So I just watched Ann Curry on NBC interviewing a minister who attributed his surviving yesterday’s massive tornado in Mississippi, to ‘The Lord this and The Lord that…His only comment about those that were killed in the storm was that The Lord still loves them blah blah blah…
I have been extremely fortunate. I've never had to suffer through the tragedy of losing a loved one in a tornado or a plane crash. I have a hard time, however, imagining anything more offensive than hearing from a survivor that 'God was watching over me’. I understand the ‘why me?’ question, but attributing one’s survival to God's selective protection is tantamount to blaming the dead for causing their own deaths.
It is the height of misguided indoctrination and arrogance for a person to believe that he or she could be individually selected to live through a natural or humanitarian disaster. Delusional ideation—that’s the medical term. Being selected to live implies that those who died were not merely ignored by God, they were selected by God NOT to live. It couldn’t be negligence or oversight, right? Since God is omniscient and all-powerful, right? It must be that God hand-picked half the airplane's passengers to die a scorched painful death. And to think that people go to churches, synagogues, and mosques to worship this God? Something is amiss here.
This all-seeing God must also have had little interest in watching over the events that led to the tornado or plane crash in the first place: the weather, how much fuel was in the tanks to burst into flames, the pilot's skill (you've seen priests bless pilot's hands, surgeon's hands, and the like). Apparently God was too busy protecting that minister, or that small group of passengers in rows 21 to 29 who survived the crash, to pay attention to other details.
Similarly, God must have had it in for six million Jews in World War II, but was fine with protecting the Nazi German murderers who lived out their natural lives after the war. They moved to the United States and were protected for their anti-communist stances. God Bless America, you know. "Ohhh, that's different", Christians say. "Nazi Germany was an example of free will and self determination—God-given, like Adam and Eve, the serpent, the apple. They’ll get theirs in the end, sort of thing."
How about the brave crew of the space shuttle Challenger, or the 200,000-plus who died in the Tsunami of 2004? God must have decided it was their time to die—fathers, mothers, kids, everyone. The millions murdered by Pol Pot and Stalin?—God must have been just fine with those two charming fellows practicing free will, since both had the luxury of living out their natural lives. God willing, you know. That’s the popular phrase these days. How about the passengers of Pan American flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland? They must have been really bad or really good for God to have selected them for early admission to the afterlife. Meanwhile, the perpetrators who planted the bomb still walk today, no doubt because God ordained it. And so on.
If there were something that should shatter the whole concept of faith, and bring into serious question the entire notion of an overseeing, all-protecting higher being, it would be any one of the atrocities above, or any of thousands of similar disasters over the millennia where innocent people were dashed against the rocks of misfortune or eviscerated by the swords of their fellow man.
Sadly, the concept of 'God watching over me' will not likely disappear any time soon. No matter how uncivilized or unsubstantiated, once beliefs are labeled as faith-based, the rest of society becomes reluctant to challenge or reject them.
Journalists, on the other hand, and their editors and producers should at least recognize how irresponsible it is to broadcast or publish comments from survivors who claim to have been 'saved by God'. The implications of blame for the victims and the added insult to victim’s families are totally unjustifiable.
