UPDATE: Piper “clarifies” his tornado comments by referring to his bout with prostate cancer. The message of every event is repentance: “That is the message of every calamity (Luke 13:1-5). And every sunny day (Romans 2:4).” It seems to me we are simply not going to get past the issue of how we can say, as God’s word, that a specific event has a specific, divinely connected, design that I can speak to you: THIS happened so that you would do THIS. As opposed to THIS happened, you SHOULD do THIS, but I can’t say the two things are connected causally. Cause of tornado = message or Cause of tornado = weather systems/ Application of tornado in Christian worldview = repent, etc.
An event has an application, and God has a Word, but making the various aspects of weather in a particular place a clear word from God is raising a human pastoral application up to the level where all the problems we’ve discussed become real problems for many people. Such connections will cause many to stumble in their faith as they wonder “what was God’s Word to me in taking my child? Why did he have to speak that way instead of another way?” Piper clearly, WILL answer that question for suffering people out of his high views of God ordering all that comes to pass. Many other Christians will not. It’s the difference between a pastor saying, “in the tornado, I see a lesson” and saying “in the tornado, God is saying to you.” There’s a significance difference between these two expressions. I, and many others, frequently call to mind the lessons of providence, but they are the connections we see, not the connections God has made absolute. “The tornado caused me to think about God” and “God sent the tornado to Minneapolis so I would think about God” are simply two pastorally different statements. I’d suggest that what I can say about my house fire (or Piper can say about his cancer) and what I can say about Minneapolis’s tornado are two very different things on the level of using my interpretation of events as God’s Word.
In my conception of pastoral care, there are things you can think and believe, and then there are things you say at particular times. In the neo-natal ICU, when a child is about to die, people are making these connections: God is punishing them, God isn’t there, God is wanting something from them, etc. I believe pastoral care doesn’t tell people why that tornado is in the ICU. It humbly clarifies what we know about God from Jesus and the Gospel. I’m not going to say “this happened for the glory of God” THEN. I’m going to lament THEN. I’m going to take the time to see death for the enemy that it is, not say this is God. I’m going to Romans 8:28, etc LATER. If your first word to those parents is God’s sovereign ordering of all things so they will repent, I don’t think you’ve spoken a false word, but in the context, you’ve spoken a word that makes it more difficult to trust God. Jesus wept even when he’d said Lazurus’s death was for the glory of God. Some believe the highest expression of God’s sovereignty in the midst of tornadoes is the best pastoral and evangelistic word at that moment. It’s a legitimate disagreement, and no one should be embarrassed for having it.
1. Christians all generally believe that God is sovereign. I realize there’s a rather large bar fight about the footnotes, but it’s a reasonable attribute of anyone who calls himself the sort of things God does in scripture.
The game, however, becomes something like this: “My sovereignty can beat up your sovereignty.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah. Watch this. I say that tornado was a warning from God to the liberals in the ECLA.” “Well….well…..OK…OK….I say that Kyle Lake’s electrocution during a baptism was because God wanted to warn the emerging church.” “Oh yeah….well….”
If you want to play this game, you can generally find people willing to play, but I have one thing to say before you do: If you tell me that I don’t believe in the sovereignty of God because I won’t play your “one up” game, I’m going to punch you in the nose (if you are a man over 18 and not blind) and then you can figure out what that means. (That’s a joke.)
2. Evangelical Christians are amazing for wanting it both ways. They want to be able to say when a tornado is warning liberal Lutherans, but they don’t want to say the light fixture that fell and killed a baby in some church is a sign of anything. They will probably sue the electrician. They want to say that God sends signs of repentance in the tornado that just skirted their town, and then want to say God is teaching us to depend on him when the tornado destroys the building the church meets in. They want to say that God is always communicating through his “megaphone of pain,” (not Lewis’s finest moment) but they don’t want God communicating by putting the face of Jesus on toast. They want to call John Piper a prophet and Kim Clement a kook.
3. It’s an evangelical specialty to jump in and out of the scientific world view as needed. It really irks me. One moment we sound like people who have no idea what storms and earthquakes are all about meteorologically and geologically then the next minute we’re off to the doctor to get more of the benefits of medical science with no reference to God’s decision about whether we should get well or not. I know these understandings of reality aren’t exclusive, but who is your audience when you talk about a storm in language not too far off from animism and then next minute you’re looking down your nose at someone who says that grandma’s blindness is caused by demonic attack, not macular degeneration?
We’re just fine telling kids that God sends X and causes Y, but if our children are scared of that God and don’t want to cross the bridge or go to sleep during a storm we tell them that everything is OK. How does that work? If you say that storms are the result of the way the atmosphere operates as a system and that bridges hold up if the engineers build and maintain them right are we confusing the kid, contradicting ourselves or just operating in two entirely different universes.
If we are going to start saying that comets and eclipses and asteroid strikes are messages from God, then I think we owe it to someone to explain how that interacts with the fact that we also understand these things scientifically.
4. The Bible says that God sent plagues upon Egypt and that God told Moses- told him- what was happening. Was there a difference in that and Moses next inclination to believe that an unusually strong wind was warning the rebellious Israelites to obey? It seems to me there’s a huge difference here, and it’s a difference that has everything to do with our view of scripture as authoritative and everything to do with why we don’t believe that every pastor who tells his church the reason God caused an infant to die is a prophet.
I fully believe that general revelation preaches to those who are listening, but when I start cherry-picking what events and occurrences I want to use to make my point, I’m being inconsistent. I never read that general revelation requires commentary from selected preachers.
5. If you haven’t read it, read this mess from Paul Proctor and tell me that it’s not a monstrous and vile abuse of the theology of God’s sovereignty for Proctor’s own purposes. This is an extreme and vicious example, but it obviously raises the question: how does this guy know that?
