That Murdered Tennessee Minister

Yet another randomly provided example of the total non-existence of God, if you ask me.

Here'a a guy that (so far, although if there's dirt, the press will have it in short time) was beloved in his community. He was a man of God, spiritual, giving, genial, outgoing, described by many as charismatic. So far, everyone had good things to say about him. And the press has described both his father and grandfather as paragons of Christian virtue, dedicated men of spirit who ministered to many.

As much as I run down organized religion, I've got to admit that these are good guys. They do things I don't have the heart to do, especially the patience to do. They believe in what they're doing, and they genuinely help people. They are community leaders, and I give my respect (although I think they are ludicrously mistaken in the beliefs that motivate their actions).

And this good guy is murdered by his wife. We'll find out soon enough what the motive was. Maybe the husband was a pedophile, or gay, or beat the wife. Maybe he insulted her cooking, or her hair.

Or maybe she just wanted out of the marriage and like so many narrow-minded murderer-idiots who have gone before her, figured she'd just off the guy and solve all of her problems. Wrong answer.

So, if this guy really was a man of God, how did God take care of his dedicated servant? How did God reward this guy for being a family man, for populating the world with three more little Christians? How did God communicate to him that the work he was doing was good and positive? Well, God had him shot, by his wife, no less.

The truly devout would say that Satan did it, that the devil got into the wife to thwart the will of God. They'd say that evil achieved a temporary victory over good, another minor skirmish in the eternal (but only 2000-odd years in the true Christian cosmology) war between the good and the bad. The truly devout could and would even chalk this up to the Big Guy himself, saying that the poor, doomed minister was just so great, such a wonderful person, that God decided to end his suffering and toil on Earth and just beamed him right on up to heaven to hang out with Him and the angels, etc.

If God called him home, why did he have to get shot by the wife? How does that benefit the wife? How does that position the children for the rest of their lives, that their mother murdered their father? Is this the kind of thing God would do? Is this how he'd leave little children? If he was beaming the guy up to heaven, why couldn't he just expire in his sleep, or give it up in the middle of the sermon, complete with golden light and a dying admission that God was calling him home? Now that would be a good way to do it, if it had to be done.

But no. The guy is just dead. The children are now wards of the state, and hopefully they've got some good family members who can take them in. He'll get a pretty funeral, folks will say nice things, and he'll go down in local lore as the minister who was killed right there in the parsonage, by the wife. The wife, she'll get life in a Tennessee prison, maybe even the death penalty (most certainly deserved, if she did it and it was pre-meditated). Where is God in all of this?

I'm sorry, but I see no presence of God whatsoever. I see just another sad story of how life is unpredictable, and how it is quick and random and completely final in its eye-blink capriciousness. That couple may have been in love once, and it may have been 15 years ago, or it may have been last week. Maybe he told her that the macaroni and cheez tasted like shit for last Sunday's dinner, and that was the one thing that shattered it for her. Maybe she just wanted his insurance so she could get a new car and move out of Tennessee. That's the truth of it: no God, just the random twists and turns of human life.