Am I the only one who had a problem with the stirring eulogy President Barack Obama delivered recently for the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.? The speech has been hailed as a masterpiece. The New York Times called it “remarkable” and “eloquent.” The Atlantic hailed it as “his most fully successful performance as an orator.” Forbes marveled that “his speech soared rhetorically and emotionally.”
I read these gushing appraisals and began to question my own sanity. I rewatched and listened and read the transcript of Obama’s eulogy. At the beginning, he had me in the palm of his hand. He morphed before our eyes from President Obama to the Rev. Obama. He became our pastor and we all became his congregation. As a rabbi and speaker myself, I paid close attention to the way the president achieved this shift. He gave us permission to identify with the mourners assembled before him. He allowed us to empathize with the victims of hate and violence. Yes, I thought. We are all one nation and we are all members of “Mother” Emanuel Church.
But, midway through the sermon, something went awry. Suddenly our Pastor-in-Chief began offering up a theology that I believe isn’t just wrong, but dangerous. He began by describing the hate and racism that led a homicidal young man to gun down nine innocent people in prayer. And then in a crescendo of confidence, Obama went on to speak about God’s intentions: “Oh, but God works in mysterious ways,” Obama said to an applauding audience. “God has different ideas.” Then, speaking of murder suspect Dylann Roof, who confessed to the killings, Obama said, “He didn’t know he was being used by God.”
The congregation applauded wildly — but that’s where our president lost me. If a preacher had uttered those words at the funeral, I could have lived with his or her statement of faith — it’s their church and their faith. But when our president asks me to believe that a suspected killer was “used by God,” then I feel left out of his flock.
Drawing on the lyrics of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” Obama pressed his point. He preached that God used an unspeakable crime to give us eyes to see the truths we’ve been blind to: “As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind.” Obama went on: “For too long, we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens. … For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation. We see that now.” Obama moved on to guns: “For too long, we’ve been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation. … The vast majority of Americans — the majority of gun owners — want to do something about this. We see that now.”
Yes, I see why Obama’s theology is tempting. Suddenly the dead weren’t victims of a senseless act of hatred. Their deaths had a higher purpose, divinely ordained. But I cannot give in to that temptation.
Is it the stiff-necked Jew in me? The skeptic? Or is it the thinking mind of any person of faith who refuses to identify God’s hand with acts of evil? When theology flies in the face of sanity, we must choose sanity. We must reject assertions of faith that attribute horrible acts to God.
Did God use Adam Lanza to shoot the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., so that we could learn to love children more? Or so that we could pass more stringent laws banning the sale of semiautomatic weapons?
Did God use James Eagan Holmes to mow down innocent moviegoers so that we could learn some lesson about mental illness?
Did God use the Columbine shootings to teach high school jocks to be more compassionate to the freaks? Or was God trying to teach us to curb the use of violent video games?
Does God use only certain special murderers or is God behind all murders? If so, do murderers belong behind bars or should we forgive them because they were just tools of God and didn’t act of their own volition?
If you extend Obama’s theology to all murders, you’d say his thinking was positively nuts. God doesn’t use shooters to teach us lessons about love or to influence policy change.
God doesn’t use racists; God loses them.
God lost Dylann Roof when he entered a Bible study group and opened fire.
God didn’t use a suspected killer as a wake-up call to our nation so that we could overcome hatred or gun violence, so that we could pass better gun control laws or so that we could remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state house. And God did not work through an assassin so that we could finally learn to love one another. God has nothing to do with heinous slaughter. Why teach people to hate God when we can teach them to love and to emulate God?
Here is what I wish President Obama had said about God at the Rev. Pinckney’s funeral:
“You might have thought that God would extend some extra compassion to the men and women who were studying the Bible and praying in a church. That somehow God would have stopped the shooter, struck him down with a lightning bolt. But God did nothing of the sort. God’s ways are a mystery. Unfortunately, God is not in the evil-prevention business. That is the sacred mission God has placed in our hands. The Rev. Pinckney understood that. He became a state senator because he wasn’t waiting for God to fix our world. He understood that God was waiting for us! His faith moved him to dedicate his life to improving the lives of others. I wish God would save the 21,000 innocent children who die each day of poverty, hunger and easily preventable diseases. I wish God would provide them clean water to drink. I wish God would heal racism and violence. But that’s our job. God has planted amazing grace in our souls. That’s why we are here. It’s our job to care for one another. That’s what God is praying for every day. That we will take care of the sick. That we will put an end to violence and racism and hatred. That we will find solutions to hunger and homelessness. God’s amazing grace is in our hands and we’ve been blind to that fact for long enough. The Rev. Pinckney could see it. He taught his parishioners to see it, and his death was not in vain because his life and the lessons he taught are leading us to see that same truth.”
My faith teaches me that God has given humanity the sacred power to create and to destroy. Free will is our greatest blessing and our greatest curse. God does not intervene in human affairs to perpetrate evil — even with the best of intentions. Yes, I do believe God works through people. We can see God’s hand in acts of compassion and kindness. My faith teaches me that God was indeed inside Mother Emanuel church on the night of the massacre. God was inspiring the Rev. Pinckney as he taught his Bible study class, and God was weeping with the dead and the dying, gathering their innocent souls into a shelter of peace. God was speaking words of comfort in the ears of the survivors and the mourners, just as God is whispering words of comfort to our entire nation: “Do not fear, for I am with you.”
Rabbi Naomi Levy is the founder and spiritual leader of Nashuva and the author of “To Begin Again,” “Talking to God” and “Hope Will Find You.”
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