Act of God

Please spare us the pc practice of decapitalisation – I refer particularly to the headline relating to the cause of the water outage in New Plymouth Saturday February 24 in which ‘act of God’ became ‘act of god’.

Whatever one’s believes about the nature of a supreme deity, the phrase ‘act of God’ is well established in our culture, embedded in the language of insurance contracts and even given humorous focus in Billy Connolly’s film ‘The man who sued God‘.

More relevant to our New Zealand context however is Dean Peter Beck’s use of the phrase after the February 22 Christchurch earthquake.

With passion and theological maturity he said to those wondering about the cause of the quakes:

‘‘The earthquake was not an act of God. The earthquake was the planet doing its thing the way the planet does.

‘‘For me as a Christian, the act of God is in the love and compassion that people are sharing among each other.’’

Once again we’ve seen people caring for each other in the aftermath of a natural event – and that is where God with a capital ‘G’ is always to be found – in those who suffer and in those who care for them.

No ‘god’ is capable of that breadth of compassion.

Rev Canon Sue Pickering, Taranaki Cathedral, New Plymouth