mentions of God, miracles, and prayer have become the argot of post-disaster reportage. They shouldn’t be. If you want to pray for Oklahoma or thank God it didn’t kill more people, go ahead. But please, especially if you’re a journalist, keep it to yourself.
Thanking the Lord for deliverance just doesn’t make any sense. Any God powerful and attentive enough to save survivors’ lives should also be powerful and attentive enough to stop the catastrophe in the first place. It’s insulting, futile, and distracting from the reality of natural disasters to inject your god into a calamity like Oklahoma's.
Not that most public figures are hesitating to do so...Prayers for Oklahoma: Wolf Blitzer and other journalists should leave God and miracles out of natural disasters. - Slate Magazine
I heard a pastor on the radio, asked what possible words of consolation he could offer survivors of the woman and small child who lost their lives in the storm, trying futilely to rescue another small family member whose elementary school was destroyed. "Just remember that God loves you as much as you love your own children, as much as she loved hers."
Shameless. Shameful.
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