To Thank God Is The Height Of Arrogance

One of the things that drives atheists to distraction is to hear someone thanking God for their survival after some type of disaster. This is especially true if someone else has died in the disaster. Here’s an example of how atheists think.

My plane is arriving home - finally. I’m tired. I’m hungry. It’s the dead of night and the rain is coming down in sheets. That would make me nervous enough but the bigger problem is this. The plane’s landing gear is only partially down. All the fuel that can be burned off is gone and we’re 1km back on final approach. I think I can see the flashing lights of some of the emergency vehicles that are waiting for us. We’ve assumed the crash position.

It’s the hardest, bone crunching landing that I’ve ever experienced. Blood is pouring from my mouth. I find out later that my left leg is broken just above the ankle. We skid for what seems like forever. The last thing I remember is seeing the wing, right where my window and protective fuselage used to be, tear away. I’m soaked in fuel and exposed to the elements as we careen off the end of the runway and into, what I later learn to be, bush and wasteland. The next thing I know, a rescue crewman is lifting me out of my seat. There are screams and smoke and shouts of “Hurry - Hurry!” I’m lying in the rain beside a fire truck, about two hundred meters from the plane when it explodes. The screams of those still inside will remain with me for the rest of my life.

Four days later, two of us are being released from the hospital. There’s a small crowd outside and they’re clapping for us. News Reporters ask if they can interview us. All I have to say is, “I am so very thankful to the rescue crew for saving my life. I can’t say enough about how absolutely grateful I am to all those who risked their lives in order to save mine.”

I’m taken aback when someone from the crowd yells, “I’m an atheist and that gives me the right to say to your face, ‘How dare you say that you’re thankful to be alive when 57 other people died? How arrogant can you be? You think you’re somebody special? You think you’re better than those other people? Well I’m here to tell you that you’re not!’”

Never one to back down from perceived injustice, I reply, “I may not be special, but the people who risked their lives in order to save mine certainly are.”

“Then why didn’t they save everyone’s life? My daughter died on that plane and I say the rescuers are nothing but cowardly scum.”

“Just because you’re angry at them doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be grateful.”

“Yes it does. Yes it does you arrogant . . .!”

I interrupt. “Why?” I ask, genuinely interested. “Why shouldn’t I thank someone who saved my life, even if he didn’t save someone else’s?”

Breaking into tears of rage, the man ends with, “Because he should have saved everybody or nobody that’s why.”

While the analogy is admittedly imperfect, the point is clear. For thousands of years, atheists have used “this one saved / that one dead” as “proof” that God doesn’t exist. I know. It’s a stupid argument, but so are all their denials of God. One thing that atheists cannot tolerate is a God who is Sovereign; a God who will choose one and not another. They would rather pretend that God doesn’t exist than bow down to such a God. God however replies back to such atheist accusations with, “You can worship Me as Sovereign Lord and be saved, or you can reject My Lordship and die in your sins. Because you have rejected Me and want nothing to do with Me, I say to you, “Thy will be done.””

Unless God is "good" to everyone, then in the atheist mind, God isn’t good to anyone. As the saying goes, “Unbelief always comes from seeing oneself as good and God as evil.”

In the atheist mind it’s black or white, right or wrong, totally acceptable or totally unacceptable. It’s this rigid and repetitive, persistent and pervasive, black and white thinking that is the cause of atheist rants toward survivors who are thankful to God. It’s the survivor who bears the brunt of the atheist’s misdirected anger. The survivor is accused of being arrogant for being grateful. Sometimes it’s hard to see why atheists deem logic and reason to be exclusively within their domain.