God Sends Gunman, Defender to Church?

On Sunday, December 9th, a man armed with "an assault rifle, two handguns and a backpack with more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition in clips" dropped a smoke grenade at one entrance to a Colorado Springs megachurch, circled around, and opened fire at the exiting crowd, killing two people. Twelve hours earlier, he had killed two others at a missionary training school in Arvada.

He then entered the church, took a couple of shots, and was gunned down by security guard Jeanne Assam. Jeanne's take on the situation? "It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God," she said.

I'm sorry, Jeanne, but God was not anywhere in the vicinity that day.

It was just you and a home-schooled kid who had become entrenched in the pseudo-religio-society that is megachurch Colorado Springs and was subsequently ostracized from his reality when he was booted from the Youth With A Mission school a few years ago (Space cadet check: Police said 3 years, the school said 5, and the church affiliated with the program? "Senior Pastor Brady Boyd of New Life Church said the gunman had no connection to the church.").

In the actual definition of "begging the question," God in the world of the extremely devout works something like this: Why does everything happen for a reason? Because God is infallible. What proof do you have that God is infallible? Everything happens for a reason.

He's got a pretty good racket going. Win the lottery? God's blessing is upon you! Have an addiction or horrid money problems or both? God's just challenging you to make you strong. Jump out of your burning apartment, break both your legs, and watch your mother die by immolation? God's blessing you survived and Jesus needed Mommy in Heaven.

And in this case, the security guard attributes her trained ability to fire a weapon at a target to God when the result of it was the taking of a human life in the house of God.

I understand the role of religion in people's lives, but blind, unquestioning faith and using God as a tool of rationalization is simply turning 'living a life' into absurdity.