WHAT IS GOD TRYING TO TELL US?

I have previously written on The Theology of Natural Disasters (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/05/theology-of-natural-hazards.html). There are those in the evangelical movement who have their own theology and believe that God is trying to tell us something through various natural and man-made disasters. Usually what these people say God is trying to tell us has nothing to do with the disaster. Billy Graham's daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, said that 9/11 occurred because we don't allow God in our schools, government, business and marketplace.* Prominent among those who link disasters to God's message is Pat Robertson, for example, who felt that the Haiti earthquake happened because of their revolt against the French under Napolian.** And somehow Pat Robertson also linked Katrina to the abortion issue.*** John Hagee, on the other hand, linked Katrina to God’s anger over a proposed homosexual parade in New Orleans.****

And that brings us to Michelle Bachmann, a candidate for the Republican nomination for President, on why Hurricane Irene occurred, that it was a warning to Washington to cure the budget deficit.***** I have wondered if she could keep herself under control for the entire nomination period. You better believe that her handlers told her to go back out there and say she was joking. This follows her previous gaff when she signed a document that contained a passage indicating that Black children were better off during slavery. Bachmann said she had not read the entire document. Later the offensive passage was removed.***** Let’s give her a pass on this one, but expect more in coming months. And I sometimes wonder if late on a clear moonlit night, Rick Perry, the evangelical governor of Texas and another candidate for Republican nomination for president, just might wonder if the drought and wildfires in Texas, unbroken by an official three days of prayer, that God is telling him that anthropogenic global warning is real? Naw, it is probably due to Texas having the highest percentage of adults in the nation without health insurance - 27.8%.******


Supporting Information on the above:

Anne Graham Lotz:
"I say God is also angry when he sees something like this. I would say also for several years now Americans in a sense have shaken their fist at God and said, God, we want you out of our schools, our government, our business, we want you out of our marketplace. And God, who is a gentleman, has just quietly backed out of our national and political life, our public life. Removing his hand of blessing and protection. "*

Pat Robertson said:
“[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Napoleon the Third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you get us free from the prince.” True story. And so the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” They kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free.

But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It’s cut down the middle, on the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island.”**

John Hagee
“Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.” “New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God,” Hagee said, because “there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came.”

Machele Backman
"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the
politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to
start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people
are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to
rein in the spending.”*****

The Family Leader
The Family Leader, an Iowa-based conservative activist group, removed a sentence Saturday from the introduction of their “Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family” that said: "Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.” *****

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/
07/family-leader-under-fire-over-slavery-comment-in-marriage-defense-pledge/

* http://www.prayerfoundation.org/billy_grahams_daughter.htm
Note: Hmm. I thought the message of 9/11 was that we need to strengthen our defenses against terrorism.
** http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/01/13/77141/robertson-haiti/
Note: The sad thing was that things were just looking up for Haiti. They were beginning to get some industry. The French ruined the crop land growing sugar so agriculture is difficult there. But I agree that Haiti is a very sad country.
***http://mediamatters.org/research/200509130004
**** http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/04/23/22152/hagee-katrina-mccain/
Note: The people most affected by Katrina were the working poor, not the indigent, say, who lived on the top of a hill. I don't know that the working poor have a more sinful lifestyle than any other group, but their problem, of course, was that they were living in a coastal area below sea level. I'm surprised God would make these people suffer because of abortion or a proposed homosexual march. I think maybe what we were being told was to build higher and stronger levees if we are going to have people live below sea level.
***** http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/29/news/la-pn-bachmann-hurricane-god-20110829

(http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/

07/family-leader-under-fire-over-slavery-comment-in-marriage-defense-pledge/).

Note: Bachmann got her law degree at Pat Robertson University.
****** http://www.e-wisdom.com/news/insurance/more-than-a-quarter-of-texans-do-not-have-health-insurance-110230036/

MORE

As stated elsewhere, America is a consumerism society (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2011/07/our-consumerism-society.html). Knowing this , companies do all they can to get us to want ever "more," "more" whatever. But we are well into the new normal of this country where we cannot always want more. We are going to have to decide when enough is enough. When we are happy with what we have and concentrate more on maintaining that. The effect on the economy of the country of not always wanting "more" will be severe. In fact a new economy will have to be invented.

There are people who have decided that we have far too much government. Unfortunately our previous president ruined the economy of the country, and we now have Federal revenues of what they were in 1950 as percent of GDP, though we have twice the population we had then. In the meantime in order to keep the country from sliding into a 1930s style recession, our government spent a lot of money; however, the situation is so dire that our government is running up huge deficits that are making some people very nervous. A recent article suggested that we need to cut the Federal budget by $7.4 trillion over the next decade. If we do this, it will put us into a deep depression at least as bad as in the 1930s.* Think of things we have now that we didn't have in 1950, for example, but with twice the population we will have to go back farther. So one better think of what is enough to make you happy and try to arrange your life to protect that. Even the Debt Ceiling Compromise, if totally enacted, may put us into a recession toward the end of the 10 years: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2011/08/debt-ceiling-compromise-effects.html

The topic of "more" has been in some movies too. For example take Key Largo. At a point in that movie Humphrey Bogart says to Edward G. Robinson (the crook), "I know what you want." Robinson replies, "Whaaat?" Bogart replies, "You want more. That's what you want." Robinson sort of looks off into space and says, "Yes, yes that's what I want. At least I always have." These are not direct quotes but close enough.

Another is The Treasure of Sierra Madre. The grizzeled old prospector says to his two tenderfeet, "Before we go to search for gold, we have to set a goal for how much we want." The tenderfeet don't like it, but go along. In the end the grizzeled old prospector has none of the gold but is being well taken care of by a tribe of Indians because he saved one of their children. He is happy. One of the tenderfeet who has the gold, Humphrey Bogart, gets captured by benditos who don't know what gold dust is and let it be carried away by the wind while Bogart gets killed. The other tenderfoot leaves the gold to go in search of the wife of a dead prospector and apparently he is happy too. I very much like both of these movies because of their morals.

*Recall that Social Security was in existence then but there was no cost of living increase.