In 1986, David Young, a deranged former cop, brought a homemade bomb into an elementary school in Cokeville, Wyoming. Accompanied by his wife, Young took 154 children and teachers hostage in a classroom and demanded millions in ransom. After a two hour stand-off, Young’s wife accidentally triggered the bomb mechanism, seriously wounding herself and causing chaos in the room. As the children fled from the smoke and shrapnel, Young shot his injured wife and then himself. In the end, 78 of the children and teachers were injured, but there were no fatalities other than the bombers.
In the aftermath of the near-tragedy some of the survivors testified they had seen angels in the room before and after the blast protecting and guiding the children away from danger. Analysis of the bomb remains indicated that most of the blast-caps had not fired and it had not performed as it was designed for some ‘mysterious’ reason.
The “Cokeville Miracle” inspired a book and TV movie, and was later featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Now The Cokeville Miracle is also a new feature film by director T.C. Christensen (17 Miracles, Ephraim’s Rescue), releasing in theaters on June 5th, 2015.
From a movie perspective, The Cokeville Miracle is certainly well-made. Like Freetown, Christensen has taken a story where the ending is already known and created a film that is well-paced and thrilling. Both David Young and his wife (portrayed by Nathan Stevens and Kymberly Mellen) are compelling characters, and Jasen Wade from 17 Miracles is also effective as the local cop (and parent) who’s having his own faith crisis even before the Youngs walk into his kids’ school. The script also gives us some surprisingly humorous moments (albeit of the ‘black’ variety) that blend well with the tense moments.
Where The Cokeville Miracle oversteps its bounds is by attempting to contextualize the Cokeville incident into a capital-I Important Lesson for people today — crafting a message about “the power of prayer” and “how God loves His children”. Rather than simply report the facts and allow viewers to decide for themselves about any element of divine assistance, Cokeville maintains that the kids and teachers contributed to their deliverance through their faith and prayers, and that we (the viewers) should do the same if we want similar blessings.
That’s a conclusion that’s not only not-well-supported, but tone-deaf and offensive to anyone whose family has been victimized in other circumstances despite sincere prayers. By inference, the film is telling other families who have suffered tragedies that…well, maybe you should have prayed harder. This message is especially jarring given other famous (and more recent) incidents where the innocents weren’t as fortunate, and for which the film has no answer.
Cokeville does make a nod to that gun-toting elephant in the room, with an end title card that notes “other hostage situations have not ended in the same way as Cokeville [with no innocent deaths] and we don’t know why.” Director T.C.Christensen noted Sandy Hook and Columbine by name at the original LDSFF screening but basically shrugged at how those incidents fit into the “how God loves His children” message that his film is attempting to present.
That’s not good enough. Just acknowledging the existence of these tragedies doesn’t get the filmmakers off the hook, in my opinion; not when the film is presenting a clear message about “the power of prayer” while ignoring any evidence that doesn’t support their thesis. Even if we grant that Cokeville was a true manifestation of God’s power which He intended to be a lesson and example for everyone else,1And there are obvious problems with this theory: (1) The Cokeville incident happened 29 years ago. Where are the follow-up ‘miracles’ that would confirm that incident to be a genuine example of God’s continual love for His children? Of God being the same “yesterday, today, and tomorrow”? What other incident would the defenders of the Cokeville message point to as a further example of the principles taught by the Cokeville Elementary experience? (2) Why did only 10 of the 150+ students and teachers present that day report some kind of supernatural experience, and why did those ten experiences differ markedly in content to begin with? If this was a genuine heavenly manifestation for which the witnesses were intended to testify as a lesson to others, why did the 140 others see nothing at all? (3) When a handful of the kids testified that “loving ancestors” took their hands and led them out of the school, what does that mean for everyone else? They didn’t have any “loving ancestors” of their own who cared enough to show up as well? None of these necessarily preclude a true ‘miracle’, but certainly suggest that God’s purpose in doing so was NOT to have a consistent message for the survivors to testify to the rest of the world. as Nathaniel Givens states in a relevant article from 2010, “Miracles cast dark shadows”. Claiming any miracle from God’s hands has many direct and inescapable implications about any and all similar incidents where God’s hand was not seen in the same way. If Cokeville doesn’t want to be dismissed as a film about “How God Loves Some Children More Than Others” (which I’m 100% sure the filmmakers would deny as the intent) it has to deal with this obvious and predicable counter-argument with more wisdom and tact.
The “problem of evil” — why God allows bad things to happen to good people — has been a source of debate (and personal faith crises) for thousands of years. And the answer presented by LDS theology is as good as any: that free agency is SO important to humankind’s spiritual destiny that it can’t be casually abrogated by divine assistance.
But while LDS theology presents a possible answer to this thorny problem, LDS culture simultaneously undermines it by encouraging stories of God interfering in earthly matters anyway, even in minor matters like finding lost SUV keys or locating a convenient parking space.
