Before the horrifying surprise of that 2:57 a.m. news alert — the one announcing that we, and all those poor family members had been grievously misinformed — I was talking with the late guy on our copy desk about miracles.
The word miracle appeared in quotes in our headline — we used it only because it was used by people at the scene: "Relieved families celebrate 'miracle' after men spent 41 hours underground."
Technically, the word has several definitions, one of which is "a remarkable event or thing" — and that certainly seemed to apply to the good news being reported out of West Virginia. But even that secondary definition seems to carry connotations from the primary one: "an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and is hence thought to be due to supernatural causes, esp. to an act of God."
Because of this, my friend hates it when the word "miracle" gets used in headlines. Attributing events to divine intervention, he thinks, goes beyond reporting the facts as we find them.
"Why is it," he asked, "that we say it's a miracle when they survive, but we never blame God when everybody ends up dead? We never call it a 'miracle' when a German skating rink collapses on a bunch of children."
He's an atheist and I'm not, but I agree with him on this.
My own theology certainly allows for the miraculous. I believe, in fact, that God is busy. But "miracle" is not a word I want to toss around lightly. Once we begin crediting divine intervention for every fortunate development, we open the door to blaming God for every evil, for every unfortunate development. And there tend to be a whole lot more of the latter.
Mrs. Jones was "miraculously" cured of cancer, we say. Therefore God must have decided that Mrs. Smith should suffer and die. And all of us, of course, including Mrs. Jones, will one day end up like Mrs. Smith. (Remember Lazarus? He was miraculously raised from the dead. Where is he now?)
So I'm uncomfortable with the casual use of the word "miracle" in the pulpit. And I'm even more uncomfortable with the use of that word in the newsroom.
That's what we were chatting about last night at around 2:35 or so as the final copies of our morning edition rolled off the presses.
Then we watched as the families' joy turned into grief and their hope turned into despair. Their joy had been infused with theological meaning and gratitude for a miraculous answer to prayer. When it turned out there had been no miracle (or, in Gov. Manchin's words, 11 fewer miracles), their grief was likewise infused with theological meaning.
"We're Christian people ourselves," one grief-stricken family member said. "We have got — some of us is right down to saying that we don't even know if there is a Lord anymore. We had a miracle, and it was taken away from us."
That will sound to some like a woman who has lost her faith in God. To me it sounds like the presence of such faith — like someone struggling to figure out what her faith in God means after life has dealt her a cruel blow.
I don't have any easy answers for this poor woman. There are no easy answers for her.
And if I cannot provide such answers as a theologian, then I certainly shouldn't be trying to provide such answers as a copy editor.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In