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If you believe in the absolute sovereignty of God, that everything that happens is because God wills it, then tell me why God would possibly think that flooding New Orleans and Mississippi and leaving people dead and homeless is in any way a good idea.
If you believe that God created the world and everything in it and then went back behind the barn to grab a smoke, leaving us to our own devices, then tell me how that is any different than me hearing the cries of an abused child and doing nothing. In the real world, if I have knowledge that a child is being abused and do nothing, then I can be in trouble with the law.
If you believe that what we need to do now is pray for those flooded out of their homes, I have one word for ya- why? God doesn't know already that whole cities are washed away and under water? Couldn't he have kept this from happening? Didn't he say he would never judge the world by flood ever again?
http://seanmacnair.blogspot.com/
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Whenever natural disaster strikes, you always encounter this knee-jerk reaction. You even run across it from the lips of nominal Christians like Sean MacNair.
Now, one can make allowance for dumb, intemperate comments from those who are actually suffering.
What one cannot excuse are those who use tragedy as a pretext to take cheap theological shots.
Those who wait until disaster strikes to discover the problem of evil merit our contempt. Those whose theology is so paper-thin that it cannot cope with the problem of evil merit our contempt.
Since McNair chooses to pose stupid, impious questions, I guess we need to state the obvious.
To begin with, why assume that Katrina represents the judgment of God?
In addition, God’s promise has express reference to a global flood (Gen 9:11), not a local flood.
Some places are more hazardous than others. But people choose to live there for scenic or recreational reasons. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But it means that you are voluntarily assuming a heightened risk.
The residents of the Gulf Coast had advance warning that a Cat-5 hurricane was making a B-line for their neighborhood. The prudent thing to do under such circumstances is to pack your valuables and hightail out of time.
Now, there are reasons why some folks stay behind to wait out a storm. But, once again, if you choose to weather the storm, you are voluntarily assuming a heightened risk.
From what I’ve heard, the levees in New Orleans were not designed withstand anything above a Cat-3 hurricane. So there was no built-in margin for the worst-case scenario.
Up-to-a-point, even that is understandable. It’s very expensive to prepare for the worst-case scenario. And folks tend to be crisis-oriented. They take chances. They play the odds. That’s not unreasonable. But when you gamble, sooner or later you lose.
The citizens of New Orleans chose to sink their public funds into a Superdome instead of a redundant system of dikes like they have in Holland. Well, you get what you pay for.
The Book of Proverbs has a lot to say about the fool. The fool is someone who doesn’t plan for the future. He lives for the moment. New Orleans is, or was, a quintessential party town—like Vegas.
We are not toddlers. We are adults, responsible for making grown-up decisions. Life isn’t risk-free. And there are trade-offs. You may choose to assume a heightened risk for the fringe benefits.
I never assumed that Katrina was the judgment of God, I never said that God caused it, and I never said I believed that God has taken a hands-off approach to the world.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I was taking cheap theological shots at all. What you see as "stupid, impious questions" is just my writing style- intentionally over the top sometimes to try and get people to think. Each point was directed towards those who may hold those positions in order to cause them to think. I was looking for an explanation as to why they may hold that position.
You offered your explanation as to why it happened. I can agree with a lot of it. I think you could have posted it without insinuating that I'm a nominal Christian, which is something you have no idea about.
Sean,
ReplyDeleteYou were the one who raised the question of divine judgment: did God break his covenant with Noah?
You were the one who compared God to a guy taking a smoke behind the barn while all hell breaks loose, or neighbor who turns a deaf ear to child abuse.
You didn't say God caused it, and you didn't say he didn't. Rather, you insinuated that God would be blameworthy on either scenario.
You put this defamatory material out there in the public domain and just left in hanging there for anyone to draw the worst possible conclusions about the God of the Bible.
This is exactly the sort of stuff that unbelievers level against the God of the Bible when natural disaster strikes. They did that when the Tsunami hit.
Posing impious questions in order to offer pious answers is one thing: posing impious questions and leaving them unanswered is quite another.
Yes, you're causing people to think all right--to think badly of God.
You're right, I don't know you. So I judge you by what you say and do. You control your own public image, so you control how you are perceived by others. If you don't like to be judged by the image you project, that's your doing.
A Christian is a believer, so the burden of proof is always on a Christian to render a credible profession of faith.
If you reserve the right to go public with this stuff, then I reserve the right to go public with my reproof.
"Yes, you're causing people to think all right--to think badly of God."
ReplyDeleteWrong. I'm trying to cause people to examine theologies which attempt to offer simplistic answers to complex events. I'm also looking for people to offer an answer to me, because I have questions of my own, as I related in the post.
"You didn't say God caused it, and you didn't say he didn't. Rather, you insinuated that God would be blameworthy on either scenario."
What I did was to throw the question out there in hopes that someone might have an answer for me. If God doesn't share some blame here, then I wanted someone to tell me why. Wrapped up in your smugness you actually did give me something to think about.
"This is exactly the sort of stuff that unbelievers level against the God of the Bible when natural disaster strikes. They did that when the Tsunami hit."
Wrong. Believers have the same questions too. Hey, I'm glad you have your theology all worked out to where you have God nicely wrapped in a neat little package, but some of us don't. I'm not the only one.
"If you reserve the right to go public with this stuff, then I reserve the right to go public with my reproof."
But... it is possible to offer reproof without coming off as a know-it-all smart-a... err... "educated mule." Try it sometime.
To say you were questioning "simplistic" answers is a cop-out. You raised a number of accusatorial questions directed at God without offering any answers. No answers are no alternative to "simplistic" answers.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's especially disingenuous when you then go on about "having God nicely wrapped in a neat little package."
So are your questions sincere or insincere? Do you want your questions answered, or would any answer be guilty of "wrapping God up in a neat little package"?
Sounds like you're more interested in questions than answers.
Frankly, it's a bit pretentious to talk about "simplistic" answers to "complex" questions unless you can offer some complex answers. If you can't, if you have nothing better to offer, then who are you to criticize the "simplistic" answers?
Yes, believers may have the same questions. But there's a difference between a reverent, informational question, and a disrespectful, argumentative question.