If I hear one more Christian take on that ugly “self-righteous” tone and suggest that the massacre at Virginia Tech is a direct result of our society’s removal of prayer in schools, I may just go ballistic.

It’s bad enough that someone would say such an insensitive thing at all. It ranks right up there with those church members who picket the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq and say that the reason the soldiers died had nothing to do with Iraqi snipers and everything to do with our society’s “acceptance” of homosexuality. Does our society really “accept” homosexuality? I must have missed that memo.

It’s even worse that they make the insinuation with a subtle undertone that indicates that they think those deaths are actually justified.

It turns my stomach. And looking at it from a “What would Jesus do?” perspective, I bet it turns His stomach, too.

I’m sorry, folks, but I refuse to believe that the God I worship would possess someone, force him to buy guns, then make him slaughter 32 innocent people just because there are others who don’t like prayer in public places. We all, any of us who want to, can pray at any time. We need not bring an event or a class or a meeting to a standstill for some public demonstration of prayer to be believers. We can pray silently any time we want.

I’m sure there were prayers happening in those classrooms as the gunman approached. And remember the shootings in Paducah, Kentucky in December of 1997? The targets were students who had just participated in a prayer circle. The shooter, reportedly, was a Christian who had just been confirmed at his church the spring before the shooting. Are these the kinds of people God would want targeted in making such a point?

Bad things happen to good people. Exceptionally bad things happen to extraordinarily good people. But I don’t choose to blame an evil, heartless, discompassionate God for them.

What if it’s those who insist that God caused this who are the ones who need to be praying more? Maybe they should be the ones asking for understanding rather than trying to speak for the God they seem to think they know so well. It’s just a guess, but I doubt that God needs them to speak for Him as much as they think He does.

It seems to me that anyone who could create everything that exists could handle speaking for Himself whenever He feels the time is right. And I suspect that when He does, the manner in which he delivers the message will be loving and just. That is what I would expect from the God I worship.