"She was the sweetest girl," said Inez Johnson, "not an evil bone in her little body. Our faith is so strong that we told the rescue workers to leave because they were just wasting their time – and their annoying machinery was drowning out our prayer circles. When those nine miners were saved in Pennsylvania, everyone knew who to give the credit to: not the rescue workers -- the Lord! And I just knew the Lord would send a band of angels to swoop down and save little Nancy Austin at any minute. But, after four days of praise and worship, it became clear to all of us that He had decided to go ahead and kill her."

President George W. Bush reluctantly arose from his hammock to express condolences to Mrs. Seymour Austin, Nancy's mother, in a phone call: "It is just like I keep telling folks who want to look at my administration records -- It is not ours to question why. The Lord plays favorites - just ask them Egyptians who followed the Jews into the Red Sea – or the Indians who used to own this here country – or the Expos! Sure as shooting, He only saved them coal miners in Somerset, Pennsylvania so they could live to make some more soot -- as a rebuke to the liberal lie about so-called global warming."

Appearing on Trinity Broadcasting to mark the one-year anniversary of the Lord's kicking back and watching the World Trade Center towers crumbling into a pile of deathly debris, Pastor Deacon Fred of Landover Baptist Church said: "Just like everyone, I've been watching the media, following the recent batch of kidnappings – I can never keep up with these secular fads – and am always curious to see which victim the Lord will save and which one He leaves to be raped and butchered. You can never second-guess the Lord though. Just when I'm sure He'll save one, He just whistles Dixie and watches them go through an agonizing death. But when you have killed as many people as the Lord – just think of that wonderful flood of His alone – I guess you don't get as squeamish as most of us would if your inattention leads to torture."

The Lord's rather unpredictable impulse to help those in peril, however, has created problems for His followers. Austell Church of God members Jane Broadwater and Slim Thompson were the best of friends until their daughters both took a ride on a church bus last summer. An Episcopalian drunk driver ran into the church bus at an intersection and all those seated in the first four rows perished. "When Slim got on the local news that night thanking the Lord for saving her child," recalls Mrs. Broadwater, still seething, "She was just rubbing my nose in the fact that the Lord just sat back and said nothing, slapping His knee while my daughter rushed to get a seat in the front of the bus."

"I mean to tell you," responded Slim Thompson, "I know it really hurt her feelings that God would save one and not the other. I mean, you should have seen her when my daughter made the basketball team, so I imagine she's even more competitive about the whole 'life' thing. It's like I told her -- I just can't explain why her daughter obviously rubbed the Lord the wrong way. But I will tell you this: I know for a good fact that we tithe more than those Broadwaters because that useless sonofabitch can never hold down no damn job. I'm only saying, you know."

Interrupted at Le Cirque, after a frosty contretemps with brassy lesbian Liz Smith, America's Best Christian, Mrs. Betty Bowers, was impatient with people who blame God when a mishap occurs: "As a True Christian™, I know that when someone lives after being in a life-threatening situation -- either a fatal illness, natural disaster or, worse, running into someone socially you have just eviscerated on your website – survival is due to the intervention of an always-attentive deity (or sometimes, simply a deft maître ď). Some naïve people would assume that if the Lord is all-powerful, always watching and inclined to intervene to save people, it is axiomatic that if God always gets credit for some living, He should also get the blame for those who die. Well, this might seem to make sense, but it is unacceptable to 21st Century American Christians, who aren't eager to market a divine Mascot who isn't cuddly. Besides, that type of thinking leads you too far into a thing that is the sole domain of Satan – logic. That is why all True Christians™ have simply decided by fiat that when someone in trouble lives, God has saved them – and when they don't make it, it was all mankind's fault. See how simple that makes things? That is why I'd bet you dollars to diamonds that people who make money off tragedy -- other than churches -- sell twenty "Thank You Lord For Saving Those Miners!" bumerstickers for every "Why did God kill Samantha Runnion?" keychain."