God's overall performance approved by most voters

I saw a survey last night on CNN about the Bearded Ol' Guy Who Floats on Clouds.

Fifty-two percent of those surveyed a few weeks ago approve of God’s performance overall; just nine percent disapprove.

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm based in North Carolina, used automated telephone interviews to question just over 900 American voters – liberal, moderate and conservative – in mid-July.

Respondents gave the Big Guy his best rating on creating the universe (71 percent approved). His handling of the animal kingdom was approved by 56 percent. What was most surprising to me is that fully 50 percent approve of the way he handles natural disasters, with just 13 percent disapproving.

I wonder how God would have fared in this poll if any Japanese were included. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan last March killed 15,641 people, injured 5,699 and left 5,007 people missing across 18 prefectures. Around four million households in northeastern Japan were left without electricity and 1.5 million without water. Nuclear reactors exploded, roads and railways were washed away and more than 125,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Speaking of earthquakes, it may have disappeared from CNN’s coverage but the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti in January of 2010 killed an estimated 316,000 people. Another 300,000 were injured and one million human beings lost their homes. It would be interesting to hear these folks evaluate God’s performance.

The Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that occurred on the day after Christmas – when Christians celebrate the birth of the Son of God – in 2004 killed over 230,000 people in 14 countries. (Thanks to the magic of the internet, I saw photos of the bloated, decomposing bodies of victims, young and old, waiting to be identified and claimed by loved ones. I can’t forget these images.) I’m curious about how anyone associated with this devastating catastrophe in Sri Lanka and India and Thailand would respond to the automated phone calls from the North Carolina polling firm.

Perhaps the 900 people contacted were provincial and didn’t consider natural disasters in other countries to be within their purview. There’s plenty of suffering right here at home that the Omnipotent Number One Superhero could stop or lesson.

Too bad no one asked Carl and Terry Probyn, Jaycee Dugard’s parents, what they thought about God. On the one hand, their prayers that Jaycee – who was kidnapped from her bus stop in South Lake Tahoe, California, on June 10, 1991, when she was just 11 – would come back to them were answered. On the other hand, it took 18 years and she gave birth to two daughters fathered by her kidnapper/rapist before she was reunited with her family.

It would be good to know if there were any questions about the West Nickel Mines School, a one-room schoolhouse in an Amish community in Pennsylvania where on October 2, 2006, a deranged gunman took hostages and shot ten little girls between the ages of six and 13, killing five.

I’m interested in knowing if there were any questions about all the people stolen from their loved ones by cancer and car crashes and heart attacks.

I know, I know: God gave us all free will and what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and sometimes he just needs more angels for heaven.

Too bad the pollsters didn’t call me. I’d have given their automated interviewer an earful.

Sources: The Guardian, CNN.