I was appalled to read The State News column "Even without reason, there's a time, place for everything" (SN 10/6). It's hard for me to understand why some people insist that God causes people to die - that "God just takes people when he sees it to be necessary."

God doesn't kill people. Accidents kill people. Gunshots kill people. Cancer kills people. Does Kirsten Nielsen really think that the God who created and loved her teacher would swoop down and smite him, in succession, with a particular body chemistry, car accident and medication, all designed especially to kill him, because God thought "it was necessary?" Isn't it infinitely more likely that pure arbitrary chance set off the series of unrelated misfortunes that caused her teacher's death?

My best friend's mother might die. She's around 50 years old, has two daughters in college and thought she'd beat the cancer before it came back to consume her.

I sincerely hope and pray that nobody comes up to my best friend at her mother's funeral, pats her on the shoulder and says, "I guess God just takes people when he sees it to be necessary. It's all part of a greater plan." We die, whether young or old, from disease or by accident, because the world is, of course, not perfect. God doesn't hand down death. He hands out life.

Brittany Naber
humanities and pre-law freshman