Entry 44 – Thank the Lord
May 25, 2013
Do you ‘thank the lord’ when a natural disaster strikes and your life is spared?
Well, if you’re being interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in Moore, OK, you apparently are presupposed to be doing just that.
Here’s a short clip from Youtube showing the famed news reporter during an awkward moment that I bet he wishes he could get back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0LP3Zs_V_BQ
A special thank you to Bradley Bannon for posting this video clip on his Facebook page.
Here’s a copy of what Mr. Bannon wrote regarding the clip:
‘This highlights the danger of presuming everyone you run into is a Christian who will also credit every good decision or outcome to divine intervention. It kind of reminds me when Katy Couric dramatically & presumptuously asked Sully whether, as he was trying to figure out how to land his plane on the Hudson River without killing everyone on board, he just “prayed.” His response: “No, I was concentrating on landing the plane safely.”‘
Well said, Mr. Bannon.
I would just like to add that I thought the young mother being interviewed handled herself beautifully. I wish all Atheists could be that gracious to their ‘lord thanking’ counterparts. Granted, it gets to be a bit much when you see so much ‘lord thanking’ for sparing certain peoples’ lives, and not enough criticism for taking others’. Sure, it can all be easily swept under the ‘Lord works in mysterious ways’ rug, so to speak, but it’s no less easy to deal with this ‘rug’ when its shifted, lifted, or removed.
Bad things happen on our planet everyday because we live on a hunk of rock that is hurdling through space and time at approximately 1,000 miles per hour around a massive ball of super heated helium and hydrogen gas called a star. And this hunk of rock we call Earth that hurdles around this star we call the Sun has an atmosphere that gets heated up by the Sun and is as testy with hot and low temperatures as my wife is with our thermostat in the hallway. As long as we have an atmosphere, we will have severe weather that takes the lives of people who are unfortunate enough to be in the path of these high and low air pressure systems converging violently. And while we’re on the subject of severe weather and atmospheres, it’s worth mentioning that because we don’t seem to really care as a global society about what gasses we continually put up into our atmosphere, it’s widely accepted by climate scientists that this kind of behavior will lead to more severe weather occurring around the Earth. But that is another discussion entirely…back to ‘Thanking the Lord’…
In my humble opinion, it’s much easier to make sense of natural disasters from a naturalistic perspective outlined above, than to explain why a deity called ‘the lord’ would allow a Category EF-5 tornado to rip into an elementary school where 7 children ultimately had no chance of surviving. This ‘the lord’ deity could have easily guided the tornado around these highly populated areas and into corn or soybean fields where maybe just scare crows and the crows that were the objects of such scaring would have been the only casualties. But no…this ‘the lord’ saw fit to let ‘nature run its course’ so to speak, and allow a 200 mph vortex level with impunity schools, houses, hospitals, you name it, creating utter devastation.
I don’t know about you, but in my book, this kind of negligence by management usually results in someone losing their job at best (think Mike Brown at FEMA circa 2005), and criminal charges for murder at worst (think Nestle Corporation and Thalidimide).
Mr. Bannon, I understand you are an attorney. Would love to hear what charges you think could be brought on ‘the lord’.
Maybe a People of Moore and Newcastle, OK versus ‘the lord’ class action lawsuit is in our future?
Won’t hold my breath…
I know reality is harsh, and like the gracious Atheist in the above clip, she doesn’t blame anyone for ‘Thanking the Lord’.
I don’t either.
I really don’t.
I totally ‘Get it’ that we all need something to get us through this incredibly difficult thing we call ‘life’. For some its ‘the lord’, for others, its oreo ice cream cake (thank you Get It Done Guy!).
But can we all at least take a moment, and seriously question this ‘the lord’ and their decision making abilities? It’s hard for me to thank a deity who would allow such a thing to occur on his or her planet where ultimately he or she has the capacity to move ‘heaven and earth’.
My thoughts and wallet contribution through the Foundation Beyond Belief (check them out by clicking HERE) are with you Moore and Newcastle, Oklahoma. I wish you peace and a speedy recovery from this latest storm.
Thanks for stopping by,
TRC
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The Recovering Christian
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I 100% agree with you. As a ex-evangelical myself, I had to come to terms with what it meant to thank God, seek favor, and live according to His “will” and came to the same conclusions you seem to have come to. Though it may be comforting to some to live life by an external deity pulling the strings, I too could no longer reduce hurricanes destroying villages and lives and mass murders to an act of “God’s will.”
Thank you, Allison, for your comments. Really appreciate you checking out the website and sharing your thoughts. Well said. Well said.