News coverage of the Miami-area condo collapse is bone-chilling in its rising body count, guaranteed to rise much further. Deepening the chill are reports of "severe" structural damage left unaddressed for three years. More than a hundred lives might have been saved had repairs been undertaken sooner.
In watching the news coverage, what also chills my bones and sickens my heart is the thought of how victims' families and other loved ones must feel when they hear a lucky survivor of the lethal collapse "thank God" for sparing his or her life.
What a direct, thoughtless, hellishly unfeeling slap in the face of the dead, mangled and rubble-buried residents and all who so deeply cared for them. What the God-thanking survivors are, in effect, telling the grieving is that, well, for their loved ones, God could not have cared less.
Such immense indifference to the gravely wounded feelings of others occurs after every natural disaster, or, as in this case, even man-made disasters. Those who see God as responsible for their survival don't seem to fathom that they're also saying God is responsible for killing dozens or hundreds of innocents — and leaving far more badly heartbroken others to suffer their loved ones' God-forsaken fate.
Just leave God out of it.