Superman

Why do bad things happen to good people? This is the question that religious believers are asked more often than any other, I think. I saw someone ask it the other day with regards to the passing of Christopher Reeve, the actor who famously portrayed Superman in the series of movies made about that superhero.

Personally, I think they are asking the wrong question. First let me be clear that I am not being callous - but at no point did God require Christopher Reeve to mount a horse that fateful day, nor did he script the events of that day in such a way that Mr. Reeve would live out his remaining years with the difficult disability that his accident left him with. Reeve himself never believed God caused his accident.

No - where you see God working in Mr. Reeve's life is what he did with his life afterwards. Who spoke out for spinal injury patients before? And what kind of a Superman was Christopher Reeve in tights, when compared with that Superman, Christopher Reeve, who fought hard to regain a meaningful life, after an accident that took so much? He shared his struggles with us publicly, he lobbied politicians far and wide, and gave everything he had to help the cause. The faceless people in wheelchairs now had a superhero to stand up for them. And Reeve, though not religious in the traditional sense, credited God with giving him the grace to take his difficult circumstance and "take a hard look at what it means to live as fully as possible in the present." (his words.)

And that is how much of the history of the world has unfolded. People have always taken their suffering, and used it to make joy, healing, and love for others. How much great art was born in misery? How many doctors were moved to fight for a cure because of their grief at seeing patients die?

The former religion editor of the Toronto Star, Tom Harpur, wrote in his book "Would you believe?" that the best way to understand our grapple with suffering is to look at the story of Jacob struggling with the angel in Genesis 32:22-32. The blessings of God do not always come from the easy route. Sometimes we struggle hard for them, and sometimes we struggle all our lives. But the blessings do come, and they redeem our suffering.

Christopher Reeve lived a short life. But he lived it large, and if you want to find meaning in his passing look at how he lived, not how he died. Because he could have died years ago. His accident was a serious enough one. But he didn't, and he used the years he was given to serve many worthy causes. He raised millions for research into spinal injuries. He changed the minds of many politicians, and many more voters. And he impressed us all with his courage in the face of an enormous obstacle.

We saw a man who did not need to fly, or arrive to us from a distant planet, in order to move mountains. We saw a superman in our own lifetimes, and God used Mr. Reeve's suffering to show us what we are all capable of becoming. Sometimes good things happen to us, too. Mr. Reeve's testimony to the human spirit was one of them. We should celebrate this, and not question God (or Christopher Reeve) that we were given it.