November 22, 1963

“Do you remember where you were when you heard John Kennedy was assassinated?”  I used to hear that question often; not so much anymore.  We who remember are getting old!  Most of our children and students barely know who Kennedy was.

But we who were alive and conscious that day, 47 years ago remember it well.  But what few remember is that two other well-known people died the same day.  Their deaths were over shadowed by Kennedy’s.  C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley also died on November 22, 1963.  Some years ago Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft wrote a wonderful little imaginary dialogue between them to illustrate their philosophical, theological and ethical differences.  Of course, Lewis comes through smelling like a rose compared to the other two!  (Huxley was a famous secular humanist philosopher and agnostic.)

Now live and work just a few miles (by Texas standards!) from the spot where Kennedy was shot in downtown Dallas and I’ve visited there several times.  It’s a strange feeling to stand where Oswald crouched as he aimed his rifle out the window at the presidential motorcade. 

A more important question than where I was (answer: on my way back to school after lunch at home) is where God was.  Did God inspire Oswald to shoot Kennedy?  Or did God reluctantly permit it?  Or is there some middle viewpoint on providence in such events?  It seems unlikely to me that God foreordained such an event because that would mean God authored Oswald’s sin.  But it also seems unlikely that God deistically “stood by” just watching it all happen having nothing to do with it. 

My motto in this area of theology is “God is in charge but not in control.”  “In charge” means God is intimately involved.  God is not deistically removed and just “watching from a distance.”  I’m sure God could have prevented that awful series of events in 1963.  Why didn’t he?  The best answer I can think of is–for reasons only he knows.  I like theologian Frank Tupper’s axiom “Life is arbitrary but God is not.”  But what I am sure about is that God does not inspire people to sin or author their sinful actions.  I am also sure that God is present with those who suffer as a result of those evil decisions and actions and brings blessings to them and glory to himself insofar as they allow him to.