I don’t know if the below story is true or not, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s instructive because the ending reveals how contradictory some popular beliefs are about God being the source of good and evil.

Millions believe deity knows good and evil, and acts accordingly, for instance, in striking down a bar with lightning. But then sensibility rebels as such notions, because those kinds of acts don’t make sense. A credible God cannot act with malice one day and unqualified love on another,…certainly not a God of Love, anyway.

Texas Beer Joint Sues Church

In Mt. Vernon , Texas , Drummond’s Bar began construction on expansion of their building to increase their business.

In response, the local Baptist church started a campaign to block the bar from expanding with petitions and prayers. Work progressed right up until the week before the grand reopening when lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.

After the bar burning to the ground by a lightning strike, the church folks were rather smug in their outlook, bragging about the power of prayer, until the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church “was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means”.

In its reply to the court, the church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building’s demise.

The judge read through the plaintiff’s complaint and the defendant’s reply and at the opening hearing he commented, “I don’t know how I’m going to decide this, but it appears from the paperwork that we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that now does not.”