Jesus Take the Wheel?

There’s a wretched country song called “Jesus Take the Wheel” written and performed, I presume, by someone whose IQ equals her dress size. For those of you fortunate enough to have been spared exposure to this cringe-fest, here’s the Reader’s Digest version: a woman is driving home for the holidays with her infant in the backseat. She drives too fast for the road conditions, hits a patch of ice and starts to skid out of control. Instead of turning the wheel in the direction of the skid and slowly reducing speed, she somehow thinks it’s a wise idea to simply let go of the steering wheel and ask Jesus to drive. Luckily, in the world of country music, this is apparently the proper way to handle such a situation and needless to say, Country-Music-Jesus has driving abilities on par with the stunt drivers at Disney World. The car miraculously stops safely on the side of the road and mother and child are safe. Amen.

Oh… and as if that isn’t bad enough, the song tries to rhyme the words “daddy” and Cincinnati”.

I guess the woman’s actions in this instance are supposed to be admirable as a testament of faith or some such thing. In a fictional song they can get away with crap like that. But what would happen if this was tried in a reality-based environment?

Sadly, we now know. Due to an incorrect gauge, a commuter jet flying from Italy to Tunisia ran out of fuel shortly after leaving the airport. In such a situation, the pilot is supposed to locate the nearest runway and attempt an emergency landing. In this case, however, the pilot panicked, let go of the controls and started praying instead. Jesus either DIDN’T take the wheel or the Lord needs a refresher course in aviation because the jet crash-landed off the coast of Sicily killing 16 passengers.

The pilot has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for dereliction of duty. Deservedly so, in my opinion.

This once again is evidence supporting the contention that blind faith in the supernatural is dangerous. In fictional country songs, letting “Jesus take the wheel” leads to miraculous life-changing happy endings. In the real world, innocent people end up dead and those doing the praying are exposed as criminally incompetent morons.