Crazy Theology - or Just Plain Crazy

Reading around the Internet news the day before Ike was to hit Texas, they had the usual series of "interviews" with people who were planning on staying put. No hurricane was going to make them move. One in particular caught my attention. They were interviewing a guy along the beach in Galveston:

"If the island is going to disappear it has to be a tsunami," he said, as he walked along the block where his home is located, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. "If it ain't your time you ain't going anywhere."

Somehow in that last sentence is perhaps one of the common crazy theological justifications for doing nothing. If it's supposed to happen, it will happen. If it isn't, it won't. It's as if God has this timetable somewhere in his heavenly archive. On that timetable is the day, hour, minute, second and location of everything that's going to happen to me. There are of course all kinds of variations on this but they all boil down to this one- I have no responsibility. I can make irresponsible choices that may put others in danger, but if it's not my or their time to go, so what?

The biggest question is really how to combat these, in my opinion, crazy theological beliefs? Perhaps there are those who do truly believe these and use them as more than excuses. But to my mind they fly in the face of free will- the ability of humans to make decisions- even decisions which God doesn't like or feel would be good decisions. I know the problem of free-will vs. determinism vs. predestination. I fall heavily on the side of free-will.

Perhaps I am just getting worked up over one crazy guy along the beach in Texas. But in the long run I think it is essential that we take responsibility for our own actions.