God Is... Good?

Plaza Towers Elementary School

Monday, May 20, 2013; 3:00pm.  A tornado hits Moore, Oklahoma. It kills 23 people and injures 377.  7 children die at Plaza Towers Elementary school alone that Monday.  On the national news that evening, one local resident, when asked about how he managed to survive the storm, says without missing a beat: "God is good!"


Idea 1:
A loving god is in control and, in fact, he planned every detail of the universe from start to finish.  He knows how many hairs are on your head and loves you!

Idea 2:
Innocent people are slaughtered on this planet every day.

How can we justify those 2 ideas?  We cannot.  Either your god is unable to stop innocent peoples' deaths, or your god does not care to.  Those are the only two alternatives, and neither is good for god.

Some readers may be tempted to defend their gods here, saying "Who can understand God's will? We are just human and we have no idea what God's plans are." What is so remarkable about this attitude: their own human understandings are what they use to determine their god's goodness in the first place.  Do you have an intimate, personal relationship with this god of yours, or not?


And what about the survivor who said on national television, on an evening when 23 of his neighbors had been crushed to death, including 7 children: "God is good."  What kind of person would, if a mass murderer killed all those people, say the murderer was good?  The thought that our gods are good because they have the sense to spare us when they're slaughtering our neighbors... this is one of the most remarkable and disturbing ideas imaginable.