This sort of thing has been going on for centuries. We should be taking notes and learning a few things along the way.
The Internet Monk Archives 
God hates steroids…..or GOD is on steroids ???
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“Scream of the Damned” sermon?
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Check the IMonk Archives. Probably search for “too god-centered” or some variant.
I know IMonk has posted on the subject.
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….but then someone from the ELCA could say that the previous explanation is exactly what Satan wanted us to think!
…. but then Piper could say that the previous line is exactly what Satan wanted us to think!
Now we’re getting into Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory logic, where “AHA! That’s What THEY Want Us to Think!” is normal when confronted by any dissonance and everything except the Truther is Part of The Vast Conspiracy. “THE DWARFS ARE FOR THE DWARFS! WE WON’T BE TAKEN IN!”
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Well, In Scandal of the Evangelical Mind there’s this statement that YEC and Pre-Trib Rapture Eschatology tend to occur linked together. Why shouldn’t “See? This Is God Punishing You!” also fit into the pattern? A lot of PreMil/PreTrib eschatology dwells on God’s Punishments in Revelation with lip-smacking glee like some sort of Christianized violence-porn. (I know the Gospel According to Hal Lindsay I was exposed to in the Seventies sure did.)
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And if someone is cured of cancer, God answers prayer, but if the next person in line dies of cancer, well, God, in his mercy, took him home.
Sounds like a win-win situation for a faith healer…
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How does one become “too God centered?” Isn’t that the point. That whole, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength thing?
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Nice post, Chaplain Mike.
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Piper is using a tornado as an object lesson. He’s not writing a systematic theology. Of course it’s going to narrowly focus on one topic. Why is that a bad thing? What pastor in their right mind would explain the entire cousel of scripture in a single blogpost, and who would be patient enough to read it? No one.
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You know, as far as the purpose of suffering goes, one can remember that when a lion kills a cow to eat, the cow suffers and dies and i would imagine is a bit unhappy about this. The lion however gets to eat and live another day. Gd “allows” the lion to die because the circle of life continues on and there is no need for Him, who set the circle up in the first place, to disrupt it.
A person’s death is a tragedy to them and those left behind, but perhaps part of the circle of life, and to Gd not a true tragedy worth bending the laws of space-time and physics to “fix”.
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One other thought: it is the law which drives us to the cross. If we think that tragedy drives people to the cross, then there will be the implication that tragedy will stop once they arrive there. It sounds suspiciously like faith-prosperity teachers: no sin, no sickness, no infirmity, as the pentecostal hymn goes. The cross breaks the power of the law, but it does not stop tragedy. It does give hope in spite of and in the midst of tragedy.
Chaplain Mike called Piper too “God-centered”. Actually, the idea that pain can change us is very man-centered; old-Adam-centered. The old Adam responds to carrots-and-sticks, making bargains with God: “If you will only stop the pain, I promise to do this or that”. The new Adam, which is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, causes us to respond out of love. Too good to be true? Then God’s grace must have something to do with it. 🙂
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Thank you.
All of these comments seem to miss that Piper is connecting this one event with all of the other events of human history that are supposed to lead all of humanity to see God as the most glorious object of worship and praise. This tornado as well as his cancer were both meant to lead people back to him. There is no need for there to be some special revelation telling Piper that this is the case because all things work toward this end.
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I personally am distressed to see Piper taking this approach. I have been edified greatly by Piper’s ministry and inspired greatly by his preaching. I have a great respect for the man. But this shakes all that. Where on earth did this come from? Not the spirit of Christ within him. I fear that Piper may be going off the rails here. It would be refreshing to see a Christian leader just admit they were wrong and apologize instead of rationalizing like he has. That is what I would call leadership. Where are his open arms of love to the gay community?
They can’t hear us when we say “hate the sin love the sinner” because we simply don’t do anything to demonstrate our love in a tangible way that they can feel (sorry, calling them to repentance doesn’t cut it as “showing love” here). Christian leaders making statements like this I fear just further digs our grave. Please, Dr. Piper. Nobody faults you for saying something ridiculous. Anyone who preaches as much as you has to get a whopper in there on occasion. But this one should be addressed in a manner that glorifies God.
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So, tell me if this is not a fair summary of what’s happening here, and why.
Piper comes out with an article as a response to this tragedy, and adds a second. His response says that every single event in your life–both happy events and tragedies–is intended by God to bring you to repentence, to forgiveness, and to victory. He connects this with, among other things, Jesus’ generalized statement in response to a particular tragedy (the collapse of the tower of Siloam). He quotes Jesus’ rebuke of those who think the 18 dead “were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem”–because the end of all sin is death & judgment.
Your response is to object. Not so much to the general statement he makes, but to his unmitigated gall in saying, “Yes, this event, too.” Because you read into his articles something that I can’t find–“This event was God’s particular punishment for you.” Something which he seems to have specifically not said.
What am I missing?
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Totally agree. Latest addition: ‘Obama health care is a satanic conspiracy to introduce atheistic-socialism to America ‘. . . give me a break.
It does remind one of the animist . . . seeing meaning in everything.
I remember a quote (can’t remember which book) from one of my church history textbooks. It referred to the early Christians as being different from the polytheistic Hellenistic people because they were not superstitious, but more rational about life events. Many Christians were persecuted during this time for not being religious enough.
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I’m afraid you’re right. I can’t help but feel the same treatment of “pests” by wishing harm on people in the wrong or nodding my head agreeably that the calamity was somehow justified. When I look in the mirror, I see someone who is always in the wrong; every calamity I experience is then somehow God trying to make me do something.
What I read from scripture is that it is God’s goodness which leads us to repentance, not his wrath (Romans 2:4). What ultimately should move us to repentance is the cross; if that is not enough, we are all lost.
“Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish’ ” – Luke 13:2-5.
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ugh, what wreckage…..for one thing, Piper’s Theodicy sure is a damn tornado 😦
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I’ve tried to read and listen to Piper on several occasions, but I never get far.
All I can think of is the Mirror of Galadriel scene from “The Fellowship of the Ring.”
Galadriel says “…I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightening! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”
Despair. Yes, that sums up how I feel towards God when Piper writes or speaks about Him.
Piper makes me feel like I’m Sisphysus rolling that rock up a hill in Siberia.
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“If you cherry-pick what events you use to make your point, you are not being inconsistent.”
Sure, it’s internally consistent because that’s the whole point of cherry-picking. But let’s be honest here: it often doesn’t give the full picture or reflect honestly the whole counsel of scripture, and therein lies the danger. The issue is not the number of passages or examples, but whether or not they reflect the wholeness of God’s revealed truth rather than just the bits we happen to find convenient at that moment.
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Pipers theological interpretations of historical events in his own existential time/space presumes he can really know what God is thinking/doing concerning a life event. This is absurd.
[Mod edit] You cannot qualitatively distinguish between his rigid theological interpretive response to life and the responses of [those] who follow the ideas of a group regardless of any rationality. Maybe Pipers interpretations comfort him but to others regardless of any timing considerations, would be dismayed. The idea that some being bigger than yourself just took your prostate away so he could show you how glorious he is, is absurd to people not caught up in this way of thinking. This is why so many people turn away from Evangelical orthodoxy. My 14 yr old brother in law put his head through a window and bled to death in his parents arms over thirty years ago. If you tried to tell his Mother or Father or me even now that Jesus killed the boy to bring us to repentence you might get more than a verbal response.
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Re: Piper update…nice try, Pastor Piper. You are still too “God-centered” (in a scrupulous, unhealthily introspective, worm theology kind of way) for me.
Why not view the storm from an entirely different perspective? Eugene Peterson writes about how John Muir used to go outside in the midst of a thunderstorm, climb to the top of a tall Douglas fir, and intentionally experience the storm in all its fury and terror, “lashed by the wind, holding on for dear life, relishing Weather: taking it all in–its rich sensuality, its primal energy.”
Why not view the storm as the Psalmist did in Psalm 29—
The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over mighty waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
and Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl,*
and strips the forest bare;
and in his temple all say, ‘Glory!’
Why does it always have to be about me? My sin? My repentance? It’s not! Ask Job. Sometimes it’s just about God and his greatness.
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Nope. Not so.
My Ma, a Vatican-I advocate if there ever was one , regularly points at disasters, big or small, as punishment from God. Especially disasters that wreck churches…
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Given over to sin = II Thessalonians 2:11-12: Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
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We can spin it all we want, but what we need to do is go back to God’s holy and inspired word and figure out what we need to do. Isn’t the Bible filled with a kingdom vision that consistently warns of hell and calls us to repentance? Whether or not you agree with how Piper, or Imonk, or anyone presents this, you need to get back in the word and figure it out, but be careful not to twist it to fit your particularly proclivity to sin.
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The murderer did threaten other people in the congregation who sought to stop him from getting away. Clearly, having made up his mind to eliminate one bad person, he had little concern about eliminating any other pests.
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Would it have happened if the ELCA had not been meeting there? Yes. it would’ve. Whether the ELCA was there or not is irrelevant to the weather system that was in that area at the time. Weather events are a result of natural forces. There’s nothing supernatural about a hurricane, or a flood, or a tornado. Otherwise, why study meteorology at all and it makes Doppler a bad thing for allowing folks to escape judgements.
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What, I wonder, is his religion: I don’t recognize ‘evangelical’ as I know it in his writing.
I suspect he is some kind of fundamentalist who insists that his beliefs are the only ‘truth’, which then gives him the right to judge others regardless of the Command of Christ not to do this.
I was absolutely revolted by how Proctor deviates from Christianity into something else.
One wonders what sort of people would follow such a man.
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There’s a difference between picking a couple instances for examples for a theme and ignoring counter-examples. Ignoring the examples that contradict your theme and only going for those that re-enforce it seems a bit dishonest.
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“It seems to me that Piper makes the classic faux pas of going from biblical text to application, without the intermediary stage of interpretation. A very dangerous and foolish thing to do.”
I was thinking about this statement. You could look at it another way:
Perhaps it is the lens you use when ‘interpreting’ that is also of critical importance.
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“Since hurricanes almost always hit the Bible Belt, does that mean . . . ? Hmm, I don’t think I want to follow that up.”
That we evangelicals should move inland to the midwest where we can be more selectively targeted by tornados.
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Steroids.
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I can reduce this to one sentence: Can I tell you that an event you’ve experienced was sent by God to you for a particular reason?
Short of that, I’m really fine.
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Well I don’t know that it’s entirely evans that talk this way of natural disasters – my point was that, given what was taking place at the time, it was interesting that i happended when it did which is the bottom line with most of the posts. My question above was just that – a question and goes the the “what if” that many of the responses have put forth regarding this situation.
Let’s put it this way can God use natural disasters in judgement? Has he used them before in judgement? Will he use them again in judgement? Think the answer would have to be yes to all three questions. Was the Minn tornado at the time of the ELCA meeting a warning of judgement to come – I don’t know – not thinking it was judgement – warning of the “storm” of issues to come in the years ahead (think ECUSA) – possibly but again everyone here, including myself is just thinking and opining out loud if you will. I think time will tell the tale as to what, if anything, this incident played in history. As to the ELCA and the decision they made – oh yeah….. they will definately have a storm to deal with now and will probably land them in the same situation as the ECUSA – they will loose a lot of members along with entire congregations.
