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/

IT'S THE FLOODS, STUPID!

While I don't want to minimize the physical effects of large earthquakes and hurricanes, we have witnessed that the biggest damage in two recent events in 2011 was caused by floods rather than the shaking or high winds: the tsunami in Japan and the floods accompanying all the rain in the hurricane Irene.

I have been in many earthquakes up to magnitude 6 as I spent four years in Pasadena, CA, and three months in Japan. I also lived in a suburb of Denver, CO, for 15 years that included the time of earthquakes increasing in magnitude that got in to the 5-6 range of magnitude on the Richter Scale (remember that a magnitude 6 earthquake has a factor of 10 more energy than a magnitude 5 earthquake). These Denver earthquakes turned out to be due to disposing of pesticides down a 12,000 ft hole and greasing a horizontal fault. A former classmate of mine and then a colleague recommended pumping out the column of highly toxic pesticides to reduce the head (How would you like to be in the crew that did that?). It was controversial as some said this pumping might increase the earthquakes; however, he prevailed and was proven to be correct. For one experience I had with an earthquake in Japan, see: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2009/11/you-are-so-lucky.html

While I have never been in a hurricane, I was involved in a false alarm that was scary enough because I was on unsecured scaffolding: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/12/hurricane-warning-biographical.html

For an account of the Theology Of Natural Hazards, see: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/05/theology-of-natural-hazards.html

SNAKE BIT

President Obama must feel snake bit. First he opens up drilling on the Atlantic shelf of the U.S. and then BP screws it up by creating a disaster in the Gulf. Then he seems to seriously consider enlarging the U.S. nuclear power capabilities, and nature screws it up by the Japan super earthquake of 2011.

I think that it was criticism of our president for not taking sides earlier in the Egypt rebellion that got him to say that Qaddafi must go. And the Tunisian uprising was successful also. And now it looks like Qaddafi may stay. As George Will has said, President Obama is doing as well as can be expected in a situation over which he has no control. Still I have this peculiar feeling that "Here We Go Again." I hope it is wrong.

I recall the Hungarian uprising of 1958 that we helped foment. When the Soviets came in to quell the uprising, I was sure it would be nuclear war. After all, we had urged them to do it. We couldn't abandon them now. I never thought that President Eisenhower would just say something like, "Too bad, boys" and abandon them to their fate. Perhaps Libya should be Hungarian Uprising II with the U.S. doing an Eisenhower.

THE THEOLOGY OF NATURAL HAZARDS

Many Christians feel that natural hazards are tools of the devil. But I disagree. After all the Apostle's Creed of the Presbyterian Church, starts with "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth..." which would seem to include things like earthquakes, hurricanes, volcano eruptions and the like. Stanza 3 of the Presbyterian Hymn “All Things Bright & Beautiful” mentions the "winter wind," after "The Lord God made them all." They say that it is an ill wind that blows no good. Perhaps, but the good of the winter wind eludes me. Off hand I can't think of anything good that comes out of winter wind, except if you are in a warm home when the winter wind blows outside to give you a cozy feeling. There are hymns that mention earthquakes (and not as some instrument of the devil).* And of course, the Bible uses earthquakes to even do good such as Acts 16:25-34 where an earthquake opens the prison doors where Paul and Silas were held.


Such devastating things as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, hurricanes, lightening, floods, and the like do have interesting effects as many people are likely to stop being mean to each other and respond to the damage done by these natural hazards (loss of life and injuries in addition to massive loss of things) with sympathy and positive actions. For awhile a large group of people around the globe respond positively to natural hazards in contrast to a smaller group of looter's, traffickers, etc. It even happens in "man's inhumanity to man" such as 9/11 (but alas not as much for refugees in a time of war). At times I think that God gave us these natural hazards to distract us from our meanness to each other and intended for us to use our brains to figure out ways to overcome these obstacles. Unfortunately, the distraction isn't as much as might be hoped.


I have noticed those who are exposed to a variety of natural hazards have a certain vitality. The poster child of what I am talking about is Japan which experiences earthquakes, volcanism, typhoons, tsunamis, and landslides, among others. They pretty much have it all. This island country about the size of California has few natural resources, many of which are pretty well used up. There is no reason for Japan to be a prosperous country except that they will it so. They are indeed an impatient people which led them into WW-II. But they now realize they can achieve their goals by peaceful means. It is just amazing that Japan has the second largest economy in the world. And speaking of California, it too has many different kinds of natural hazards and is probably the most vital of American states.


Yes, every dark cloud has a silver lining or at least nearly so.

Sometimes natural hazards do have some positive outcomes even today. For example after the great Indonesia earthquake in 2004 and in addition to the massive outpouring of sympathy and aid from around the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake):
The hardest hit area, Aceh, is considered to be a religiously conservative Islamic society and has had no tourism nor any Western presence in recent years due to armed conflict between the Indonesian military and Acehnese separatists. Some believe that the tsunami was divine punishment for lay Muslims shirking their daily prayers and/or following a materialistic lifestyle. Others have said that Allah was angry that there were Muslims killing other Muslims in an ongoing conflict.[95] Women in Aceh required a special approach from foreign aid agencies, and continue to have unique needs.

The widespread devastation caused by the tsunami led the main rebel group GAM to declare a cease-fire on December 28, 2004, followed by the Indonesian government, and the two groups resumed long-stalled peace talks, which resulted in a peace agreement signed August 15, 2005. The agreement explicitly cites the tsunami as a justification.[96]

* The modern Presbyterian hymn "God of the Sparrow" in verse 2 starts out: "God of the earthquake God of the storm ..." (The Presbyterian Hymnal: Hymns, Psalms, and Spiritual Sons: Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1990).