caveat?
I mean, I know everyone here always, ALWAYS prefaces any statement of opinion with, “This is simply what I believe and I wouldn’t want you to think I’m forcing it on you, but…”.
If she want’s to give it up for God, why not? What does it hurt? Clearly, she believes it and, in a very real way, that makes it real or as good as. I think the far more interesting question is why did you respond that way?
Jesus H. Christ on a segway; even this nonbeliever thinks this post is harsh.
QJ: I respond this way because I do. Words and beliefs matter and most people don’t follow them through – or think about how others are affected and hurt by words and beliefs. It’s the same reason I respond the way I do to whatever I post about. It’s what I do. And if it sparks introspection in even one person and if even one person is helped by what I propose or write or help to achieve, then it’s worth it.
John: I meditate and visualize and hope for the alleviation of suffering for all sentient beings. But I do get harsh or passionate or bitter sometimes when I’m annoyed. So…guilty as charged.
Certainly that’s true, Kate, and many people pay lip service to a belief and don’t investigate or live it further. At the same time, I can’t help but wonder, “Well, how do you know?”
I guess we’re approaching this from two different perspectives. I’ll admit when I hear something like that, my hackles also go up. Instead of putting it back on the woman, however, who I only know from a quote in a newspaper, I’m trying to stop myself and wonder why I’ve immediately rejected her…piosity? That doesn’t sound right, but I hope you know what I’m driving at. I’ve categorized her and yet don’t know her. Who can I learn more about from this?
I can’t “introspect” (big ol’ FUCK YOU to the English Language this morning, I guess) others, but I can capture my own impulses and look at them. So my question is less, “Why did she bring God into it?” and more, “Why do I seem to assume that her belief is any less than my own?”
As for the other bit, about God having a plan for child A but not child B, that’s tricky. But it has sort of inspired me to blog about it, so thanks for that.
It’s really not that complicated,
It’s simple once you realize that the choice of life or death is that person’s. Karma and reincarnation is the only thing that makes any kind of since. I have struggled with the conception of hellfire and damnnation for many years, and simply could not put it together in my head of a loving god and this crazy cruel god that made you imperfect,But what, sits back and laugh in cruelty as you fall by the wayside in your sin. Well you coose to believe as you see fit. There are over 8000 religions out there to prove that it’s relationship with god that is important. And there are miracles every day. Heck just getting back home through evening traffic with out some big rigg knocking you off the road is a miracle. When you think about it and realized that life is not some random act. that there is a reason for everything. And that it all in how you think. That soul has it’s own journey for it’s soul evolution. And rather it lives a hour or 100 years is has meant that particular life lesson when it chooses to leave the earth. And how it leave rather by natural cause, accident, or murder is also it’s choice. Because it chooses to experience that death for karma, or just for the experience.Life is a choice and a lesson for us all. So your right God has no respect of person, and your mom is right also. There is a plan for little childers. But that’s just the way it is. Except it or not.