REPLY TO CINDY

Submitted by DANIEL REDMOND (United States), Jan 24, 2008 at 02:30

Dear Cindy,

Thank you for your very sweet and good-natured reply to my earlier correspondence. Truth be told, living here in the United States the vast majority of the people I've known and cared for have been Christians and I've found most people to be pretty decent souls, regardless of religious affiliations. Virtually all of my best friends are connected in some way to some kind of Christian church. But I think they'd be just as good and kind with or without the influence of Christianity.

I have always found it baffling how people are so willing to credit God with any and all good things that occur, yet not attribute any of the negatives to him while simultaneously insisting that God is "all powerful" and has the capacity to intervene in human affairs. If a tornado blows a whole town away the faithful will credit God with saving the lives of any survivors while ignoring the fact that others died and never wondering why they, the dead, were apparently unworthy of protection. When a close friend of mine had a difficult pregnancy a few years ago her sisters formed a "prayer chain" to pray that the baby survived. Well, the baby was stillborn. Had the baby survived they would have credited God with the deed; why not blame him for the death as well?

On Easter Sunday of year 2006 a two-year old toddler strapped into his car seat in his Sunday best suit on his way to church was killed by a bullet fired a block away by a drug dealer in New York City. There is no way to put a positive spin on such an event. The violent death of small children is the worst kind of tragedy there is. So the question arises, 'if God isn't going to protect a toddler on his way to church on Easter Sunday, then why would anyone think God was going to protect them from anything, anywhere, at any time......?' This is a valid question. If God is both 'all powerful' and 'all benevolent' then such a tragedy cannot possibly be reconciled with your Christian beliefs. In reality, either your God is not all powerful and cannot intervene in human events or he is all powerful but is not benevolent and cares not to intervene; OR perhaps the Christian concept of God is a figment of a collective imagination and an imaginary figure.

If one's concept of God is of a universal force of nature that rules the universe with some semblance of order and precision, then I can accept this as a reality. But the traditional concept of the Christian god is of a separate sentient being who listens to individual thoughts or 'prayers' and intervenes in events accordingly by providing special favors and special protections to the faithful, and it is a concept that has had no verification throughout the ages. None of God's supposed miracles could not also be as easily explained as natural events.

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