How did I miss this?

Send a Message to God
He has gone too far this time.
By Heather MacDonald, Jan. 10, 2005, Slate Magazine

In the wake of the tsunami disaster, it's time for believers to take a more proactive role in world events. It's time to boycott God. [Yikes!]

Centuries of uncritical worship have clearly produced a monster. God knows that he can sit passively by while human life is wantonly mowed down, and the next day, churches, synagogues, and mosques will be filled with believers thanking him for allowing the survivors to survive. [Holy, er - ah, crap!] The faithful will ask him to heal the wounded, while ignoring his failure to prevent the disaster in the first place. They will excuse his unwillingness to stave off destruction with alibis ("God wasn't there when the tsunami hit"—Suketu Mehta) and relativising ("for each victim tens of thousands yet live"—Russell Seitz), even if those excuses contradict God's other attributes, such as omnipresence or love for each individual life.

Where is God's incentive to behave? He gets credit for the good things and no blame for the bad. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is fond of thanking God for keeping America safe since 9/11; Ashcroft never asks why, if God has fended off terrorist strikes since 9/11, he let the hijackers on the planes on the day itself. Was God caught off guard the first time around, like the U.S. government? But he is omniscient and omnipotent.

So slavishly do his worshipers flatter God that they give him credit for things he didn't even do. Let a man rape and murder a child, and it's the man's offense; but if someone tends to the sick or shares his wealth, it's God's hand at work. The Most Rev. Gabino Zavala from the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese rejects any suggestion that God forsook the tsunami victims, according to the Los Angeles Times, but he credits God with the subsequent charity: "You can see God in the people's response—how they're reaching out."

And so, no longer guaranteed an adoring public, he starts to make nice. He calls back avalanches poised to wipe out whole villages; he brings rain to drought-stricken communities; he cures fatally handicapped babies in the womb, or prevents such flawed conceptions before they happen. He presents tokens of his love to malaria victims and children paralyzed by auto accidents. Africa blooms with peace and prosperity.

It might not work. But the "I'm rotten-You're divine" syndrome isn't too functional, either. It's worth a try; there is nothing to lose.

Ms. MacDonald has a point. Why should we give God all the credit for the good stuff and none of the blame for the bad? We always get the old song and dance: “it’s God’s will that the nun and the orphans were hit by the speeding cement truck.” What sort of God wills that sort of crap, along with war, pestilence, and George Bush?

Here’s something else that’s always bothered me - we pray to God to vanquish our enemies. Our enemies pray to God to vanquish us. What does God do? Flip a coin?

We, the Godly Americans, lost to a bunch of godless Commies in Vietnam. What should that tell us? Castro’s Cubans beat our Godly Hispanics at the Bay of Pigs, and we can’t forgive and forget… that’s not very Christian.

What to do? Hell, a boycott couldn’t hurt - could it?