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iMonk, thank you for this post and for your helpful reflections on Piper’s comments. It seems to me that Piper makes the classic faux pas of going from biblical text to application, without the intermediary stage of interpretation. A very dangerous and foolish thing to do.
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Joanie,
Amen, and again I say amen. Proctor’s pages actually made me feel dirty.
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Michael, I went to the Paul Proctor page you gave us. He writes about Lake, “Frankly, Rev. Lake sounds like someone who was absolutely in love with his life, the world around him and everyone in it, which is the expressed reverse of what the Bible teaches.”
Oh my…Lake loved everyone in the world! Horrors! God… protect us from people who teach as Proctor teaches.
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Piper clarifies, and I’m correct: http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1968_clarifying_the_tornado/
“But having spent too much time on the undercurrents, let me also say that it’s difficult for me to grasp how, exactly, it’s responsible to say that tragedy and disaster should serve as even a general call to repentance.”
I absolutely agree that it can be difficult, but it is in Scripture. See the Luke passage in particular. God designs pain and suffering, in part, to lead us to repentance.
“I repent because I recognize the saving, loving power of Jesus, who just utterly smashed to pieces all of our ideas about what is strong, what is powerful, what it means to conquer, what it means to lead and to love.”
As you should! But nowhere in Scripture does it say that Jesus is the ONLY thing that should lead you to repentance. Quite the contrary; Romans 2 says it’s God’s kindness (implication points to kindness in general revelation) that leads us to repentance; Romans 1 says that God’s power revealed in creation should lead us to repentance; Job repented after seeing the majesty and power of God — not the love of God in Christ; Isaiah (Isaiah 6) repented when he saw the vision of God on the throne and was THEN cleansed.
Each of these is an example of repentance in response to the character of God. That is what Piper is getting at — disaster shows us something about the character of God. Namely, it shows his power and sovereignty and necessarily implies our weakness and frailty before him. THAT should lead us to repentance.
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Funny, Bill! But what you say is true about how these things turn out. People who attribute these things to God “warning” us need to read Job. God asks Job how he can possibly understand what God is up to because God is God and Job is not. That doesn’t mean that we should not seek God but we seek to remain in his love and Jesus tells us that remaining in his love is what God “cares” about. If Jesus said it, that’s good enough for me.
Hey, Michael, if that is Jesus in the toast, looks like someone gave him a smashed-in nose! Maybe some of the unhappy Pharisees. 😉
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Those things were written from a human point of view. I find it interesting that Evangelicals are the only group of Christians I’ve run into who talk like this about natural disasters.
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1. If an event happens, and it wakes you out of your coasting state and you remember God, then remember Him, and help others to do so. But don’t go looking for signs to back up your case. Just repent and move on.
Far too many people are looking for supernatural signs to back up what they think, and we all know what Jesus said about that repeatedly.
2. I’m amazed at people like Proctor, and the fellow’s relative at Piper’s church, reigning down judgment on people. I have never seen these people actually living out love toward anybody, and I wonder at what point did they come to recognize Love as == Condemnation?
Christ’s main 3 commandments were love, and yet most Christians actively fail to live that out in any way, other than to their close friends and relatives, and even then in an actively censorious manner, unless it’s of things that they themselves are guilty of.
3. Lately, looking at folks saying “given over to Satan”, I wonder if that isn’t more like “abandoned to their sin”, as in, they seem bent on taking this course, so we’re going to let them know that they’ve been ostracized to go follow that course, and though we’ll be willing to help them pick up the pieces, we’re not going to be with them in the car as they drive off the cliff.
So much of the time, references to Satan in the NT seem far more about sin nature in the world than an entity, though of course not always. My self, my pride, my need to praise and please myself, is always crawling around the edges of my consciousness, attempting to lead me to destruction, and part of my heart really wants to give in to it…
We each seem to carry a bit of that around with us. I wonder, how many people have freely given into that part, in their hatred and judgment of others, finding pleasure in their self-righteousness, thinking that they’ve clearly avoided the enemy, when, in the words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
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Agreed. I’m in sharp disagreement with the ELCA, but I don’t think the tornado was a special revelation of God. It was an interesting and timely coincidence though.
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Children have a way of peircing right to the heart of the matter and bypassing all our adult facades
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” I fully believe that general revelation preaches to those who are listening” I am with you there
I think when God decides to use nature to punish evil, we will all know about it.
For the most part, as we are exhorted to “overcome evil with good”, and its “his kindness that leads us to repentance”, then I think that that is where God is, this side of eternity.
In the OT as physical blessing was seen as being in Gods favor, calamity and disaster were viewed as God taking vengeance on evil people and actions. This gave people the “heads up” to repent. Even then God relented from sending calamity. It was fairly cut and dried.
Nowadays, we are far removed from “appeasing the gods”, we even medicate ourselves when we can’t cope with the evil within and without.
I don’t know whether God has moved on in his punishments, like a parent who tries to figure what works/what doesn’t to get our attention, but natural disasters as messages of condemnation account for as much as Chicken Little saying “the sky is falling”.
Personally, I think God has moved on…unfortunately we haven’t.
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Since hurricanes almost always hit the Bible Belt, does that mean . . . ? Hmm, I don’t think I want to follow that up.
Our Lord Jesus says, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
It presents a viewpoint of God that shows Him as allowing the “natural” processes of the climate to proceed as they were created to do. It very specifically says that the Father does not limit his natural blessings to the good, but also gives them to the evil.
And, though not stated by Our Lord, it also presents the possibility that God also allows the negative natural processes of climate to impact both the just and the unjust.
Of course, God does sovereignly intervene as he desires and when he desires. But Our Lord does seem to say that regularity in climate is the norm, not the exception.
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That is excellent. I will have to remember that augury line.
