The Hand of God is usually invoked when you want to ascribe a religious meaning to a random event, or want to forgo personal responsibility for something you did that was wrong. I am more familiar with the term in the latter sense. Every soccer fan remembers Diego Maradona’s goal against England at the World Cup 1986, that he later attributed to the “Hand of God” :
But I see that the work experience students who write articles for Christian Today are also familiar with the term, as can be witnessed from this latest train wreck by Grace Mathew, who we’ve come across before, if memory serves :
In the wake of the recent 10 year anniversary of 9/11 (or 11/9 for our Australian readers), a spate of stories have flooded social media outlets, regaling us with tales of close calls too close to be called mere coincidences.
There’s a new one, inserting supernatural agency into random events ! It’s a variety of the religious “god killed 150 passengers on that plane, but one infant survived, it must be a miracle !” trope. Grace sure knows how to make religion and belief look embarrassingly stupid.
She then goes on to tell the story of some woman who apparently bumped into Gwyneth Paltrow on the morning of 9/11, and who subsequently didn’t get killed in the WTC as a result of it. And Grace concludes from this encounter that the Judeo-Christian god she was brought up to believe in must indeed exist.
It seems that hidden behind the biggest obstacles are the greatest opportunities. It makes me wonder which delays and ostensible ‘mishaps’ have hidden the hand of Providence, protecting us from what we cannot expect.
The stories are too abundant to tell, but whether heralded as a fluke, a fake or a lucky coincidence, sometimes we all stand in awe of the hand of God.
Only deluded fools do, Grace. We normal people realise that the human brain has the ability to see patterns where there are none, and that religious people have a tendency to insert their imaginary friends into random events. So tell me Grace, why do you think your god let those 3000 people die if he saved that one lady, surely he could have saved them all ? And you’re not allowed your stock “my supernatural entity works in mysterious ways” cop-out.
I wish religious apologists would stop being so damned ridiculous. (Not you, Maradona, you can do that against England anytime !)
