Thanking God after surviving a tragedy is cruel

Hemant Mehta (http://www.friendlyatheist.com, http://www.patreon.com/Hemant , https://www.facebook.com/friendlyatheist)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/21/god-spared-my-child-says-mother-after-branson-boat-tragedy-that-killed-17/

You may have heard about a recent tragedy in Branson, Missouri where 17 people died after the boat they were on for a special tour was caught in a storm, flipped over, and trapped people underneath. It was just horrific. Fewer than half the people on there survived.

One of the survivors was a 15-year-old girl. As you can imagine, her mother, who wasn't on the boat, was so thankful to learn her daughter was alive. And she said something to reporters that sounds perfectly normal. She said she felt fortunate that "God spared my child."

God spared her child.

Now, look, I have no desire to criticize anyone whose emotions have been through hell and back, but I think that statement needs to be analyzed because it’s a common sentiment.

If God spared her child, the implication is that God chose not to spare the lives of any of those 17 other people. In this mother's mind, the same God who killed those people allowed her daughter to make it out alive, and she’s praising Him for it.

Do you know what the other side of that tragedy looked like? 9 of the people who died were from the same family. Imagine what it must be like for the surviving members of that family to hear someone else thanking God for the decisions He supposedly made in that storm.

Obviously, the mother wasn't intentionally trying to say something awful. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a completely warped way of thinking. If you're thanking God after a tragedy, then God deserves blame for the death and destruction, too. Or (hear me out here) maybe a better God would've stopped the storm from happening in the first place.

Or, better yet, blame someone who actually deserves it, like the captain who didn’t make everyone wear life jackets.

As someone else once said, thanking god for sparing you in a disaster is like sending a thank-you note to a serial killer for stabbing the family next door.
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