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Check my blog here for another take.
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Actually I thought the tornado was because of the a/c failure and sweltering room at the meeting for my kid’s soccer league the other day…at a Lutheran church.
I wonder what that earthquake I felt at the World Series was all about? Anybody know for sure?
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On the Lewis quote context is important. This was about pain, in general, pointing to the falleness of the world and need for redemption. I think the quote is something like, “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world”. In other words, pain can help people see that what we have here is not right, and not all there is. That a day without pain or tears is possible, and is coming.
That seems a succinct and ‘fine’ way of expressing it.
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Who ISN’T wrong? Hello? Romans 3:23? John 8:7? Isn’t that what Paul addresses in his letter to the Romans? After listing in chapter one those upon whom God’s wrath falls, he drops the hammer in chapter two: “are YOU any better?”
Didn’t several key leaders of the cultural war die recently? Maybe THAT was God”s judgment for neglecting to preach the gospel. Maybe Piper should be watching out for tornadoes himself!
“Though justice be thy plea, consider this: That, in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.” – Shakespeare.
“When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?’ But Jesus turned and rebuked them” (Luke 9:54-55).
We could learn a lot from King David, who bitterly wept over the tragedy which fell upon Saul and his family.
I think of the nut job who recently shot a notorious abortionist in the middle of church. I keep thinking that had anyone been caught in the cross-fire that they would have been treated by the self-righteous murderer as mere collateral damage, or guilty by association.
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Wait. I just got it.
All those hurricanes we got in NC from 89 till a few years ago. I just figured it out. NC has been voting R for the president since the Carter won the state in 76. They must have been a sign that we should repent and switch get off our habitual voting for R’s for president. Well I guess we finally got the message as we voted for Obama in the last election.
Let’s see we also learned to take control of the state legislature with bribes, institute a state lottery, and have the governor take and give out favors like it was Illinois. Yep we learned out lesson. Those hurricanes were just the message from God we needed. Just took us a decade to get the message.
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So, anyone want to comment on the message God was sending when the Pope broke his wrist? His right wrist – that’s got to mean something, right?
This train of thought leads to – well, the kind of thing that happened in Limerick in July of this year, when people started seeing an image of the Blessed Virgin in the stump of a tree cut down in the local churchyard.
“But local curate, Fr Willie Russell has been quick to dispel the notion that there is any kind of apparition in the grounds of St Mary’s Church in Rathkeale. “A tree is a tree,” he told the Limerick Leader. “A person with imagination is a person with imagination.”
“If people were there praying, it didn’t do any harm,” he said before adding: “There’s no harm in that. I don’t believe in idolatry, that would be the danger.”
When we start looking for omens and practicing augury, that’s the danger.
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Warren,
I couldn’t agree more. Ultimately, for the believer, the “why” is all about conforming us to the image of Christ – forming more faith in us, more love, more humility, more dependence, more brokeness, more hope – that we might ultimately experience more of Christ. I think this is what Paul is getting at in the letter to the Philippians when he says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…”
This doesn’t mean that we should desire suffering as believers, but it does indicate that our suffering has meaning. And if so, all God’s will and acts, whether they bring comfort or pain, are also filled with meaning and purpose, not just for me, but for everyone and everything.
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I don’t mean for this to be too personal… but, I’ve got a family member who’s in Pastor Piper’s congregation, and I’ve been personally challenged to keep my Christian faith based on her “witness.” Her last line to me was that she hoped that God’s punishment to teach his sovreignity to me wasn’t through the death of my children. If I were a new Christian, I’d be starting up an athiest blog tonight. How about we talk about what we don’t understand, and Christ not understanding or not giving into suffering, and then holding someone’s hand – without the gleeful hope that they’ll finally make the altar call?
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As a probabilist and statistician, I often find myself contemplating the strange brew that is our current understanding of nature — its deterministic laws telling us what must obtain, yet so delicately interacting with our limited knowledge of the “initial data” that we often can’t hope to predict what will happen very much in advance. Chaos theory types call it “sensitivity to initial conditions,” but most people just call it the weather. Somewhere in here must be the source of much of our magical thinking about nature’s ways. We know that, in principle, these tornadoes’ evolution can be predicted, even if we don’t personally know the first thing about “vortex-type solutions to the Euler-Lagrange Equations.” But — so the thinking continues– there’s enough “wiggle room” for divine intervention in there somewhere, without, as it were, a meteorologist’s being tipped off. Behold, the God of the Aerial Gaps!
But there is a very real possibility that this sort of “gap” will persist indefinitely, in contradistinction to the usual “God of the Gaps” who notoriously shrinks in proportion to the growth of our understanding of nature. For this gap arises, not from a lack of understanding of the laws of nature, but from an inherent inability to predict a specific outcome to a humanly satisfying degree of precision. Philosophically and theologically, we should be prepared for the long haul on this subject.
I am not convinced that it is wise to point to the gap above as THE manner in which God interacts with His Creation. I am convinced, however, that we will always feel the pull to do so, and when we do, the temptation to Piperize the event — tornadic or otherwise — will always lie before us.
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People often quote Romans 8:28 when they are searching for but not finding the answer to their, “Why?” about what God is doing in His sovereignty.
The key is in the very next verse (8:29): it all boils down to his primary goal of conforming us to the image of His Son….some way, some how, that is what it always boils down to for those who are His.
We have to keep in mind that, after Jesus’ baptism and His Father’s approval, He was IMMEDIATELY driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tormented by wild beasts and the Devil. Why should we be exempt? Aren’t we to consider it an honor to share in His sufferings?
Losing a child to leukemia is a horrible experience, but God can very well use it to shape a man’s character to be more humble, more gentle, more compassioante, and more transparent – just like HIs Son…
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TOO funny! And oh, so right-on.
