A healthy person looking upon one worn down by disease, the sighted looking upon one blind from birth, the well-to-do tourist looking at a group of beggars from the window of his air-conditioned tour bus, the happy family man surrounded by his family happening to meet a former classmate who went down the desperate path of high-stakes gambling and is now divorced, bankrupt, miserable—all may be provoked by the sudden humbling realization that without God’s blessings, they would be in that very position.

It is both humbling and heartening that, along life’s path with its many hazards, the divine presence has been there, protecting, guiding, intervening to remove obstacles or to prevent horrific disasters, proving the bountifulness of divine mercy and love. When I was still a Catholic, I was filled with profound gratitude each time I reflected on how, at various points in my life, without God’s intervention, things could have turned out so differently.

Divine grace seemed to have operated right from the start. My mother gave birth to me at the same time as a neighbour, but whereas her midwife botched the delivery, causing the newborn to be strangled with its own umbilical cord, I came safely into the world. As I was growing up, I was aware of the pain in the neighbour’s voice each time she looked at me and turned to say to my mother, ‘My child would have been the same age’, or ‘I could be a grandmother today!’ (when my mother told her of my first menstruation).

Each time I went back to my small hometown, on vacation from the University, and saw young relatives and friends working at menial jobs, I would think, ‘There but for the grace of God…’

Then there came a time when reflecting on my privileged position no longer gave comfort. In fact, it caused doubt and anguish, leading to my finally leaving the Church. For like the favoured child secretly troubled by the apparent favoritism of the parent despite being the beneficiary, I began to question the whole matter of the Chosen People, claimed separately by each of the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by which each group affirmed its special status, in effect excluding all other groups from the ultimate joy of eternal happiness with God in Heaven. The sheer injustice of it all, against the belief of an all-loving Creator who created every being on earth, stunned me into leaving my Catholic religion, to try to work out my own ‘religion’ that would be centred on a common humanity.

The ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ belief is actually an offshoot of the Chosen People belief, at the individual level, and a twisted one at that, for it really means that even among the Chosen People, some are more chosen than others, getting a larger share of the divine largesse. I cannot forget two Catholic classmates, both equally devout and regular church goers, one seemingly favoured all the way, ending up as a prosperous businessman with a large happy family, the other neglected and abandoned, suffering ill health and poverty and dying alone in a home.

I am particularly troubled when divine grace benefits one at the expense of others. A woman who escaped death in a horrible plane crash through a last-minute decision to take a later flight, exclaimed, ‘It was God who saved me!’But what about the passenger who also through a last-minute decision took over the vacated seat? What about the ninety eight others who died in the crash? A father went down on his knees to thank God when his little son was pulled out of the rubble of a collapsed school in an earthquake; what about the other children who were killed? A Father’s love of this highly discriminatory kind is surely both psychologically disturbing and morally indefensible.

When I look at people far less fortunate than myself—and there are so many—I can only have recourse to a much revised, much expanded version of the old comforting mantra: ‘There but for the complex workings of nature and heredity, nurture and environment, personality, character, chance, randomness, happenstance, etc, most of which are beyond our control, go those of us who are lucky. But there is something within our control, and it is to share this good luck with others who have so little of it.’

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...