Wondering About the Ways of God

By now you may or may not have heard about a weak (EF0) tornado that hit in downtown Minneapolis last Wednesday and did some damage to the steeple of Central Lutheran Church. To put that into a perhaps totally unrelated context this is right across the street from the Minneapolis Convention Center where the Lutherans (ELCA) were meeting for their convention. It is, you may know by now, the convention that made some significant changes to the church's stand on gay clergy.

Now we don't often see tornadoes in Minneapolis- or in downtown urban areas for that matter. Nor do we often see tornadoes like this one that took everyone by surprise. It was not a severe weather day. Hmmm.

It doesn't take a prophet to see where this could go, does it? Well, John Piper, pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church pondered it on his blog and took it there:

"The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction."

This, of course, was just another in a long list of acts of God (or humans) that have been described as warnings from God. Piper himself even pondered that possibility with the collapse of the 35W bridge not all that far from Wednesday's event. You will remember, too, Katrina as the judgment on New Orleans and, a ways back, that AIDS was God's pestilence against Gays.

How sad. How scary. If I have learned one thing in my years it is that it is getting more and more difficult for me to know what is a judgment from God. In fact, I have the scary thought that it might be based on my own (or anyone else's) biases. If that tornado had damaged the steeple at Bethlehem Baptist instead of Central Lutheran it would have been ignored as nothing more than another weather event- or as an act of Satan against the successful ministry of Bethlehem Baptist.

We humans are quite adept at looking at things from God's point of view more often than it is possible, basing it on our point of view. We ascribe to God our understanding, our political positions, our desires and projects. Many years ago now I read Mark Twain's devastating book, The War Prayer. According to Wikipedia it is:

a scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.

An unnamed country goes to war, and patriotic citizens attend a church service for soldiers who have been called up. The people call upon their God to grant them victory and protect their troops. Suddenly, an "aged stranger" appears and announces that he is God's messenger. He explains to them that he is there to speak aloud the second part of their prayer for victory, the part which they have implicitly wished for but have not spoken aloud themselves: the prayer for the suffering and destruction of their enemies. What follows is a grisly depiction of hardships inflicted on war-torn nations by their conquerors. The story ends on a pessimistic note: the messenger is ignored.

I was shaken to my roots when I first read it. It is the grandiosity of humans and the seemingly unshakable certainty that what I want is what God wants. I am afraid that John Piper is doing the same thing from a different perspective but with the same result.

Now I have to admit that God of course could use tornadoes and hurricanes or anything else in all creation to chastise or encourage us. But when it always is happening to other people who think and believe differently from me- maybe I better look at my certainty a little more closely.