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I would submit this question – why is it that we are so afraid to say that something could be/is a judgement of/from God? In scripture are many, many examples of God using various things – invading armies, prophets, natural disasters and many others to exact judgement on sin – sin of
and by the people – his own and their enemies as well. Not saying the tornado was that but, I would find that there is something to be said for the timing. Would it have happened if the ELCA
had not been meeting there….. I don’t know – it might have, it might not have but it, never-the-less,
is quite interesting from a time standpoint that it happened when it did while a body calling itself
his is shreading his word. Now, you can begin the shreading of me….. just pointing out that it is
very, very interesting that’s all.
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I’m having a hard time with this particular argument. It’s impossible for me to read what Piper wrote and not read the absolutely clear admonition directly to the ECLA.
I mean, the whole point of writing the thing was to say, “hey, here’s a tornado, on THIS DAY, in THIS LOCATION, damaging THIS BUILDING, while they’re having THIS VOTE.” You say all of that and then soften it with, ‘oh, hey, and all of us, too,” and I don’t really believe that that’s what you meant. It’s a “things that make you go hmmmm” moment, and the undercurrent is really difficult to miss, even if by some strange fluke Piper didn’t mean to put it there.
He may have meant better. He may have even tried to communicate what he meant better and simply, accidentally failed. But I don’t think so.
Regardless of what he really thought or meant to say, I’ve got countless evangelical friends who would read that post and retell the story again and again, citing Piper’s authority and admonishing us all about how God sent a tornado to send those Lutherans a message. It’s an irresponsible connection to make, it assumes too much (both about how well we can interpret the natural world to reflect what God wants to tell us about *specific situations* and about how well Piper himself can interpret them), and Piper should know better.
But having spent too much time on the undercurrents, let me also say that it’s difficult for me to grasp how, exactly, it’s responsible to say that tragedy and disaster should serve as even a general call to repentance. Sometimes tragedy and disaster is just tragedy and disaster. Often, even, one man’s tragedy is another man’s triumph. (Just imagine a recent war from the perspective of the victor and then the loser, for example.)
I don’t repent because the world around me throws me curveballs. That just makes me angry, or frustrated, or broken. I repent because I recognize the saving, loving power of Jesus, who just utterly smashed to pieces all of our ideas about what is strong, what is powerful, what it means to conquer, what it means to lead and to love. And I see that I’m nothing without Him. I don’t need natural disasters to ruin my life. I’m quite capable of doing that on my own.
Maybe that’s just me, though.
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*wait-a-minit*
Proctor worries about boogy men on the fringe of the frayed (Ben Creme et al — sheesh)
so why bring him into the conversation ? Besides imonk is better lookin’ , smarter
( LOL humorUS)
and has a much better photo .
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It seems to me that Romans 11:33-34 speaks to this pretty concisely…
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”
The Bible makes one thing clear: God is sovereign. He is in control of everything and He has a reason for everything that he does. Further, all of God’s acts ultimately work together for those who love Him and have been called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28). Yet, in the here and now, we are unable to discern whether the working of God’s “dark will” (those divine “acts of God” that cause death or suffering) are acts of judgment, discipline, or grace. Why does God allow a hurricane to hit New Orleans? Why does God allow a tornado to hit Minnesota? Why did God allow my sister-in-law (a precious woman who loved Christ, her husband, her children, and her church) to die of breast cancer. Is it judgment? Is it discipline? Is it a dark grace that is designed to turn our hearts to Christ? Is the hurricane sent to humble us? Is the cancer sent to awaken us? Is the tornado sent to break our pride? To harden some? To soften others? To confound the wise? To give us opportunities to love. To draw us together? To remind us of our mortality?
Perhaps it is all of this…and more.
In the meantime, in regard to these deep and dark matters concerning God’s Sovereignty, perhaps it may be best if Rev. Piper, along with all who call upon the name of Christ, echo the words of Job:
“Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3).
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Tornados aside – real issue is that the ELCA erred greatly on this issue and I would expect in
a few years to see the same thing happen with them as has happened with the ECUSA. Cannot
scripture be taken as it is? Yes it was written in a different time but I thought its truths were
timeless and that being the case – if it says it’s wrong it’s wrong – if right it’s right…… Folks, bottom
line is the evangelical church as we know it is in a heap of trouble – this stuff needs to stop before it’s gone for good.
BTW folks, I’m not anti-gay in the sense of treating them as second, third or greater citizens and people. They are people that God loves and sent his son to die for be we defeat part of the purpose
of the church everytime we compromise away various parts of God’s word – at what point will
scripture be irrelevant – seems we’re pretty close to that in a great many of our churches now! ELCA – you need to re-consider this one.
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It’s not just Calvinists, of course. The Arminians in my church do the same thing. I used to be guilty of it myself. Now I call it for what it is: Augury. Reading omens in the sky and interpreting the will of the gods through it.
The only difference between ancient Roman augury and present-day Christian augury is that Christians believe that God is automatically on our side. Not one of these evil omens is meant to warn or punish us Christians for hypocrisy, apathy, complacency, and a myriad of other sins we commit. It’s always to warn or punish the non-Christians. (Which is really an ineffective means of communication when you think of it. The non-Christians aren’t cued in on how to interpret omens like we Christians are. They might think weather is a natural occurrence. How silly.)
The Romans had no such assurance that the gods were on their side. Omens could mean divine favor or divine displeasure. They didn’t presume one way or another. Somehow we’ve become dumber than those pagans.
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“We’re just fine telling kids that God sends X and causes Y, but if our children are scared of that God and don’t want to cross the bridge or go to sleep during a storm we tell them that everything is OK. How does that work? If you say that storms are the result of the way the atmosphere operates as a system and that bridges hold up if the engineers build and maintain them right are we confusing the kid, contradicting ourselves or just operating in two entirely different universes.”
