Matthew Paul Turner has a great entry on his blog yesterday about Christians who find God behind hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, etc. Jesus Needs New PR: How To Find God in Natural Disasters! Check out his blog for the entire post.
Here are the points for any TRUE Christian to use when laying blame:
Now, for those of you who are atheists or Episcopalians and already discounting the whole “God’s wakeup call” theory as hogwash, you might consider the fact that this small earthquake happened during the same week that Hurricane Irene is expected to make landfall and get all Sodom-and-Gomorrahish on you and on the same exact day that Barbra Streisand’s new record released nationwide. Call me crazy, but three natural disasters in one week doesn’t just happen for no reason.
1) Think Biblical: In order to fully grasp how God might show up in the details of this week’s disasters, you must first embrace biblical thinking. How do we Christians do this? By imagining that we’re Moses or Elijah or heck, even Jesus. Since Moses found God in a burning bush and Elijah called to God to bring fire down from Heaven, and Jesus calmed raging stormy seas with the flip of his hand, it should come as no surprise how easy it is for us to visualize God using a cold front or the jet stream to maneuver his ways into our ways. This probably also explain why you’re born-again aunt always updates her Facebook status to “Watching the power of God” during thunderstorms. Once you’re in character, consider the fact that you now believe that God created the heavens and the earth, and thus, it only makes sense that he would occasionally use the heavens and the earth to encourage us to do good things or perhaps Republican things once in a while.
2) Think Spiritual: While many Christians claim to see God in all of life’s nooks and crannies—you know, they claim to smell him in a rose or taste him while eating a plum. I suggest you start smaller by looking for God in the really big events, ie, after Irene blows through, walk around and look for oddly placed crosses. If a cross from a local church ends up destroying your rhododendron plant, that could be a sign. Or if you find a couple of 2X4s in the shape of a cross atop a pile of rubble, that’s definitely sign. God loves using 2X4s. You might consider taking a picture of that and send it into your local news station. And who knows? Maybe Irene will bless you with a backyard etching of the face of Jesus or Mary or a face loosely based on the face of Jesus or Mary. We never know how God will speak to us, so we tend to keep an open mind.
3) Look for God’s Message: Since we read hundreds of accounts in the Bible of people believing that God spoke or acted or showcased his talent via nature’s more uglier moments, anytime God sends or allows or doesn’t stop natural disasters from showing up at our doorsteps, we expect a message! In most cases, there’s always some sort of message attached, literal or otherwise. It’s like getting a bouquet of flowers or an envelope dusted with anthrax, it doesn’t just happen. There’s almost always a fully spiritual explanation. So look for God’s message. I think experiencing an earthquake is like getting a text message from God when my phone is on vibrate. But it’s important to remember that the earthquake isn’t the actual message, it’s just a signal to let us know that you’ve received a new message. It’s essential that we check our messages. Have you checked Tuesday’s message from God?
4) Share the Message: God’s messages are meant to be shared! So, once you discover what God’s trying to say to you through Tuesday’s earthquake or this weekend’s hurricane, make sure you tell people about it. Now, depending on whose theological persuasion you listen to, God’s message might need to be interpreted (which is “Christian” for deciphered) because sometimes God’s messages come to us more heavily coded than the Book of Ezekiel. Still, a message exists. So find it. Decipher it. And then Tweet it!
5) Believe in God’s Mercy: Now listen, it’s absolutely imperative that you believe that God is merciful, no matter what the devastation or how FEMA responds. God. Is. Merciful! (Repeat that two times.) With that in mind, if you don’t figure out the message the first time, know that God won’t leave you uninformed. God always keeps attaching the message again and again to whatever natural disaster happens to slip through his hands and onto your part of the world. So don’t worry! Keep your mind focused on God’s mercy. A pastor I knew in college always said: God’s mercies are new every morning and occasionally they get measured on the Richter Scale. He was a Calvinist.
