Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

It's nice how God is praised when something goes right and nobody seems to fault him, publicly, when things go wrong. My other personal favorite is how God is always on the side of the winning sports team (mainly because the losing team doesn't get as much press). Do athletes that thank God at every chance for their success also blame him when they lose?

I think God gets a bad rap in general, but probably nothing he can't handle.

As to the boyscout/prettygirl issue, damn have you seen that kid? I think he was trying to outrun his morman parents and is pissed off they found him.

Of course, I'm synical sometimes.

I don't think I could do this if it was my kid, but I try to take the position that God has another plan for those he takes from the earth so seemingly early.

That, or maybe they accomplished on earth what God intended and it was time for them to come home, so to speak.

There was a story here in NC of a woman who suffered for years and years needing a heart transplant. She was near death several times. She finally got here heart transplant and recovered from the surgery, had a baby and was living a great life. She was killed about a year ago (also about a year after regaining her health) by a Drunk Driver.

I always read "prayers answered" as a figure of speech, not as an indication of the speaker's belief. Did I miss something?

I think Davids comment goes to show the barbaric nature of God as opposed to the benevolent facade often put forth by his followers. Of course my own belief is that God is just pretend anyway.

David,

Theology aside, for those of us who have lost friends on mountains and in tsunamis in the last year, your comments feel a bit insensitive.

I myself certainly do not wish to be thought insensitive to anyone's grief. But I do want to suggest that if God is responsible for saving people and averting disaster, as is commonly attributed to Him, then it naturally follows that He alternately "turns a deaf ear" to many countless more who are not saved. To me it is this notion that is offensive. Whenever someone says "God answered our prayers and averted our loved one's death" then someone who wasn't so lucky is forced to conclude that God ignored their own pleas. Perhaps they just weren't worthy or sincere enough? It's a horrible, horrible thing to say.

Shel, at what point would it not be insensitive?

I don't find David's comments the least bit "insensitive". The problem of evil (or things that make people unhappy) in a world alleged to be governed by a benevolent God has always bothered people. There was much ado (by Voltaire and others) in the 1750s when 50,000+ people in Lisbon were killed by an earthquake. Why them and not us? Some concluded that God was not benevolent, or did not care, or did not exist (and if God does not care, then it doesn't really matter if He exists). Others held to the belief that He works in mysterious ways ... but it's fair to comment on the mystery about who lives and who dies in these cases.

The tsunami lately can pose the same question. Are the true believers doing a body count to show that proportionately more followers of religion X were spared than followers of religion Y, to demonstrate that God favored "His own" in some way? (Or would favoring them mean taking them to Him... as suggested by Chris W?)

I heard a young woman on a religious broadcast say she had been cured of a horrible disease because Christ was with her. The preacher/host did not follow up with "So, Debbie, if you had been a Jew/Muslim/Buddhist/animist/atheist, you would have been dead by now?" but surely that was the implication.

Branko is surely right that people don't mean to make theological pronouncements in using the "prayers answered" language, but it's a live metaphor, not a dead one, i.e. its literal meaning still makes sense, so it's fair to comment as if meant literally.

So David's comments were fair and in a long line of philosophical discussion - though may not win converts (which was no doubt not the intention.)