Dealing With the Jessica Ridgeway Tragedy

Unspeakable horror overwhelms me when registering the phrase from my local news station about Jessica Ridgeway, “Body Not Intact.”  How could we conceive of a powerful and loving God who allows such events to destroy the body of a person made in the image of this God? 

I have struggled over the issue of Theodicy (vindicating an all-powerful and just God in the face of evil) for over a decade.  Although I am quite content with perspective that God is not responsible and can draw near to those in pain and suffer with them through these tragedies, these tragedies still happen, and they still hurt immensely.  And the phrase, “Body Not Intact” leaves an incomprehensibly macabre image.

I’m working on an MA at Iliff School of Theology.  One question that I have been asking myself is, “From where does religion come?” or “Why do people believe in God?”  Recently, I was required to read Peter Brown’s, “The Cult of the Saints.”  The book records and explains the belief of Christianity during the Dark Ages surrounding the rituals of commemorating the saints of the early church.  These saints were originally martyrs.  They suffered for a just God in unspeakable horror.  And Christians during the Dark Ages believed that because of their sanctified and meaningful suffering, their bones served a special purpose for those still existing on the temporal side of heaven.  Christians would travel far and wide (before trains, planes and automobiles) to be near the presence of these bones in hope that they may be a source of healing, prosperity, or forgiveness.  Brown makes a bold attempt to show how it wasn’t the authority of the Bible (i.e. Reformation) that preserved Christianity of antiquity, but the belief in the metaphysical presence of these saints through their bones, and as a result the channeling of God’s grace through them.  This belief system and practice surrounding the body parts of the saints created community and hope for those who suffered in the face of impending death.  To broaden our understanding, keep in mind that the life span of people during this time was very short.  Brown writes in the opening of his chapter titled “The Very Special Dead,”

One of the most moving fragments of late antiquity is now attached to the wall of the Mediterranean room in the Louvre.  It is the epitaph of a little Sicilian, Julia Florentina, “a most dear innocent child,” who died at the age of eighteen months, having received Christian baptism, experienced a momentary remission, “and lived on four hours longer, just as she had once been before.”

While her parents bewailed her death at every moment, the voice of [God’s] majesty was heard at night, forbidding them to lament for the dead child.  Her body was buried in its tomb in front of the doors of the shrine of the martyrs.  (Ancient Latin Christian Inscription, 1549)

We have here a glimpse of a Mediterranean family thinking about the unthinkable fact of death.  Their inscription is a reminder of the force of the tensions latent in early Christian attitudes to death and the afterlife (Brown, p.69). 

So back to the two simple yet unanswerable questions, “From where does religion come?” or “Why do people believe in God?”  In light of the recent Jessica Ridgeway tragedy coupled with the manner in which early Christians dealt with similar horror, I answer with questions: “How could we not come together as a community as a result of this horror and want to yearn for something of hope, goodness…life?” And, “How could we not believe in a person or idea that transcends the unspeakable gruesome facts of death, violence and chaos?”  Humans are hard wired to deal with this awful reality.  This is a fact regardless of the diversity with which it is dealt. 

So I propose that we not think of Jessica Ridgeway’s “Body Not Intact” in horror.  Doing so would give the victory over to evil.  I believe that we should envision her body a relic of a Saint, a Martyr.  I am not going to allow the phrase “Body Not Intact” to overwhelm me and grip me with fear.  But, I will imagine that God’s presence is so much more overwhelming in goodness, love, peace, and hope, and will use her body as those of the Saints during the Dark Ages and claim it as a channel of grace to those who yearn for goodness, life and peace!

May Jessica be blessed in the presence of the Almighty for eternity!