Eighteen months after the June 3rd disaster, Ghanaians were handed a huge doze of deja vu Thursday night when news broke that a gas filling station near the Trade Fair Centre in La had exploded.
This disaster, thankfully, was on a far lesser scale than the horror of June 3rd, but no less tragic for it. But that it is so reminiscent of what happened on Circle that day speaks volumes of how much we’ve failed to tackle the root cause of this problem.
The wanton disregard for regulations when setting up such dangerous but essential stations, the lack of enforcement of the regulations once the station has been set up, and an attention span that last for one week at most means that despite the best incentive in the world to change our ways (June 3), we simply went right back to business as usual, waiting for the next tragedy so we talk tough for a few days and forget everything once again.
That kind of laissez faire approach to preventing problems is nothing new and probably not going away soon, but that is a problem for another day. I am more interested in another problem, which is all I’ve heard about from near everyone I’ve spoken to about this tragedy. There are people thanking God for saving them, others calling for prayers for the injured and for the souls of the departed.
This is a very delicate time, and no doubt there are families dealing with immense grief at this moment. Nine people are believed dead and many others injured. We are all religious and thus we tend to gloss over all these but there is something really sinister and selfish about those alive exalting in being ‘saved by God’.
Christians have this really neat trick where God takes credit for the good things but escapes blame for the bad – ergo people thank him for saving them but he escapes blame for those who died. Under no framework does it make sense that one goes without the other. Considering the kind of powers Christians have endowed their God with, it stands to reason that he has the power to stop this tragedy entirely but let it happen. How then does he get ‘thanked’ for saving those who survived but receives no blame for those who died. He could have simply saved everyone and spared those families the tragedy.
Also, those who claim to have been saved are simply playing the game where they are the special ones God put his hands on. In their universe, those who died did not deserve God’s protection, but they, the ones who survived, did. Intentionally or not, that is the point being made when we play this game.There is no reason why those who survived are any special or deserved some sort of protection that those who died did not.
For us to believe God saved anyone, we also have to believe he saw the explosion coming and simply sat on his hands. Or he simply was nowhere to be found and did not kill nor save anyone.
President Mahama also called on us to pray for the injured. It’s too late for God to help the dead but presumably he can help the injured. But he is also supposedly omniscient, which means he already knows who would survive and who would not, which makes these prayers redundant. Unless we’re supposed to believe God would change what has already been written because some people prayed.
This world is a very cruel place, but also very random. I live around Trade Fair, I use that gas station every once in a while – I could very easily have been at that station yesterday, but I don’t believe any divine hand steered me away. It’s simply how life is, sh*t happens. Sometimes you are a part of the sh*t and sometimes you are not. There’s no reason to drag the supernatural into it.
We are too fond of it, and it blocks getting real solutions to our very real problems.