I first heard about this story via a tweet that my wife forwarded to me from the inestimable Angry Black Lady. A condescending Wolf Blitzer asks the nice lady from Oklahoma if she thanked the Lord for the fact that she escaped death in the tornado. In fact, he asks her twice. But this hinterland hick completely shuts him up by telling him she’s an atheist, a species of person that people like Wolf think only exist in New York.
Now, if she wasn’t so polite, and had been thinking really fast, what she should have said was this: “Yes Wolf, I thanked the Lord for killing those other people, including all those innocent children, instead of me and my child.”
Why is the Lord only responsible for the people he doesn’t kill? The only person who ever blames the Lord for destruction these days is Pat Robertson, who seems to think the Lord likes killing babies to punish the gays. Back in Puritan times a tornado or other natural disaster would be considered to be a judgment of the Lord on the entire community, which, while ridiculous, is at least intellectually coherent and encourages some self-examination rather than scapegoating. Nowadays, when a tornado hits, a flood floods, a storm strikes, or a plane crashes, the Lord gets credit for the survivors but gets a pass for the harm to the innocent dead.
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