Gays don’t cause tornadoes
Today was supposed to be for another Diana Butler Bass post.
But then the gays had to go and cause a tornado in Minnesota.
Like a lot of people yesterday I read John Piper’s outrageous post claiming that God caused a tornado in Minneapolis to send a message to the ELCA: God doesn’t like gays and doesn’t want them in His (yes, His) church. And like a lot of people I was angered.
I left this comment on Piper’s post:
It is deeply disappointing to see such a prominent Christian leader yet again contributing to the narrative of fear. You’re peddling a poisonous and toxic theology Mr. Piper. And you join the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in doing so. Yours is a Christianity that betrays the heart of the gospel. I highly doubt you will, but I pray that you retract your words.
I was in a hurry so here’s a few more thoughts. (My hope is that more people (people who, unlike me, have voice and influence) will call Piper out on this because the last thing we need is another excuse for people to write off Christians has gay-bashing, fanatical, wing nuts.)
The theology is ridiculous. I’m hesitant to even call this theology because Piper’s cutting and pasting of scripture tells me that he is more interested in justifying his own ideology with religious authority than he is in serious reflection.1 It is very destructive and obviously raises some disturbing issues when it comes to theodicy and the nature of God. The burden of proof is on Piper to explain every other natural disaster. Who is being punished in all the other tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes? And what kind of God dishes out punishment of that magnitude? What of grace? If God is in the business of unleashing holy hell on those God pleases then why does God only seems to care about who is having consensual sex with whom and who is marrying whom? Aren’t there other issues that might seem at least a bit more pressing, like say, war or starvation or economic exploitation or disease? If this is God’s way of dealing with things the why hasn’t the United States been wiped off the map for failing to care for its own as the wealthiest nation in the world or for starting bogus wars abroad in order to secure its “interests?” What kind of hierarchy of sins is this that sex is at the top and other problems that directly affect persons livelihood don’t even seem to register? Why doesn’t God give a damn about those?
When you push the thought to its inevitable conclusion, Piper’s God begins to look more in more like the mean kid killing insects with a magnifying glass. God is a sadist who enjoys inflicting cosmic pain on others. If that is true then I have no interest in God. And if religion consists of me running scared for the rest of my life hoping that God isn’t out to get me then I’m out on that too.
Christianity is not a religion of fear. From beginning to end, it’s narrative is one full of hope for the redemption and restoration of all things. Piper, in his post, is more interested in a narrative of fear that dehumanizes the other, casting God as a cosmic antagonist, the ultimate mob boss who will kill you on a whim if you look at him the wrong way. This is not the gospel, indeed it betrays the very heart of the gospel by opting for fear and hate instead of hope and love. “Perfect love casts out fear.” Jesus modeled that perfect love and brought the narrative of hope to its apex. He had a ton of opportunities to go postal on someone who didn’t get it or deserved to be punished, but he didn’t. In fact, in the third act of the story Jesus shows us just how absurd the whole system of punishment and fear really is. Is that not the clearest and most unambiguous embodiment of the very nature of God?
God does not create tornadoes to “send messages.”
God sent the best message God could 2000 years ago and the message is this: love, not hate wins; hope, not fear, has the final say.
You, John Piper, are on the wrong side of history. Homosexuals pose no threat to the church nor does God hate, despise, or want to punish them. We should be welcoming them with open arms to join us in participating in the restoration and renewal of all things. Justice demands it.
- To be sure, we’re all guilty of this to some extent, but there are good interpretations and bad interpretations. [↩]
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who the hell is john piper?
Name
21 Aug 09 at 7:08 am
Nice thoughts. To suggest that frequently occuring natural events are somehow the effect of human action is odd and wrong… it's a blame game with no winners. If lightning struck John Piper would that be due to his sin? If I pitch a tent on train tracks then get hit by a train, what have I been guilty of: bad judgement or moral compromise? It doesn't work that way.
If God thought the way Piper did, then Jesus would have been the one casting the first stone in John 8.
RyanD
21 Aug 09 at 9:43 am
[...] Blake Huggins – Gays don’t cause tornadoes [...]
John Piper and actions of God | jonathan stegall: creative tension
21 Aug 09 at 11:34 pm
i think gays cause awesome weather. since the vote was passed in MN, the weather has been awesome. today was gorgeous was it not?
Drew Tatusko
23 Aug 09 at 7:54 pm
i think gays cause awesome weather. since the vote was passed in MN, the weather has been awesome. today was gorgeous was it not?
Drew Tatusko
24 Aug 09 at 1:54 am
[...] The core problem with Piper’s view — aside from the outdated cosmology — is theological determinism. Such a view makes things very simple to understand: X happened because God caused it and thought it should happen, there is a moral reason for everything that happens in the cosmos so we shouldn’t worry too much, it will all work out in the end. It is an easy way to make sense of tragedy but I must effectively excuse myself from wrestling with the moral ambiguities of reality. Not to mention that must ascribe to a premodern cosmology and assume that God is, at best, amoral. [...]
Moltmann v. Piper at (Ir)religiosity
14 Sep 09 at 5:31 pm
Hi Blake. While the right to pronounce natural disasters as acts of God is best reserved for God (though insurance companies don't seem to think so), I wonder what you make of passages like 1 Cor 10:1-13; 11:30-32; Heb 12:1-12. Then again, I don't know what hermeneutic you're operating from so these words, which the authors considered to be inspired, may have little bearing on your own theology.
