If your son consistently rebelled against everything you taught him and rejects every one of your attempts to intervene in his life to protect him, how would you feel if he then accused you of not protecting him when some thing bad happened to him? She’s not saying that your son is to blame for bad things happening, but she is saying that his accusation against you is unreasonable. The great thing is that in much the same way you would be overjoyed if your son turned back to you and asked you to be involved in his life again, so would God be and He would jump right in without any hesitation.

just a theologically necessary point: people also forget that God has never promised to protect us from all physical harm, even physical death.

I think you will find that there were many religious aid organisations who did come to the assistance of victims without prejudice.

Also, it seems to me that saying people should turn to God to prevent natural disasters (which we’ve established was not in fact what she said) is as abhorent as saying people should turn away from God because of natural disasters, which is what the presenter was saying.

Seriously, I tool a picture through my glass door!

“Amusement” comes in varied textures. Some is clever, some is whimsical, and some is just mean spirited intimidation. You seem to cover the gamut in your often clever blog, but this is not in one of the more entertaining of those categories. I’m not offended exactly, but mean spirited stuff is kinda of boring – dumb jerks are not exactly a limited resource to be cultivated. Your blog would have been less interesting you had had simply decided to stay up the next night and shoot the raccoon. (You would have had some posters who loved that simple ending too). This post is your “just shoot it and shut up” equivalent. I’m glad you were more creative with the raccoon.

The people who do sometimes benefit from being “called on their bullshit” are those with well functioning consciences, or at least a partially functioning sense of how to live among a social species. Like perhaps you, or me.

ricky is going down