Thank you. Am dealing with just this thing right now with an 8 year old who keeps asking why God allowed the serpent in the Garden and does not like the answer. (sigh)
Another reason why this sort of thing bothers me so very much is it makes folks who are NOT a part of the ‘bad guys’ feel so righteous. Between the bridge, the Scream of the Damned sermon, hard core compism and now this, I have pretty much stopped listening to Piper.
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When I read 1 I chuckled because what I’ve seen is a lot of Christians who say “God doesn’t fit into all these nice little boxes we try to put him in.” What they really MEAN is “God doesn’t fit in the box YOU want to put him in because he fits into the box he providentially gave ME.” And, yes, I’m going to just say that in my experience Calvinists are the worst at playing this sort of game. You would think they wouldn’t be but that’s just not how it turned out.
2 and 3 can be summed up, as I see it, this way–we, even as evangelicals, simply cannot admit that we want to buy into sympathetic magic when it suits us. Let me put it this way–evangelicals who are skeptical about the worldliness of the social sciences because they are are soft on sin lap up writings about business or organizational expansion. All the stats and concepts are awesome if they help the church grow 20% in a year. If there is an emotionally unstable person who gets into conflicts with landlords and friends an evangelical is most likely to say that person needs to stop clinging to their pride and sin. The idea that that person might actually have bipolar disorder is probably the last thing an evangelical would consider because psychology is influenced by too many godless ideas. It would be easier to say some generational sin is at work or that someone is just being obstinate.
We are advocates of science only when the results are magical. We are opponents of science if it might get in the way of us saying someone else is being a willful, obstinate sinner toward who we need to display some mercy. I feel very strongly about this subject and I’m going to try not to ramble endlessly about it.
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imonk you need a snappy photo like Paul Procter, it really is the best part of the page.
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Thank God no tragedy came from the wind storm there.
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He might be. The problem is that he doesn’t know, and neither do we. To suggest that he does know is presumptuous.
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excellent post.
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“2. Evangelical Christians are amazing for wanting it both ways. They want to be able to say when a tornado is warning liberal Lutherans, but they don’t want to say the light fixture that fell and killed a baby in some church is a sign of anything.”
You hit the nail on the head with this one. Reminds me of a recent gathering with relatives where one of the elderly belivers (who should have known better) expressed thankfulness that none of our large family had the problems she’d seen in a group of disabled kids earlier that day. But you can bet if any of the young marrieds in our family had a disabled child, they would be seen as a blessing and gift from God.
Things like this are about where I get off the evangelical merry-go-round of pronounced limits to God’s grace and mercy and love and blessing. My head can’t spin that far.
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It’s always easier to remove the log in the other guy’s eye…
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That was brilliant. I am SO stealing that at some point….
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ProdigalSarah, i thought you put it beautifully.
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Couldn’t someone from the ELCA make the claim that Satan caused the tornado, as God was actually happy with what they were doing but Satan was trying to scare them into thinking God was angry with them?
….but then Piper could say that Satan wanted us to think that God was happy with what the ELCA was doing when God was actually mad about it, and Satan wanted us to give him credit for trying to scare them when God was really the one who did it. God allowed Satan to try and decieve us in order to test us and teach us discernment!
….but then someone from the ELCA could say that the previous explanation is exactly what Satan wanted us to think!
…. but then Piper could say that the previous line is exactly what Satan wanted us to think!
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Is he a fundamentalist ?
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“3. It’s an evangelical specialty to jump in and out of the scientific world view as needed. It really irks me. One moment we sound like people who have no idea what storms and earthquakes are all about meteorologically and geologically then the next minute we’re off to the doctor to get more of the benefits of medical science with no reference to God’s decision about whether we should get well or not. I know these understandings of reality aren’t exclusive, but who is your audience when you talk about a storm in language not too far off from animism and then next minute you’re looking down your nose at someone who says that grandma’s blindness is caused by demonic attack, not macular degeneration?”
Interesting. The brew ha ha that got started when a SS class of mine started to explore the differences between Old and Young Earth makes more sense. Much of the YEC / Ken Hamm crowd that I’ve run into is big into things like the Minn. tornado as punishment to the ELCA or Katrina was punishing New Orleans but doesn’t want to hear about it when their best friend is killed in an auto accident.
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i wanted to blog something about this, now i can just link and say ditto. enjoyed that. thanks.
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2. Evangelical Christians are amazing for wanting it both ways. They want to be able to say when a tornado is warning liberal Lutherans, but they don’t want to say the light fixture that fell and killed a baby in some church is a sign of anything. …
3. It’s an evangelical specialty to jump in and out of the scientific world view as needed. It really irks me. …
And if someone is cured of cancer, God answers prayer, but if the next person in line dies of cancer, well, God, in his mercy, took him home.
Wish I had a nickel for every time I have had thoughts along these same lines. Thanks for this post.
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im not saying i agree with him bc i dont but wot if hes right?
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If Piper had written that piece with humor, admitting he didn’t know and making the ironic play that these events were interestingly placed, and admitted he has no reason to apply it more to the ECLA than to himself, I’d be praising it.
Great stuff there: and this could even had been expressed seriously, as in the Daniel Webster vein of “I always meditate on MY mortality in order to live in a careful way……” and then this becomes a sentiment that all of us can get behind. As it is, this “GOD is showing us or waring us…..” becomes very iffy. Not that HE can’t, or isn’t, but as has been said repeatedly “who can know that ??” for sure
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Sorry. Meant to type quiet voice.
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I considered it revelation when I realized that our Creator is beyond anything my pitiful little fallible brain can ever comprehend. If that were not so, if God were no greater than my ability to comprehend, wouldn’t that be a god of my own invention?
