[tsmithson]

This is the recurring problem of the God of the lost car keys, a quieter cousin of the prosperity gospel. At its core is a deeply human craving for certainty. We are uncomfortable with ambiguity, and so we build cognitive systems that give us the illusion of control—systems where outcomes can be explained, predicted, and morally justified.

When people say, “God protected me,” the phrase sounds humble and faithful, but it often carries an unexamined assumption: that God intervened selectively on their behalf. Usually—though rarely stated outright—it implies that something about obedience, worthiness, or spiritual alignment unlocked divine protection that day. Taken seriously, that belief collapses almost immediately under even modest moral scrutiny.

Your question exposes the fault line. If God protected these teenagers, what are we to say about the children killed in the Texas floods? Was God absent? Indifferent? Selectively attentive? Were those lives less worthy of protection? No thoughtful person can sit with those questions for long without recognizing that this framework produces a God who is arbitrary at best and morally incoherent at worst.

Even more troubling is the implicit lesson that can be absorbed without anyone intending it: risk is acceptable if God is on your side. Speeding becomes survivable. Poor judgment becomes spiritually insulated. The narrative subtly shifts from gratitude to presumption.

The only interpretation that makes sense to me is not triumphalist faith, but humility. Gratitude, yes—but gratitude stripped of entitlement. Something good happened that easily could not have. Not because it was earned, deserved, or spiritually engineered, but because existence is fragile and outcomes are uneven. If we use the word “grace” here, it must mean what grace actually means: unmerited favor. And sometimes, if we are honest, it may simply mean luck.

What troubles me most is not that people feel thankful—gratitude is natural and human—but that leadership so rarely reframes these moments. When testimonies unintentionally teach a transactional or selective God, silence functions as endorsement. A gentle correction could preserve faith and moral coherence: emphasizing compassion over causality, humility over certainty, and shared grief over implied spiritual hierarchy.

Faith does not require us to explain why some are spared and others are not. In fact, the insistence that we must explain it may be one of the ways we miss the deeper call—to mourn with those who mourn, to resist simplistic answers, and to trust without pretending we understand the machinery of God.

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