Where Was God When…?

Humans can and do die prematurely through no apparent fault of their own. It’s a common feature on the news. It’s reasonable to ask who’s responsible. There are various agencies that can be held accountable: God, Mother Nature and Mankind. Since God is allegedly the Top Banana, the buck stops with Him when it comes to a ‘please explain’ those premature deaths. So, here’s an analysis of possible explanations with God taking centre stage.

Either God exists or God does not exist. If the latter, God cannot be held accountable for anything good, bad or ugly. But, if God exists, and has those positive attributes given to Him, even by His own words in the Bible, then God has a lot to answer for when it comes to explaining why humans are allowed to die prematurely through no fault of their own. The basic charge is premeditated murder at worst, almighty godly negligence allowing death at best.

Let’s review some positive Godly attributes:

God is Loving – Jeremiah 32:18.

God is Merciful - Exodus 34:6; Psalm 103:8; Joel 2:13.

God has Compassion – Psalm 86:15; Psalm 145:8.

God is Forgiving – Daniel 9:9; Ephesians 4:32.

God is Kind – Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13.

God is Gracious – Exodus 34:6. Psalm 86:15; Psalm 116:5.

God is Righteous – Psalm 24:5; Psalm 116:5.

And there’s a lot more besides but you get the idea. God is the good guy. God is your friend. God looks after you. Pure bovine fertilizer! In fact the extreme Christian Right Wing, those televangelists, the Westboro Baptist Church, etc. all like to stress some other of God’s attributes, like being a jealous God, a vengeful God, a God quick to anger and a wrathful God – they like a God who hates and who kicks human butts, hard, and fatally. To them, any premature death to anyone by any cause is attributed to God, thank God, full stop. That also strikes me as pure bovine fertilizer. 

Humans die thanks to God before their time is due:

Why God’s rush to judgment? Since everyone is doomed to die anyway, there’s no apparent need for an immortal deity to rush their demise. To God, a billion years either way, either side of now, is of no consequence, so a human lifespan is just a piddle. If other words, since God will get His pound of flesh, or the devil his due in the fullness of time, there’s no need for any human not to be granted the right to live to die of natural causes – old age.

Innocents have been put in harms way through no fault of their own. Who’s responsible? Where does the buck stop? The buck ultimately stops with the chief cook and bottle washer – the Almighty. 

We have humans killed by deliberate Acts of God:

An Act of God usually implies wilful death and destruction, pain and suffering, inflicted on humanity by well, guess who, the Almighty Himself. That’s murder in the first degree. What else would you call Sodom and Gomorrah; the Egyptian tenth plague on the firstborn; the invasion of the Land of Canaan? Nor does it have to even be a mass murder scenario – even God smiting a single individual is premeditated murder. Fortunately, there have been no unnatural actual Acts of God (as opposed to natural Acts of Nature) in way, way over 2000 years plus, at least defined as a major destructive event that happened without benefit of a natural cause, or even a single death that can only be attributed to “God” and so listed on the death certificate. So in the Common Era, God is off the hook for premeditated murder, though God should still stand trial for atrocities committed in the Old Testament. 

We have humans killed by random Acts of Nature:

That’s wilful negligence since God, if there be a God, ultimately controls nature, God being all-powerful and all that. But first, if it appears to be a natural disaster (flood, drought, famine, hurricane/typhoon/cyclone, tornado, bushfire, volcano, earthquake, hail, epidemic, pandemic, asteroid/meteor impact, solar flares, blizzards, icebergs, lightning, tsunamis/tidal waves, etc.) then lets adopt the duck philosophy – if it looks, sounds, swims, flies, and otherwise behaves like a duck, it’s a duck, or in this case, it really is an Act of Nature and not something deliberately set in motion by Mother Nature’s boss, God, though that’s not set in any philosopher’s stone by any means.

Acts of Nature have an apparent natural cause, but of course that could mean that God is hiding behind an apparently natural causality curtain, but in reality forcing Mother Nature to do His bidding. But why would an all-powerful God hide behind Mother Nature’s skirts? - Back to the duck philosophy. So let’s just assume that God just sits on the sidelines (if He’s still in the neighbourhood, don’t forget He hasn’t been seen or heard from in over 2000 years) and lets Mother Nature strut her stuff – the nice balmy spring mornings; the multi terror-tornadoes that strike in that afternoon.  

Now what does He do from His heavenly sidelines? Well, He can do nothing and wash His hands of the unfolding events, whether it’s the twisters that form in Tornado Alley, a Hurricane Katrina moving towards New Orleans or an Asian tsunami about to strike. But God failing to take action is akin to the parents of a toddler who’s crawling across a road busy with traffic and failing to take action to prevent the inevitable tragedy. That’s wilful negligence. Or, God could manipulate apparently natural events to suit His purpose – create winners and losers.

