Comedy v. Tragedy

God's sense of humor is very different from our own.
He does not laugh at the simple
"man walks into a bar" joke. No, God needs
complex irony and subtle farcical twists
that seem macabre to you and me.
All that we can hope for is that God
God got his good laugh and
a tragedy such as this will never happen again.

--South Park (Season 7, Episode 10, Grey Dawn)

After I finished watching all 16 available seasons of South park, I thought I should mention one of the more striking quotes. When I watched season 7, it was much closer to the Newtown, CT, massacre than now. But I still think the quote is applicable. Trey Parker and Matt Stone both say they are not atheist, but they do freely poke at all things, including religion. I think that is a fairly healthy habit to do; poke and prod at things that don't make sense.

Anyhow, this episode was about old people driving cars and killing people. But really, any tragedy, disaster, terrorist attack, etc. will work fine in this situation. If you believe in God, it makes it very hard to explain some of these tragic events. How could a loving God allow that kind of stuff to happen to His children? The LDS theology says that He cannot interfere with mankind's agency, so bad things happen because of bad people. But that doesn't account for natural disasters. Do they happen because of bad people too? I suppose some of the stuff in scripture did. That does not sound like much of a loving God; vengeful, jealous, and hateful, more like. You know, the kind of God that this quote so aptly describes.

I personally reject the notion of a God that is just messing with us. I refuse to worship such a being. I also reject the notion of a God that supposedly loves us and yet allows such terrible things to happen. Hell, I am a mere mortal and can get my kids to not kill each other. I can teach them love, respect, honesty, and all manner of goodness BECAUSE I AM HERE. God would get a lot farther in His desires for all mankind to worship his great name if he were physically here doing good things for His children that He supposedly loves.

In the meantime, I will just have to give credit for all the terrible things that happen on this planet to the same place I give credit for all the wonderful things that happen: mankind. We as a species span the spectrum from unbelievably horrible to spectacularly wonderful. And I will attribute to any God the same credit I give to Santa Claus: nothing.