Several weeks ago, many national leaders including preachers and politicians wanted to suggest recent earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes especially in the northeast part of our country were “signs from God.”
It always amazes me how quickly natural disasters are attributed to some intentional strategy of the divine. Insurance companies commonly call them “acts of God.” While this may help distinguish such frightening and terrible events from any human causality or responsibility, it makes for an even more frightening and terrible theology, an understanding of God’s actions in the world rejected by none other than Jesus himself.
Speaking about some of the current events of his day, Jesus reflected in Luke 13 about a tower that perhaps under construction or during repairs fell and took the lives of 18 workers. In the same context, another recent tragedy involved a group of outsiders from the established group. Jesus asked rhetorically, “Do you really think these people were any worse than others? He preached in his celebrated Sermon on the Mount, “the sun shines on the good and the evil and the rain falls on the just and the unjust.”
Jesus taught what we all know as deep down truth. Not only do bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people, but even our understanding of who is really good and who is really bad is as shaky as ground beneath our feet and as capricious as the sky over our heads. So let’s be careful drawing lines of causality and blame so quickly and irresponsibly.
In my own practice as a minister, I quickly learned to never take credit for good weather. Beautiful days can turn on a dime, especially in Kentucky. Before I might even know it, I could just as likely be blamed for the inevitable string of bad weather sure to follow.
That’s why the slogans “sh*@ happens” and/or “blessings happen” are partially correct and equally wrong. Pastoral experience reveals plenty of both in every life. While some suffer more terrible consequences because of their own poor choices, even the greatest of saints are not insulated from calamity. It all comes with the territory of living.
Preachers and politicians alike should be more careful when attempting to speak for the Almighty. It’s just as wrong to profane the sacred as it is to tie universal experiences together with specific pronouncements of God’s judgment. Both take God’s good name in vain and betray a prejudice far removed from God’s true intention for the world.
As I seek to interpret the gospel’s true message, I find God is always in the redeeming business, to be a source and strength for the troubles that will undoubtedly come our way. Good times are great, but will not last. And better if the challenge of a disaster brings out the best in us. When that happens, let me then be the first to say, “Look, a sign from God.”