Now we’ve merely substituted one theological problem with another: we’ve now presented a God that no longer abstains from stretching forth His hand to assist His children in situations of poverty or violence because of a higher principle, but one that provides divine help arbitrarily, seemingly on a whim.2Imagine a rich father who says (a) he loves all his children equally but (b) refuses to share his fortune with any of them. Defensible, with the argument perhaps that his children would be better off making their own fortune in life without relying on his wealth. Now imagine a rich father who (a) says he loves all his children equally, but (b) gives his fortune to some of his children but not others. Those two statements are logically incompatible, unless either the father is (a) lying about loving his children equally, or (b) that, fundamentally, sharing his fortune has nothing to do with his “love”. Obviously, Cokeville kids being spared from a bomb blast represents a more significant blessing than finding lost car keys3In a very real way, many of these God-Of-The-Lost-Keys testimonies are the LDS equivalent of “Humblebrags” — where they are ostensibly about thankfulness and the goodness of God, but are really about how special WE are., but the principle is the same — any claim of divine assistance in one matter that’s absent in another raises logical questions that sincere beliefs about “God loves all His children” don’t eliminate. 4A personal anecdote: one Saturday night in 2010 I saw the early news reports about two LDS missionaries who died in Romania due to a gas leak during the night. The next day — Fast & Testimony meeting in my ward — a ward member who taught high school testified of a recent experience deciding whether to bring cookies or donuts as a treat for his class, and then praying about it, and feeling inspired by the Holy Ghost to choose donuts, and how his students came up afterwards and told him how they appreciated it, and how it really improved class relations, and how he was very thankful for the power of prayer, and for how God blessed him with that inspiration. A particularly banal version of the God-Of-The-Lost-Keys testimony, but more striking due to the news reports a day earlier. God (supposedly) chooses to use his limitless power to bless this teacher to know to bring donuts instead of cookies for his class, but too much trouble apparently to warn two missionaries their lives were in danger. I wondered what the parents of those two missionaries (or the two missionaries who died of carbon monoxide leak in Taiwan later that year, or any other missionary death we could name) would feel if someone in their ward got up that week and shared a similar “Lost Keys” experience.
LDS theology and culture — with its emphasis on “obedience and prayers bring blessings” — can understandably lean toward believing that any perceived divine assistance has been “earned” in some abstract way. No one wants to feel their lot in life has been determined by some arbitrary criteria or random chance, like God picking a name out of a hat in some unseen divine lottery. But perhaps we need to accept that many things in life either (a) are completely random, or (b) they are not random, but God has absolutely no interest in allowing us to see “patterns”, intending for us to live our lives as if they are random anyway.
These are serious issues that continue to cause faith trials today, and must be treated with gravity if the intended lesson is to increase (not decrease) faith. In the film, Jasen Wade’s character Ron Hartley represents the crux of this theological problem. Hartley is a local police officer who has had his faith in God shaken by the many gruesome scenes he encounters in his line of work, innumerable innocent lives shattered at the hands of evil people without God’s staying hand. When he later applies his detective skills to investigating the details of the attempted Cokeville bombing he (apparently) finds his faith in God restored, even though he never says how he’s attempting to reconcile his son’s experience at school with those previous experiences as a police officer. His son is still alive, but those other people are not: what does it all mean?
The most problematic scene comes late in the film as Hartley and his wife are discussing his research into the bombing and all the unexplainable details he uncovered. Bro. Hartley shows some natural and understandable reluctance to fully accept the proffered divine explanation…whereupon Sis. Hartley angrily berates him for his “pride” and for holding any kind of doubts that their children received direct divine assistance. As if this was so clear and obvious that any further debate as to What It All Means was in itself offensive.5She later threatens to leave her husband in an over-the-top manner. Not particularly conducive to honest, heartfelt discussion about spiritual matters… (Actually, Movie Sister Hartley, this shows *your* pride, not your husband’s, in believing that you have all the answers and there’s no need for further questions or reflections.)
Here we have the film hinting at serious faith questions but dismissing them at the same time without exploration, as if the answers were as “obvious” as the movie Sister Hartley thinks they are. Not good enough, when the film wants to be a positive force towards faith, rather than away from it.
War veterans or survivors of natural catastrophes often refer to their deliverance in words like “by the grace” or “providence” of God.6Often accompanied by “Survivor Guilt” — an intense feeling of guilt that they survived while others did not, caused by the knowledge that their survival wasn’t because they were better or worthier of life than the deceased. “Grace” in this context doesn’t mean the Biblical “salvation by…” but an admission that their survival was due to luck and random circumstance, with an allowance for God having a divine master plan which they couldn’t possibly comprehend.
The Cokeville Miracle needed a lot more ‘grace’, in my opinion. Cokeville isn’t untouchable material — it’s an interesting story and could have been handled through the Unsolved Mysteries approach: this is what happened, these are the elements of the story that don’t make sense, and that’s all we know. God may very well have saved the kids and teachers that day from harm through divine providence, but we don’t know why, period, full stop.
There’s a fine but significant difference between saying “we were spared from evil men by the power of God and we don’t know why”, and “we were spared from evil men by the power of God and we DO know why — because of our prayers and righteousness.” The former shows thankfulness *and* humility, the latter thankfulness and pride. The former is akin to Alma’s admonition to “take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.” (Alma 34:38) The latter is more akin to the Zoramites in Alma 31, who were thankful to God, but only that He had exalted them above their brethren. The idea that the Cokeville participants “saved themselves”, even in part, is a dangerous idea that needs to be treated with tact and wisdom when attempting to proselytize about prayer among many current and former believers that had equal faith and prayers without equal results.
I’m confident that many in the target audience (as they did at the LDSFF screening in March) will enjoy the film (as I did from a purely filmmaking perspective). I would hope, though, that all viewers will take the time to ponder deeply the theological implications of the film’s message, and whether it’s truly persuasive (or just offensive) to those with different experiences. Would this film be comforting to someone whose child had been kidnapped and murdered? I suspect most of us, if in a congregation with such a person, would not immediately stand in front of them and testify about how our kids were protected and saved, thanks to our prayers and faith, and isn’t God great how He loves and protects His children? Rather, we’d keep a silent prayer of thankfulness in our hearts, and find something more compassionate and wise to say to others who weren’t as fortunate. Perhaps the proper way to address the Cokeville incident would have been to do the same?
Final Grade: B+ for filmmaking, D for thesis
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