6) Self reflect: No natural disaster is complete without self reflection. It’s never easy for me to believe that I might be partially to blame for God sending natural disasters. It might be an easier stretch for you to believe that. But whether difficult or easy, it’s a necessary evil. Look at yourself in the mirror and ask: Are you the Jonah of this week’s story? Are YOU the reason God is pissed off and sending everybody from Atlanta to Detroit a text message? Only you can answer that question, of course. But as you’re clearing your deck of loose items or shopping for toilet paper and bottled water at Wal-mart, it’s something you might spend time thinking about. Perhaps if you are this weekend’s “Jonah,” you could confess or move to another state and possibly spare your friends and neighbors the wrath of Irene.
Perhaps if you are this weekend’s “Jonah,” you could confess or move to another state and possibly spare your friends and neighbors the wrath of Irene.
ReplyDeleteThat makes no sense at all. I don't care how much you try to turn it around, twist it and transmogrify it, it just doesn't make sense. There's a real disconnect there. Jonah for a weekend? Just isn't going to happen... can't happen!
There's really something wrong with this guy's brain. Maybe too few connections across the hemispheres. Not enough brain cells here to play Where's Waldo, only there's no Waldo and this guy doesn't seem to be playing.
Thanks to freedom of religion though, it's unlikely that the guys with white coats in the aid car with the straight jackets are coming unless you can prove in a court of law he's a danger to himself or others with a preponderance of evidence.
Otherwise, this is to be considered as a harmless nut, but you don't have to try to make sense out of anything he says -- you could end up in a similar state: It's called Folie à deux (the same thing Herbert Armstrong did to his followers).
That makes no sense at all.
Maybe he should be outside chasing butterflies outside in Hurricane Irene.
I'm thinking this has got to be satire!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I see God in natural disasters, but only to the extent that God created all of the natural cycles, and the cycles have both highs and lows. So far, there really has not been radical departure from those cycles, or exponential escallation.
It's also true that people who are temporarily reduced to a state of suffering will often spend some extra time seeking God, which is not really a bad thing. I reserve my own wrath for the self aggrandizing ones who equate their work with that of God, and use disasters to shove God down people's throats soas to further their own agendas.
BB
Yep. Satire.
ReplyDeleteCheck out Jesus Needs New PR. Some pretty good stuff over on that blog.
It's obvious to me that it is great satire! I have never seen so many grumpy people in the last day or so. Go take some Midol!
ReplyDelete"August 26, 2011 in Satire"
ReplyDeleteAnd I would submit to you that you haven't experienced really grumpy up to this point.
Haven't you figured that one out yet?
If god were really real and in charge, he must get pretty PO'd with the east coast on a very regular basis.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't the first hurricane to follow that path or be that strong. They come that way every few years and have been doing so for centuries. Ir'a all determined by atmospheric currents.
New Orleans gets blasted every few years as well. So does Florida. When lightning strikes your or someone else's property (hopefully not you), Thor didn't hurl his hammer, and neither did Yahweh or Jesus. It's all tied up in electrons and plus and minus charges that build up and go boom.
You can rail all you like about this 'gee-zeus,' 'lord,' and 'god.' They are all figments of the imagination.
ReplyDeleteThe Creator must look down and pause thinking, 'look at the idiots calling the other idiots, 'idiots,' and they are so dumb they don't even know my name."
What a catastrophic contradiction.
Well, it's pretty much all over and Irene turned out to be a mildly inconvenient blimp with some non-catastrophic incovemoence and destruction. Neither Thor nor Yarweh seemed to be overly PO'd at the east coast.
ReplyDeleteI believe we had a "snowpocalypse" a few months back.
Now, there's a disturbance off the west coast of
africa. Let's see if we can mine that for more ratings and eye-catching photo opportunities -- and, of course, sell lots of ads.
Excuse me. Think I'll have a bowl of popcorn and relax with the science channel. Maybe they'll have something worth spending time on.