Here we go again....?

Question

First of all, my heart goes out to those that were killed or injured in the Minneapolis bridge disaster and to their families.

As in all disasters, those that narrowly escaped injury or death in the bridge collapse, thanked God for sparing them. If God was there to save them, why didn't he save those that were directly behind them and went down with the bridge? And why didn't God keep the bridge from collapsing in the first place, or postpone the collapse until a time when fewer people would be on the bridge?

In a disaster, why does God spare some and allow others to be injured or killed. There is no evidence that the ones that are spared are particularly moral, or that the ones that are injured or killed are particularly evil.

If it's God's will, why is it God's will?
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Answer 1

God has nothing to do with it. I find it callous for survivors of any disaster to suggest God spared them and allowed others who were not quite worthy to perish.

Answer 2

God calls some people to him sooner than others. It has nothing to do with moral. There is bad things in the world to balance out good. It could of been a LOT worse. Those people are extremely lucky. It's a very unfortunate situation, and my hearts go out to them as well. Now is not the time to turn against God, and to be angry at Him. He is there for condolences and comfort. Do not turn your back on him, if those people were with Him, they are much happier now anyways. We could not ever possibly know why it's God's will, or why he wanted it to happen that way. Man cannot know or understand God's will.
Many bad things, perhaps not this, maybe so, happen because of the sin in our world. Man chose to have sin here, and now we live with it each day.

Answer 3

Excellent questions. I have struggled with similar questions myself. It may surprise you that I am an ordained minister. We all ask these questions for various reasons. There are no easy answers and what I have concluded is not easy nor is usually welcomed by those who ask of me. For what its worth...
If God is who the Bible reveals Him to be, then He owes me, you, nor anyone else any thing at all. He is the creator. He makes up the rules. He makes the board on which we play the game of life. He didn't owe the birth I had, nor does He owe me the next breath I take.
He does what He does and thats it. He asks us to trust Him or not. It doesn't make a lot of sense and doesn't always seem very comforting. We cannot hold God to the same standards we hold each other(our peers, our equals) because God has no equal. I stand with Job now and say, "Even if He kills me, yet will I serve Him." If my pain, hurt or even death brings Him glory, then so be it since my chief end in life is to glorify the Triune God of the Bible. He gets His glory how He sees fit. This is the blunt truth and this is why so many, even those who claim to know Him, reject who He is.

Answer 4

Everybody has a time to go. We charted these events before we came into this life, and when your exit point comes up, you go. It's not logical to think that God would for whatever reason just pick at random victims of horrible or disastrous deaths. That would make Him a cruel, callous, monster. Bridges collapse because people are human and make mistakes sometimes and because when things get old they get more fragile. We chart our lives with various ups and downs and when we experience the downs, we blame God. God does not mistakes. Therefore he couldn't possibly be blamed. We chose it, we are living it.

Answer 5

It's an amazing phenomenon, isn't it? When things go right, it was God's will. When things go horribly wrong, it was somehow also a part of God's divine plan (which he coincidentally sets up to look exactly like the world would look if he was not interfering at all).

They leave no space in between for injecting reality into the situation.

And it's indeed sickening how disaster survivors will credit God with saving them, in effect implying that everyone who wasn't so lucky must've been less important in God's eyes than they themselves are.

And the Christians pride themselves on their humility?

Answer 6

They are not thanking God for saving them, they are thanking God that they lived through it, for they came real close to dying and realized how precious life is. For those who lived and thanked God, I hope their lives are changed for the better in that they become closer to God.

God didn't cause the accident, and in most cases I'd agree that He didn't do anything to save any particular person. The bridge fell because of sin. Yeah, I know, laugh aloud now ... but think about it. The bridge was deficient, but wasn't shut down, why? Greed, most likely (pssst, greed is a sin). When you look at the reasons why the bridge collapsed, you will find someone who sinned - whether it was greed, jealousy, whatever, that's why.

Answer 7

Well I think the answer is that you never die. The bridge collapse was terrible (I wish it did not happen), but thousands of people die everyday from tragic accidents. I think I am lucky to live in the US where safety is a top priority. In other countries you would never get the response we are getting with regards to making sure this never happens again.

Answer 8

Since God knows everything, I believe it was their time to go. They just happened to be on the bridge at the time. None of us know when or how we are going to die, we just know its going to happen.

The bridge collapsing has nothing to do with God but with man's workmanship. I heard it stated that officials were told in 1990 that the structure was weak and needed attention.

Answer 9

I don't think it has anything to do with the will of whatever God/s may exist. All of us die sooner or later. It has to do with probabilities and luck, and sadly for the folks killed in Minneapolis, they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The fact that you pointed out -- that it rains on the just and the unjust alike -- is to me a powerful argument that tragedy is indeed random, at least in that sense.

Answer 10

my heart also goes out to all the people that has lost loved ones as well, and my prayers goes out to them..But we all are borned and we all will die when it is our time..you yourself could walk across the street and get hit and you could die yes it would be your time. We have no control on how long any of us will be here on earth...we all are here for a reason, for a time and when that reason and time has ended then we will go one way or another..it also happens to the good and the bad, that has nothing to do with if you gonna die or not..