As I've said before, I think the biggest problem with God and Christianity are those that are attempting to do the current PR.
After the devastating earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan March 11th, MOST people felt an outpouring of compassion and concern. But as we knew from previous experience with the likes of Pat Robertson, there are those media leeches who have a vain, narcissistic need to turn the attention back to them by saying the most asinine thing they could think of to get tongues wagging.
Yes, Glenn Beck. I'm talking to you.
Glenn decided he needed to introduce the concept maybe, just maybe, God sent these devastating effects to teach us all something.
He didn't say it *exactly*, but he didn't NOT say it either.
As usual, this shock jock needed to needle people by stoking the two emotions he's discovered run rampant in his target audience: moral superiority and blind fear.
It's a combustible mix, just ask the Westboro folks.
There are those who are either comforted or justified when an act of nature strikes so that they can hang the culpability on God. In their mind it is perfectly logical that God would need to send a catastrophe to "get our attention" to let us know that we're doing something we shouldn't be doing.
This always makes me extremely suspect of their own parenting skills. Anyone who could think that God - who is supposedly their heavenly Father - could send death and destruction just to "teach them a lesson" should be closely watched on how they decide to parent THEIR children.
Jesus tackled this mindset in the Bible. Not only did he heal lepers that the community believed cursed by God, he tried to teach the faithful how to properly pray saying to ask your needs and desires and not fear that you might be punished instead with calamity. He said, simply, "Which of you, if asked by your child for a fish, would give him a snake instead?"
He tried to get us to understand that God was not a wrathful force but a father who was willing to do for us all the good things we would do for our own children.
And in fact the entire reason for Jesus at all according to any card carrying Christian (whether ChristianTM or not) was that he was the last and ultimate sacrifice for our sinful nature, and as such is an intercessor working on our behalf to reconcile us with God. "Forgive them, they know not what they do."
What sense does it make to kill your only begotten son so the world doesn't perish ONLY TO KILL THEM?
For the record... God wasn't in the Earthquake that devastated Japan. That's nature. Earthquakes happen as indiscriminately hurricanes and tornadoes. These are not thinking entities. They have no purpose, reason or emotion. They are, quite simply, events.
In the case of Japan, it's not even that shocking of an event. It would be like an earthquake hitting California, or a tornado hitting Kansas. Earthquakes happen in that part of the world on a regular basis, the only shocking thing about it was the previously unimaginable scope.
The only thing *bigger* than the devastation is the response we imperfect humans managed to muster, rather effortlessly, after it happened. By any religious nut's own argument, we humans managed to be BETTER than God if God could be so heartless to send this kind of devastation "just cuz."
Personally I don't think it has to be either/or. I believe that we humans balance a divine nature along with our own natural instincts... and it is in THAT nature you will find the face of God. That means if you are truly looking for God in this scenario, you need look no further than the massive outpouring of concern, compassion and support that followed this tragic event. It was unconditional and it was full of the mercy that Jesus was so maligned for by the religious leaders of his day.
The selfish nature of mankind would say we let the earth shake off those it feels the need to, but it is the divine nature within us that *needs* to reach out and ease the suffering. The nature of a savior, and indeed the heart of Christ himself, is to be overwhelmed with empathy where we cannot simply sit still and let these people suffer more than they already have.
THAT is the Jesus as he is taught from the Bible... and likewise the bridge to God himself.
The only people who would label God as the type of bully Glenn Beck suggests he is are people who can justify bullying of any degree to make their own point.
Yep, still talking to you, Glenn Beck.
These sanctimonious religious folks are deeply insecure that their message will eventually be silenced. They see themselves trapped in a lost and evil world that would reject their message and their God and ultimately challenge them to question their own faith (which, I think, scares them the most.)
I hate to tell ya, but you're part of the problem.
Like I mentioned in my blog The Jesus People See, anytime you attach the label "Christian" to your lapel you're representing Jesus to the world. If you have no clue what his message truly is (cough... Glenn Beck...cough,) then you're turning people AWAY and making your own enemies by your own bully tactics that completely miss the mark of his message of grace and mercy.
What's even more unfathomable is that you think you get to skate in on this same grace and get "saved" by someone else's sacrifice... but it is everyone else in the world that needs to change.
If you're the kind of person who believes that God could send an earthquake to teach "Japan" (or "the others") a lesson, then what exactly is God trying to teach you by your own challenges?
Do you stop to think about that? Or are you quite comfortable in the position of a sanctimonious and bullying Pharisee, who, if left unchecked, will actually try to kill anything that Jesus actually stood for?
I'm not saying that losing sponsors, ratings and an audience as a media personality is God trying to tell Beck something...but I'm not NOT saying it either.
Strangely though, those people so willing to blame God on these types of events to teach someone ELSE something generally believe that the challenges they face are God *supporting* them through their trials and persecution so that they don't have to change.
Funny how that works out.
It seems for these kinds of folks, Christianity didn't do anything to teach them the message or heart of Christ. It just gave them carte blanche to justify bullying because that's the only approach they understand.
For that, I feel sorry for you.
The Bible says that Jesus came to give not just life but that more abundantly, so if you must insert God into any act of nature I'd prefer to find God in a sunrise rather than an earthquake. Miracles exist, if you only know where to look for it, and I think God has a lot more to say in the heart of compassion than one of condemnation and rebuke.
I've been through some stuff in my life, and never once did I find comfort or reason by blaming God for the bad stuff.
Where I did find transformation and growth was how his grace got me through it.
"God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through;
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.
* But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, light for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love."
Click here to donate to The American Red Cross to assist in their emergency response to the devastation in Japan.
0 comments:
Post a Comment