Brooklyn Tragedy: Trying To Make Sense Of It

My thoughts on the devastating, incomprehensible tragedy in Brooklyn which claimed the lives of 7 of the family's 8 children, 7 children between the ages of 5 and 15 (for those of you who don't know, it was a house fire):

These sort of tragedies really throw me religiously...a religious, ultra-orthodox family, their Shabbos hotplate (apparently) caused the fire...incomprensible, indeed...so if they hadn't been shomer Shabbos, they'd have been fine?? who knows...if H"M wanted the children, the argument is that he'd have taken them anyway but the argument put forward by those who philosophise religiously is that H''M had nothing to do with it, that He gives us our lives and the planet and we get on with it...and the other argument is that it's H''M's way and that ours is not to question nor to understand...the thing which gets me, I'm sorry to say, the convenient hypocrisy, is that when great things happen, we thank H''M but when dreadful things happen, it's not H''M's fault and that is where I struggle...He gets all the credit but deserves none of the criticism.

If this family had been a bad family, nothing worse could have befallen them....oh yes, of course it could, they could have lost all of their children....hmmmm....I just don't get it. I am too scared to NOT believe, I daren't take the chance....religion relies on fear...many of us say and believe that we stay with G-d because we love Him and, whilst we do, I also think that, deep down, it is fear that really keeps us attached and connected. How can we know, how can we be sure that He does NOT exist? We can no more be sure that He does NOT exist than we can be sure that He DOES exist so we err on the side of 'safety' and stick with Him....and going off on a tangent, that fear has always worked for those who have wanted to control us...I'm no Marxist but Marx said, "religion is the opium of the masses"...he might be right on that one.

G-d rest their souls...