By Gregor Duncan
We live in world and a society where, however much care is taken and no matter what health and safety procedures are in place, there is and always will be the potential for tragedies of various kinds to occur.
This is part of life: things go on normally and then suddenly something happens to turn this upside down and our lives are changed. We realise again how fragile our hold on life really is.
Be that as it may, it was very important for the families and friends of the dead, and indeed for the wider community, that the Fatal Accident Inquiry into the bin lorry crash provided a reliable narrative of what happened and why and where responsibility lay.
A certain level of understanding is necessary for those who grieve and also for those who can try to make sure that this particular kind of accident cannot happen again.
I say "certain level of understanding" because, from the perspective of Christian faith, the inquiry necessarily left questions unaddressed and unanswered, above all the question of meaning. It is one thing to understand why something terrible has happened but it is quite another to give it any meaning.
Perhaps one of the hardest things to face in life is a gathering suspicion that the worst things that happen to you (and perhaps also the best) have no meaning at all, and cannot be made to make any sense at all.
Can Christian faith and Christian theology have an answer to this? Well, yes, they can, but not anything cut and dried or easily reassuring. At their best, they try to grapple with this question of meaning on at least two levels but without trying to explain away or deny the pain, the suffering, the desolation; you might call them the level of speculation and the level of experience.
In terms of speculation, we might ask ourselves what kind of world would it be if such terrible things could not happen? Would it really be a better world as we are tempted to think it might be? Would it not lack many things we deeply value, among them, for example, moral responsibility, courage, compassion, solidarity? These qualities and virtues would not emerge in a world without tragedy or suffering, in a world where they were not needed. If no choices had to be made, if no risk of tragedy existed, the landscape of life would be flattened out. It might be easier to cope with but would it really be life?
Then there is the level of experience. People often ask when tragedy strikes: “where is God in all of this?”; or: “this kind of thing makes belief in a God of love impossible or even farcical. People who go on believing are just closing their eyes to the facts”.
But, in a way, meaning and God are to be found not so much in what happens as in how people respond to what happens to them and live with the results.
There is a measure of meaning and there is God in every act of love and kindness, in every attempt at care, in every effort to heal the wounds of the broken hearted, in the coming together of communities in solidarity with one another.
It is often said among Christians that ubi caritas et amor ibi deus est: where there is love there is God. So, where at the moment of disaster and in its aftermath people show love, kindness, care and even self-sacrifice, God is there.
Many people of faith, and not only Christians, experience this to be true and part of their task in a world of suffering and heartbreak is to keep that perspective alive and visible whilst fully realising that, for those whose lives were torn apart in Glasgow city centre one year ago, the questions, the grief and the loss will continue.
The Rt Rev Dr Gregor Duncan, Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway, will lead the the reflection at the remembrance service for victims of the bin lorry crash in Glasgow Cathedral today.
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