Do Not Put This On God
None of this was God's plan.
There’s an old parable most of you have probably heard. It has many versions. One of those versions goes something like this:
A vicious storm hits a town, and as the flood waters rise, a man is kneeling on his front porch in prayer and listening to a radio report about the flood. He ignores it.
A rowboat comes by, and the person paddling it shouts up to the man: “Hey Mister, the water’s rising! Get in the boat, and I’ll take you to safety!”
The man shouts back down: “No, I’m a Christian! God loves me! He’ll save me!”
The waters continue to inch up his house, and the man is forced up to his roof. A helicopter comes up and hovers over him. The pilot shouts: “Hey there! I’m gonna drop a ladder to you! Climb up, and I’ll get you to safety!”
The man shouts up at the pilot: “No! I’m a Christian! God loves me! He’ll save me!”
The helicopter goes away and the man stays and the water envelops him and takes him away and he drowns.
When the man reaches Heaven, he’s astonished to have died. He says to God: “Oh Lord, I trusted you. Why didn’t you save me?”
God says to him: “I sent you a radio report and a boat and a helicopter. What the hell are you doing here?”
I have been full of rage over the past several days. I told myself not too long ago that I’ve been letting anger get the better of me lately and I need to be more graceful, both with myself and especially with others, and I’ve been trying my best to work on that.
But I saw something this morning that collapsed that effort entirely.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Cancún) was being interviewed on the far-right news network Real America’s Voice, which is basically Fox News on a cocaine bender.
He was asked about the 80+ deaths in the flooding in Central Texas this weekend and God’s role in such a horrific tragedy.
This is how he responded:
Why does God allow bad things to happen to young children? I don't know that I have any additional insight other than saying God is a good and loving God, and He will help us through this… And all I know to do is to lean on God, to lean on prayer, to lean on family, to lean on friends, and just grieve. We have a good and benevolent God, but God allows things to happen sometimes that defy human explanation, and that's where we need love and where we need grace.
“…God allows things to happen sometimes…”
As a Christian, when I hear someone else who supposedly believes in Christ’s teachings say this, my usual response is to cringe. It is a deeply inhumane statement, and moreover, it’s arrogant and lazy and thoughtless and cruel.
But when I heard that this morning, my emotions skipped cringe and disgust to unbridled rage. I dare not say what justice I’d like to see done in response to that statement.
It is so profoundly callous to tell any person who has lost a loved one—particularly a child—that it was somehow God’s plan.
But it’s even worse when this is clearly said in an effort to deflect blame. The rage that filled my body when Cruz said that is difficult to properly articulate.
My faith is the most important aspect of my life—far more than anything else—and I don’t think for a second that it was “God’s plan” for all these children to die in flood waters.
I don’t think it was God’s plan for 27 children and counselors to die when Camp Mystic was overrun by the Guadalupe River.
I don’t think it was God’s plan for all of us to bear witness to the horror stories of parents finding out their children were missing and knowing there was nothing they could do to save them, waiting for a miracle that never came.
I don’t think it was God’s plan for the Trump administration and the completely absurd DOGE project to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, removing 600 professionals and leaving the National Weather Service critically lacking in support, even as all five living, former directors of NWS publicly warned the country that people would be in danger because of this.
I don’t think it’s God’s plan for Trump and his cronies to seek shutting down all federally-funded meteorology labs in the country. All of them. Not some. ALL.
I don’t think it’s God’s plan for Trump and Musk and DOGE to have cut $700M from FEMA’s budget and the agency announcing it will no longer go door-to-door to assist victims after a natural disaster.
I don’t think it was God’s plan for the unsupported NWS to jarringly underestimate the amount of rainfall that was expected in the warnings they issued just hours before the flooding struck.
I don’t think it was God’s plan for local officials in these areas to act slack-jawed and surprised, as though they could never have expected such a tragedy in a flood plain and didn’t have common sense measures in place to prevent these deaths.
You know how I know that? Because this has already happened in the same area and in the same month and under the same circumstances.
On the evening of July 16th, 1987, a flash flood hit this region. NWS issued warnings. The Guadalupe overflowed, rising 29 feet over the next several hours. It was the last day of a church camp in Comfort, Texas, and the decision was made to evacuate the 300 children there.
But upon evacuation, the last bus was stalled by a rush of flood water and a van was stuck behind it. Both were swept into the Guadalupe. Ten children drowned.
In October of 1998, there was flash flooding in nearby counties. This time, 31 people were killed.
Ten years ago, there was flash flooding in the same region, and 13 people were killed, just a month after a separate flood killed 13 people in San Antonio.
I don’t think any of that was God’s plan either, and I sure as hell don’t think it was God’s plan for local officials to somehow not have implemented an effective warning system in the past 40 years, even with constant reminders that it was needed.
I don’t think it was God’s plan for Kerr County officials to have discussed installing a warning system back in 2016, only for them to resolve it was too costly and instead rely on “word of mouth” to save people in an emergency. Really.
I don’t think it was God’s plan for the Texas state legislature to fail to pass a bill just a few months ago that would have, in part, funded better alert systems for impending natural disasters.
I don’t think it was God’s plan for an official, when asked if there were any plans to evacuate before it was too late, to respond: “What we don’t want to do is cry wolf.”
I don’t think it was God’s plan for all these grown ass adults at the federal, state, and local levels to point fingers at each other, trying to deflect blame, when all of them would have prevented the resulting death and destruction. All of them.
I don’t think it was God plan’s for any of these people to exploit God as a shield against criticism of their own incompetence and carelessness and in the faces of grieving families.
I don’t think it’s God’s plan to ignore the incessant red flags about the coming consequences of climate change.
Don’t put this on God. You had plenty of warnings this might happen, and you chose to ignore them. You chose to leave the people you’re sworn to serve in the most vulnerable circumstances. You chose to risk danger befalling them.
I don’t know if it’s God’s plan to see all your asses voted out and removed, but I would sure be worried about it if I were y’all.
Thoughts and prayers.
They’d rather blame it on God than accept responsibility for their cruel and heartless decisions.
Thank you for stating this so clearly, Charlotte.