Why do people want a god so small that they dare speak for him?
Our minds can study and understand the great natural forces of this planet, the storms, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. But how can the accumulated knowledge of all humanity begin to dissect the still, quite voice.
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That’s great. I’ll have to remember that.
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“I fully believe that general revelation preaches to those who are listening, but when I start cherry-picking what events and occurrences I want to use to make my point, I’m being inconsistent.”
If you cherry-pick what events you use to make your point, you are not being inconsistent. You are being wise with your time. When a pastor gives a sermon illustration he doesn’t give every possible illustration that fits; he gives one or two. When a pastor preaches on injustice, he doesn’t give every example of injustice ever, just those that aid in the message.
“I never read that general revelation requires commentary from selected preachers.”
No, it doesn’t require it, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be helpful.
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Do you really think Piper sees this as divine revelation? This is a magical sign from God against the ECLA? I think much more likely is that Piper sees all tragedy and disaster (threatened or realized) as a GENERAL call to repent, to all people. If you have heard Piper speak on tragedy before, it is obvious that that is what he believes. This particular post differs in that he then applied that general call to repentance to the specific ECLA situation. Since he singles them out, it seems like he’s saying it’s a sign from God against the ECLA, when in reality it’s a warning from God to everyone that is he applies to the ECLA.
Poorly written? Perhaps. Piper believes a tornado is a magical sign specificly for the ECLA only? I think not.
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Hey I had a Pop Tart for breakfast too . . . brown sugar and cin. Didn’t see anything but I’ll look closer tomorrow.
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And one more thing – thanks for the Paul Proctor link. He sounds like a nut.
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Oh yeah, before I forget…Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
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Let’s call it what it is. Unfortunately, evangelicalism is rife with superstition. From, “the Lord spoke to me,” to “I don’t have peace about that,” to my plastic loaf filled with promises on the breakfast table, to the hundreds of Dispensational books now out of date because the oil embargo is over or our current choice for the Antichrist died, to the spiritual warfare folks who supposedly uncover generational curses, to the culture warriors who think President Obama is a Muslim secret agent that will one day reveal himself to be a terrorist, to the young earth creationists and their comic book understanding of the Bible and the universe, it just goes on and on and on. It’s a wonder tornadoes don’t blow us all to Oz. Oh wait, we’re already there.
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“How does he know this tornado is a sign of anything to anyone?” – I have no idea. I think it’s foolish to make such declarations apart from direct revelation. I don’t think his argument holds up. I was just surprised to find that phrase “all of us” in what he wrote, because everything I had read previously made it sound like his comments were directed at “them” rather than at “them and us too”.
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Piper’s point is not that this is some sign that the ELCA are evil heretics worse than all others. He likens it to the Siloam tragedy in Luke 13. Jesus specifically says in Luke 13:4-5 that the Siloam tragedy was NOT a sign that they were worse offenders. It was a general warning that they should repent. Tragedy anywhere should remind us of our place before God and our need to repent.
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Having been through a couple of health issues with family members, I am just trying to focus on listen for God’s voice rather than trying to understand what He saying through the events around me. But when I try to “figure it all out” or “find the meaning in this,” I find that I wander pretty far off the reservation.
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The problem comes in using what is a mystery- even one that revelation applies pastorally and evangelistically- for our own agendas, good or not.
If Piper had written that piece with humor, admitting he didn’t know and making the ironic play that these events were interestingly placed, and admitted he has no reason to apply it more to the ECLA than to himself, I’d be praising it.
Listen, I just want some of you to consider that being “God-centered” better come with some humility or you are going to wind up out on a limb. It happens all the time. Pastors are so prone to this we could fill up a forum with statements pastors have made as if they never what God is doing in events.
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imonk,
Maybe you don’t realize this, but we ARE talking about John Piper! lol.
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How does he know this tornado is a sign of anything to anyone?
I know that the ELCA is wrong and that I am a sinner who needs mercy every moment whether a tornado hits my house or not.
Almost ten years ago, a house fire could have killed all of us in our sleep. I happened to get up because of an unexplained noise and found the fire. I believe that noise was part of God’s providence. He let us live when we could have died. I also believe it’s completely a matter of the causes of the fire, and anything could have changed that. In other words, it’s a mystery. God is in charge and we are alive. He’s to be praised.
But I didn’t need that providence to know any of those things. And I don’t know them BECAUSE of those events. As a believer I know them IN those events. I’m alive now and not experiencing a heart attack because of the same mercy. It’s so constant that isolating it is risky.
And here’s the problem: When I start telling you what God was up to in your Providences, I’m on shaky or non-existent ground.
And if I keep doing this, every time there’s a providence that suits my agenda and I don’t lament, wrestle with or have my faith challenged other events, I’m not being consistent.
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I keep telling my wife – if you look, unaided, to Providence for any information about God’s character and motivations, you’ll end up with a capricious dice-tosser not much more admirable than Zeus. If God always immediately punished the wrong and always immediately rewarded the right, everyone would line up on whatever side He demanded, just like no one ever wanted to be the first one to stop clapping and sit down after Joseph Stalin gave a speech.
I’ve been told that if you want some insight into what goes on behind the scaffolding in the physical world, you should be prepared to do what St. Anthony did. You won’t get it from the Bible alone. You need to get in the zone where the Bible was written, and that is far from a comfortable place for most of us.
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What he actually said was that it was “a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us”. If you want to talk about whether it is appropriate to say that God caused or allowed a specific event for a specific purpose, fine, but why make it sound like he was only talking about the ELCA? Why leave out the “all of us”?
Suppose he had said “The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction.” Would your response differ?
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There was an image of a tornado on my Pop-Tart this morning……..
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