PTM WEEKLY UPDATE -- APRIL 28, 2008
Beware the ides of April?
Q. Julius Caesar made the "Ides of March" a famous time of danger when he was assassinated. Now that pattern is happening in America -- except about a month later. Is it a pattern or just coincidences that these things happened?
4/14 The Titanic sinks -- with many Americans on board.
4/15 Abraham Lincoln is assassinated.
4/16 Virginia Tech massacre.
4/18 The great San Francisco earthquake, which killed more Americans than any other natural disaster.
4/19 Branch Davidian disaster in Waco, Texas
4/19 Oklahoma City Bombing
4/20 Columbine School massacre.
Springtime may be the bursting out of life -- yet tragedy sometimes comes and ends the cycle.A. Unfortunately, too many people are attracted to these kinds of ideas -- because they fail to think critically. This is similar to the popular notion that tragic events such as airplane crashes or natural disasters happen in sets of three -- or that bad things are prone to happen on Friday the 13th. Let's apply a little critical thought to this notion. First of all, you have not demonstrated any "pattern" by listing six generally disparate events which occurred in mid-April of various years. In order to determine if there actually were a pattern, you would have to 1) list all of the adverse events in recorded human history, including location and time of year, (in itself, a nearly impossible task), 2) establish sound criteria for ranking the adversity of the events, 3) rank the events in order of adversity, 4) determine if events of greater adversity correlated with any particular time of the year or geographic area, 5) if a pattern emerged, determine possible causes for such a pattern.
Even if no physical causes could be determined, that would not justify the conclusion that some supernatural cause was involved. It would merely mean that the cause was as yet undetermined. Even if it somehow could be demonstrated that the phenomenon existed and that it was a supernatural phenomenon, or "curse" of some kind, what would we do about it? Would we take special precautions in April -- but if the problem were supernatural, how would our precautions protect us? And finally, what would this say about God -- the same God that sent his Son to save us? Would this be some kind of cruel and capricious game that God is playing with us -- some kind of arcane code he is expecting us to decipher? This idea is not consistent with New Testament teaching about the nature of God.
One last thought -- was the death of the brutal dictator Julius Caesar on the "ides of March" such a bad thing?
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