Just asking for a lightning bolt

Cap'n Ken has written at length about the double murder that happened Tuesday in his state.

He makes some great points about giving God too much credit.

Fox 5 interviewed a kid on the wrestling team who said everybody had been bitching about having to drive all the way out to Athens during the week for the meet. But now, in the wake of the killings, they were happy to have had that time with their coach and his son.

Fair enough.

But, as the kid put it, God must have arranged for the meet to happen so they could spend that final time together.

OK. So if God arranged this time together in advance of the murder, then God must have also known the murders were going to happen. And if God was able to make the meet happen, he could have also stopped the murders from happening. But, of course, he didn't.

Not only that, but why would God arrange for Coach Venable's last moments to be with the wrestling team? What about his wife and daughter who probably would have appreciated that time a little more?

But, as the Cap'n points out, God didn't have anything to do with the matter. He also didn't help Evander Holyfield win the boxing match, and He didn't help Britney Spears record her album. If He really has a hand in everything, what's the need for those Commandments?

I'm also glad to see the Cap'n sticking it to to the hundreds of students who are supposedly grieving.

I'm not so damn cold-hearted that I'm going to make light of the killings themselves, although I do want to tell the kids at Tucker High to try not to get quite this distraught — lots of open grief has been shown on the news — over a "tragedy" outside of your own family. Live a bit more of your life and you'll realize you should save some of your grief potential for the really bad things that are likely to impact you directly later on.

I agree. Get over it. Chances are, you didn't know this guy, and you probably barely knew of him.

At my high school, we had a lot of kids die in car accidents. All the students would be "overwrought" with anguish. I was always the asshole who didn't care much. Sure, it's tragic that they died, but it didn't effect me personally — I usually didn't know them or I didn't know them well. I'm certainly not going to act upset just for the sake of doing so.

In this case, I did know Mrs. Venable. She was one of my teachers. But while I see the event as a tragedy, I'm in no way grieving. That's for her to do. I didn't experience any personal loss — just as I didn't experience any personal loss when a person I'd met once died in one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center. Me grieving would only be self-serving (ooh, poor me — I knew of the victim).

But based on my belief that God doesn't "stick His hand in," I can't in good conscience say that the Venable family is in my prayers, either. I hope they get through this, but I don't think my vote is going to make God step in and ease their pain any more than He stepped in to prevent the murders from happening.