Oh please, give me a break: It's ridiculous bragging!
For a long time I have suggested that people should carefully study—and absorb the truth about—World War I. In John Loftus’ Second Edition of God and Horrendous Suffering, he included my essay, The Problem of World War I, in which I present the case that this brutal conflict should have put an end to belief in a good, caring, all-powerful god. World War II reenforces this conclusion, as Darrell Ray has pointed out in his book, The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Cultures:
“It took two world wars for Europeans to realize that the prayers of millions of people were not answered. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that god isn’t working too well when 92 million people died in two world wars, or to see the complicity and cooperation of the Pope, Lutheran clergy and Christians with Hitler during WWII.” (page 75)
Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel about World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, includes a description of the suffering:
“We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their splintered stumps into the next shell-hole; a lance-corporal crawls a mile and a half on his hands dragging his smashed knee after him; another goes to the dressing station and over his clasped hands bulge his intestines; we see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces; we find one man who has held the artery of his arm in his teeth for two hours in order not to bleed to death.” (p. 362)
In 2007, Historian G. J. Meyer published A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918. Meyer wrote the following words in his 2013 reflections on Erich Maria Remarque’s novel:
It “…seemed almost the suicide of Europe.” “Death rained down (on average, fifty-five German soldiers died in every hour of the fifty-month-long conflict), killing and sparing the weak and the strong at random.”
Remarque’s novel is an important study for the devout who are inclined to shrug off World War I as a theological problem. Meyer also wrote: “Remarque’s book has stood as an immovable boulder in the path of anyone wanting to portray what was arguably history’s filthiest and most utterly pointless war as anything other than filthy and pointless.”
In my essay I noted: “It also stands an immovable bolder in the path of Christian theologians who refuse to see World War I as a challenge to their faith in a good and caring God. Remarque (1898-2070), as a German teenager, fought in the trenches during the war, then spent a long time recovering from wounds. His novel is based on what he saw, experienced, and felt.” (p. 227, God and Horrendous Suffering, 2nd Edition)
I recently finished reading Chris Bizzell’s 2025 novel, Echoes from Verdun: The Minutes. (219 pages on Kindle) It presents the story of a farm boy from rural England who signed up for the army during World War I. The sinking of the Lusitania (more than a thousand civilians killed), among other things, prompted his decision. He ended up in the trenches at the Battle of Verdun (February to December 1916), which took the lives of up to a quarter million men.
“Why would God send nineteen thousand British soldiers to their deaths? In one day… In one day. Nineteen Thousand!” (page 11)
“Am I bitter? Damn right, I’m bitter. The aristocrats, with their damned war, threw away a whole generation.” (page 12)
“I’m tired of feeling like an empty shell. Tired of the void inside of me. Tired of the memories. The mass graves. The bodies. The smell. Never goes away.” (page 15)
“I see the reality of a dysfunctional world now. A world turned all gray and black. From eyes that have been too much. From a body that has endured too much. From memories that have made me a prisoner. Shackled to the weight of a thousand lifeless bodies. Some friend, some foe, but all human. None of us wanted to be there. On either side. Why didn’t we all walk away?” (page 23)
“The only emotion saved is anger. You live and survive with anger pulsing through you. The anger, always seething just below the surface. You had seen so much death at this point; you were just going through the motions. The whole experience was surreal. Tired of trying to understand why the world had melted into a cesspool of hatred. An endless chasm of blood-soaked black. Everything went black. Better not to see. Close your eyes and watch the black.” (page 43)
Better not to see. That could easily be the motto, the guiding principle of theologians and clergy as they try to divert attention from this immovable boulder.
It was in 1927 that the hymn He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands emerged. Maybe to help folks ignore the theological problems that a massively evil war throws in their way. It falls into the same nonsense category as God Works in Mysterious Ways and God Has A Bigger Plan for Humanity that We Cannot See. Marian Anderson offered a tender, gracious version of the song on the Ed Sullivan show, and a young Laurie London sang an energetic, exuberant version of it on the Sullivan show in 1958.
This popular hymn is actually an intense form of denial. It includes the words, “He's got the little tiny babies in his hands…” How ironic and idiotic: for many thousands of years, high infant mortality was a grievous reality for humans—until the discoveries of modern medicine made childbirth less painful and deadly. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed 225,000 people. How many of them were little tiny babies?
It’s been the habit of theologians and clergy to urge devout Christians not to look at reality. Because reality shatters the pretentious claims of theologians that their god is loving, caring, and all powerful. In fact, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands turns out to be a celebration of the Christian god’s incompetence. If the suffering and violence of the world happen even as their god has the whole world in his hands, this hymn is an indictment of this god’s lack of caring and power. Come on devout Christians, let curiosity and critical thinking kick in: look at the brutal realities of human and animal life on earth, and adjust your theology accordingly. God has a lot to answer for—not to take credit for.
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes:
• Guessing About God (2023)
•. Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also available.
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
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