For those of you who are unaware of what happened yesterday morning in Waco, Texas… a pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted.
Yep. Seems that, while waist-deep in the baptismal pool, this brainiac reached out and grabbed a live microphone! (The church folk there claim that a microphone is the only way to get everyone in attendance to hear the pastor. I guess these folks never thought of a cheerleader's megaphone, or maybe a battery powered bullhorn.) The mic, improperly grounded, or perhaps faulty, proceeded to flood his body with electricity.
Even when properly grounded, it's not too bright to handle a microphone while taking a dip. But maybe he assumed God would never allow harm to befall him while performing the sacrament of baptism. Guess God showed him.
Another pastor at the church said, "At first, there was definitely confusion just because everyone was trying to figure out what was going on. Everyone just immediately started praying." And we see how well that worked. Rev. Kyle Lake was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly thereafter.
The young Rev. Lake leaves behind a wife and three children. Guess God felt it was best that these kids grow up without their daddy, for some reason. And maybe poor Jennifer is better off without him, in God's eyes.
Now, I'm not making these comments out of cruelty. I never met Rev. Lake, but he was probably a very decent fellow. I think his death is a terrible thing, and my heart genuinely goes out to his widow and children.
Rather, I say these things in the hopes that maybe some fence-sitter somewhere will realize that the old "no one can pretend to understand the will of the almighty" routine is a bunch of crap. No "just and loving" god would do such a thing.
The world is not fair, folks. Bad things do happen to good people. And yeah, good things happen to bad people, too. These facts are not easy for us to accept, because we do have a sense of justice instilled in us. But the world is not just. And if there is a God, then He is not just, either… at least, not in any sense of the word comprehensible by human beings.
No… We may wish for a fair and loving sky daddy to make all things right in the end. But rationalizing tragedy is a very sad way to go through life.