Andrew
12 Jun 10 at 5:58 am
I try to avoid pulling isolated passages out of context and applying them to contemporary situations ad hoc such that they bolster a combative ideology. My understanding of God and cosmology precludes me from attributing natural disasters to the will of God much less to God's punishment of a particular group of people.
Blake Huggins
12 Jun 10 at 2:19 pm
How can we be sure our understanding of God and cosmology and non-combative theology is not based on isolated passages, then? And what do we do with those isolated passages; relegate them to the original audience? The points Paul and others are making seem to be very important for the first communities. Also, when developing a theology, it only seems appropriate to offer a treatment of all relevant passages. We have to deal with them one way or another.
Andrew
14 Jun 10 at 4:56 pm
We are never sure because we always find ourselves within the contestation of conflicting and, at times, incommensurable texts. I'm not interested in blending them, frankly. And no, I'm not interested in relegating texts to the original audience alone either. That's a bit lazy. I deal with those texts by noting their context, how they were situated, and, most importantly, how they functioned theologically. This is not always a gesture of positivism. In fact, in many cases it may not.
Take the Corinthians text, for instance, where Paul is recalling violent acts attributed to God in the Hebrew bible. Were I to exegete that text I would take note of how it emerged within a new, fecund community seeking to separate itself from other sects. The acts attributed to God in the Hebrew scriptures were likely a result of deep ethnocentrism and tribalism, similar to the situation in which Paul was writing. Violence was attributed to God in order to validate one community over another (and one ideology over another). We have no business using such texts as justification for continued exclusion and dehumanization today because for one thing (among many) our context is vastly different. Then there is, of course, the complex issue of sexuality in the ancient world which hardly allows us to use those texts in the manner that most evangelical Christians, like Piper, do. But that is another matter.
The important point I am getting at is this (and this the bottom line for me): I understand the scriptural text to be the record and witness of various communities and they way that the signifier God functioned within those communities. I don't hold these texts to be a complete and inerrant record of God's action in history. It bears witness to divine action, to be sure, but ultimately the text is the product of these communities' own understanding of God not God Godself. The task of the theologian is to wade into the contestation of these texts to determine just that and to proffer constructive, more liberative understandings. For me, this means that the text need not be bent or subsumed under a positivistic framework, because the text does not exist in a vacuum holding timeless, eternal truths which can be imported into this or that context. The texts are constituted. Here I think biblical scholarship has much to learn from continental philosophy and philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur, etc.) in particular lest it continue to be beholden to the cold legacy of the Enlightenment.
Anyway, thanks for the comments. I doubt we will be able to constructively continue this much further because we're both starting in a fundamentally different place with regard to the text. I don't want to waste your time or mine circling the wagons.
Blake Huggins
14 Jun 10 at 5:38 pm
Thanks for the exchange Blake. I hope the spelling out of your understanding of scripture served as a helpful exercise for you as much as it helped me understand your position. I wouldn't have guessed your working assumptions from the original post, and since it was the only one I read on here I assumed you were working from a more conservative view, via “cutting and pasting of scripture” (evangelicals don't consider that a proper hermeneutic, either. I still affirm that when addressing an issue like theodicy, even from your perspective you must address relevant texts, whether the issue was only touched on by the ancients and serves as a premise to the larger argument of a passage or not). I think a more constructive way to have addressed this issue would be to theologize/philosophize about it, since without a hermeneutic based on authorial-intent there can be little room left for exegesis. This you did in a couple of your paragraphs. When God does not punish the obvious sin we witness, we can(?) appeal to mercy or mystery. The narrative of evangelicals has always led us to believe that Jesus will make one day make things right. All I'm saying is (as you suggested in your last paragraph) you can't hope to have any meaningful conversation or criticism of evangelical theology since they are starting from a different place. So… how helpful are critiques of Piper's theology, really?
Honestly, to suggest God disciplines/punishes people hardly has anything to do with cosmology. For Piper and others to affirm God can and does (according to ancient communities' experience) intervene in creation is not an irrational position, though the right to attribute specific acts to him is a different story. Still, you reference things like the “gospel” and I'm wondering how much we're reading our own theology into the text and doing away with passages that suggest God is still in the business of justice, discipline, and correcting evil. When we say things like “not interested in,” one can only conclude that you are coming to the theological task with your own presuppositions. Your conclusions like the early Hebrews being interested in ethnocentrism and tribalism again reveal you are coming to the historical task with your own assumptions.
Re philosophical hermeneutics: thanks for the lead! I really will pursue that soon.
Andrew Dragos
16 Jun 10 at 3:42 am
While I am thinking about it, you might find this post interesting. I spell out my view of scripture and revelation in a bit more detail with more theoretical backing and with reference to philosophical hermeneutics. In particular, I address the issue of subjective presupposition, something I think we all always already bring to the text — indeed something that constitutes the very meaning of the text — and something that is inescapable whether we name it as such or not.
I differ from myself a bit on some of the details of that post now — namely the Barthian (re)assertion of Christ as the locus of revelation — but I still hold to the main points concerning the text itself.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Blake Huggins
16 Jun 10 at 4:15 am