He's just not that into you

In general, like most things in life, it's best not to write posts when you're angry. I find, however, five days after writing this post, that I'm not angry. I just vehemently disagree with the premise suggested to me and I want to say so.


TO: The "lady" who thinks "god" kills babies as punishment for painful life decisions


I've thought about this and I just can't believe I understand you right, so I'm looking for a little enlightenment here. Clarification, if you will.

If I understand this correctly, you believe that "god" - a loving and almighty force for Good, a being so powerful and all knowing that it understands us implicitly and completely from the moment we enter the world, an entity so forgiving and full of love that all of mankind can find salvation in its "arms" - this "god" kills babies on purpose - Kills them. Babies. In the womb babies, so like, hasn't even had an orange poop explosion up the back of mom's favorite onsie yet, sin-free, completely innocent babies - intentionally, as retribution for a parent's mistakes.

Not necessarily heinous mistakes. Not murder or rape or theft. Not mutilation of another. Not intentional harm of any sort.

This "god" of yours murders innocent babies on purpose as punishment for two parents in a loving, committed relationship adopting a child with love and every intention of raising the child no matter what, finding that the child's traumatic past causes behaviors in their home that they are completely incapable of dealing with, calling in professionals to help them determine how to help the child heal, being advised that the child is most likely not able to attach in their home environment, expending every single resource at their disposal to find the child a home without other young children that meets the child's needs, committing themselves fully to the transition process, following every single piece of advice and therapy recommendation, letting the child go, despite crushing heartbreak and judgment to this home that is, according to every single person who knows and is working in the child's best interest, better for him, and dealing with the emotional aftermath of that fact. For these crimes of failure to be the parents we had hoped to be, failing to meet a child's emotional needs and having to find another loving family that can do so, our sentence was, wait for it, this is rich: the death of our first baby.

But wait. It gets better. This "god" that you follow is so vicious, so sure of our ineptitude, so brutally confident of its almighty righteousness, so lacking in mercy or belief in the human spirit, that it took this action in advance of our crimes.

Do I have this correct? Your "god" murdered our first baby before we had even committed the heinous act of failing to live our lives as perfectly as you obviously do. Since clearly nothing so damning has happened in your life to let you fall out of its favor or else you would have babies dropping dead all around you if you so much as looked at them, I assume.

Am I missing any salient detail here?

That is ... I have no words for that. It is stunningly horrendously awful for you.

That is the model for your life? That is the example you look up to? That is the lesson that you preach?

Lady, lean in, I gotta tell you a secret, you've got to find yourself a different god, girl. The rest of us don't have to deal with that shit, for real. Do you let your husband beat you when you wash the dishes wrong too? Do you tell yourself you deserve it? You're living under Trujillo over there and it's killing your soul. Think less brutal, sadistic dictator and more benevolent, kind power for good. Think peace. Think forgiveness. Think love everlasting. Think indifference, for God's sake (aha), just try not to think baby blood bath as punishment for heartbreaking family decisions.

I know it hurts, but listen, a "god" that would treat babies that way, that would treat people that way, isn't worth your time. Break up with your god. There are better gods out there, honey, I promise you. You don't need that controlling, baby murdering asshole. You deserve love. You deserve understanding. You are beautiful. You don't deserve the threat of bloody, dead children hanging over your every action and every possible future action for that matter. That is suspiciously anti-god like. Or at least, no god I want to know.

Unless you enjoy sadism? Murder? Crushing defeat of any who dare to live their lives "below" the standards you arbitrarily set for them? So yeah, on second thought, if that is the case, you keep your "god." You keep him busy over there where you are, slaughtering babies for violent retribution.

I'll just whistle my way back over here to my higher power. It flourishes in joy and order and nature. It understands that biological things live and die as a part of the natural order of life that it helped to create and that it continues to fuel. It loves the color purple and sunsets and spirals and perfectly balanced mathematical equations. It judges beings by the joy in their hearts, not by the short-sighted measures that we limited humans hold up to one another.

I'll strive every day to model my life after its example and in furtherance of the joy that sustains it. And I'll continue to live in happiness and peace, knowing that I try, I try so hard, to take actions and make decisions and live life in love. Even hard decisions. Even impossible ones. And that when I make a mistake, when I lose my way, it is still there, boundless joy, waiting for me to recover, to rethink, to repair and make amends, without slaughtering a single baby to convince me of the rightness of that path.

I'll focus my energy on being a part of the joy that underlies, permeates and sustains this universe. The joy that I call God.

Can you say the same?