God's Been a Real Sport to Me!

I don't remember if that quote, "God's been a real sport to me", is actually from Stephen King's book The Dead Zone or if it's only from the movie made from the book, but it's a good quote.  It comes from the character Johnny Smith, played by Christopher Walken, after someone tells him that god must have blessed him for him to survive a horrific accident.  Mr. Smith replies "Bless me"? Do you know what God did for me? He threw an 18-wheeled truck at me and bounced me into nowhere for five years! When I woke up, my girl was gone, my job was gone, my legs are just about useless... Blessed me? God's been a real sport to me!"

I couldn't help but be reminded of this when I read the stories about the survival of a woman from British Columbia, Rita Chretien, who managed to live through seven grueling weeks in the wilderness of northern Nevada stuck in a Chevrolet Astro.  You can read about the story here.  The quote that caught my eye was this, attributed to a written statement from her family - "We are extremely grateful for the thousands of prayers from literally around the world on our behalf. We have been covered with the peace that only God can give over the past seven weeks."  I have to be honest and say I'm not sure what they mean by that.  Their mother and father had been missing for 50 days and they've been at peace about it?  I'm not sure that's what they meant to say, on the other hand it was supposedly from a written statement, so it couldn't be considered a slip of the tongue.

I'm not trying to be critical of the family in the sense of accusing them of being okay about their parents being missing.  I'm just trying to understand how they could feel okay about their parents being missing.  Is this what they mean by the power of prayer?  If this isn't bad enough, their father is still missing!  I can only suppose that they're at peace with that too.

Okay, I understand I'm being an ass and using a tragedy to make a point, and I'm sure they would accuse me of deliberately twisting their words.  I have a lot of empathy for this family.  I can imagine what they've been going through.  I don't believe that I'm wrong about this, however.

Christians have been touting the amazing ability of jesus and god to soothe their fears and heal their hearts.  Unfortunately for them, this state seems indistinguishable from antisocial personality disorder.  They claim to feel a calm in a situation that calls for stress.  This isn't an improvement.  They seem to feel that there is no reason to be distressed when your loved ones may be suffering.  They blame other peoples misfortunes on them but blame their own misfortunes on other people. 

This is how christianity wants people to view the world.