The sickening belief in divine intervention

“I had a student in my class,” she said, “whose father worked in the World Trade Center. And on September 11th, when the school made the announcement about what happened, all of the kids were in shock. But she just started crying and crying. And we spent all day trying to call and find out about her daddy, but of course we couldn’t get through.”

The woman, a now retired school teacher, was telling this story to a small group of us this afternoon. We had been discussing tragedies, and our memories of where we were during great events in history.

“Now, her father had worked there for 30 years, and had never missed a day of work in his life. But the day before, on Monday September 10th, he had been feeling really sick, and he picked up some Nyquil on the way home from work. He took it that night. He wasn’t even planning on taking the next day off of work. But he took the Nyquil, and he slept through the alarm, right into the afternoon. He had never missed a day of work in his life, but he missed that day. He had no idea what had happened. We finally got in touch with him at 5:30 pm. He was still at home, feeling sick. He had no idea what had happened.”

“That’s just amazing,” a man replied.

“Can you imagine? He’d never been out sick, never even taken a vacation, but on that day…..” she said, letting her voice trail off wistfully.

“Well, I’ll tell you: that’s divine intervention, right there!” the man announced.

I said nothing.

…but this is what I thought:

HOLY SHIT YOU ENORMOUS ASSHOLE!

Are you saying God chose to intervene in the natural course of human history in this specific moment, and “saved” exactly 1 man while allowing almost 3000 other people to die?

Are you saying that every single one of those 3000 were less deserving of life than this girl’s father?  That the feelings of loss of the young daughters and sons of the 3000 others did not matter enough to warrant God bending the normal natural rules of time and space….. but only the feelings of this one girl did?

Everyone has xir own definition of “god”, and while I roll my eyes at all of them, some of them are at least palatable.  The “blind watchmaker” God who sets the universe in motion at the beginning of time and then refuses to intervene, for example, is a weird contrivance for whom there is no evidence… but at least he’s not an asshole.

The God that this man believes in is a cruel disgusting sociopath who makes a point of reaching into his creation to save a single life while destroying thousands of others. For absolutely no reason.

I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking: The fact that you would choose to believe in such a God is perverted. By raising one person’s good fortune onto some kind of pedestal you are telling the entire rest of the world: Fuck you. In that moment, you weren’t important enough. God was there for someone; God was not there for you.

So when you see a Satanist who seems angry about religion, or angry about God, remember this story. I can’t speak for all Satanists, of course. And not all Satanists are angry. But if you’re ever asking yourself, “Gosh, why is it that some Satanists seem so filled with hatred towards God?” just remember this story.

If a Satanist expresses hatred for someone’s perception of God, there is a good chance it is because that person’s God is hateful.