In any natural disaster (Acts of Nature) there will tend to be ‘winners’ (survivors) and losers – the newly deceased. If God got down off His throne and intervened then presumably He wanted the ‘winners’ to live and the losers to die and made sure the natural dice were rigged to ensure that outcome. If so, then the ‘winners’ can “Thank God”, at least for the surviving part, though God should still get the Big Finger from true believers for allowing that Act of God under the guise of an Act of Nature to have transpired in the first place. Is the credit due God for saving some lives outweighed by the blame for the deaths and overall destruction God caused in the first place?

We have humans killed by Acts of Man at God’s direction.

That’s God being an accomplice to murder in the first degree, for example the Battle of Jericho. Of course today such a defence holds no legal water. If I murder someone, the jury is unlikely to be swayed as to my innocence if I suggest that God wanted and directed me to carry out that murder. So let’s let God off the hook for Acts of Man, even if humans were inspired by God setting a bad example, summed up by that old chestnut, “do as I say, not as I do”. God may say “Thou shalt not kill”, but God’s own track record matches anything Jack-the-Ripper accomplished by many, many orders of magnitude over and above Jack, the serial killer.

We have humans killed by Unintentional Acts of Man:

Friendly fire is one such term, ditto collateral damage. It’s quite apparent from reading the newspaper or watching the evening news on TV that human related accidents cause the death of other innocent humans. A driver has a heart attack, loses control of his vehicle which slams into another car killing the occupants. A hunter shoots at what he assumes is a deer only to discover it’s a fellow hunter he shot by accident. It’s not a difficult assignment to come up with dozens upon dozens of accidental death due to some human error or unintended scenario unfolding, like that cigarette butt tossed out the window which starts a bushfire which goes out of control and ultimately kills dozens. The issue arises; we know why Hercules or Superman can’t come to the rescue, but why doesn’t an all-powerful deity, believed by the multitudes to exist, come and save the day? Doesn’t the deity, say God, care for the innocents? Or perhaps the multitudes are mistaken and God has no more reality than Hercules or Superman. If the former, God doesn’t come out of the situation smelling like a rose, that’s for sure. If the latter, the multitudes need to engage their brain into forward gear and question their beliefs, rather than have it idling in neutral, ever unquestioning.

We have humans killed by Intentional Acts of Man:

Though God ultimately has control over the actions of humans; God could argue that because of man’s free will, He shouldn’t get involved or be held accountable, even though parents are morally accountable for the actions of their children, and aren’t we, allegedly, God’s children? That analogy aside, though God probably thought it was none of His business, should He have really turned a blind eye towards what was to unfold in August 1945 at Nagasaki and Hiroshima? And what about the innocents caught up in the events of 9/11? What about tens of thousands of similar, but less memorable happenings like intervening before Jack-the-Ripper ripped? Again, God probably said it’s none of my doing; I’m not going to get involved. But, would such an attitude jive with all of those loving, kindness, compassionate attributes so noted and logged in the Bible? 

We have humans killed by their own stupidity: The Darwin Award:

Many a human has ended his or her own life prematurely through sheer stupidity, forgetfulness, negligence, and similar concepts. There are a whole series of books on what’s titled the “Darwin Awards” – those who benefit humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool and thus not passing on their stupidity genes to the next generation. Some people are their own worst enemy, accidents waiting to happen. While we’ve probably all experienced an ‘oops’ moment, some ‘oops’ are fatal ‘oops’. Now the question is should God save you from your own stupidity? Whatever your answer, God’s clearly answered that philosophical issue in the negative since people do die prematurely because of their own stupidity. Humans have a far better track record saving or rescuing people from their own stupidity – in the nick of time – than any deity.

Conclusion:

By way of final explanations, either 1) God does not exist or has left the building for parts unknown; 2) God doesn’t give a damn which suggests He isn’t compassionate or merciful, etc.; 3) God plays favourites which also implies He’s not merciful, etc. to all equally. It’s also statistically improbable that only those who were the losers in every natural or human related disaster deserved, in God’s eyes, to burn, baby, burn, and every ‘winner’ was a saint in human skin. When it comes to allowing even dictating the premature deaths of God’s children, well, God’s a god-awful parent! And this is the God you want to snuggle up to in heaven? If God really doesn’t have these positive attributes (mercy, compassion, etc.) then it illustrates that the Bible is full of it, and I don’t have to elaborate or spell out what “it” is.