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The Heavy Hand of God, Facing up to the Obvious by T. M. Moore
According to this column (by T. M. Moore), there is nothing natural in natural disasters. God rules everything including all events and creatures in the cosmos. Therefore this article offers these four conclusions.
1. All events are consistent with his will. There is no chance in the world made and ruled by God.
2. God frequently (?!) acts in unfavorable ways to warn or correct an injustice and inequity.
3. In any tragedy, it is likely (?!) that God is speaking to someone, wanting them to cry out for mercy.
4. In the midst of the tragedies, God's grace will be seen, either when someone salves another's injuries or when someone is comforted and cared for.
With these conclusions, this column offers this summary of four applications:
1. When someone is suffering, we should not debate why they deserved that punishment but rather we should consider how to stimulate love and good works on their behalf
2. We should take every opportunity to call others to seek God's mercy, whether in a disaster or not.
3. We should give thanks to God's might (?!) and the mystery of His ways (?!). God's actions are always designed to elicit worship from men.
4. We should not be reluctant to raise the issue of divine judgment, unpopular as that may be - to lead people to their senses by indicating their misery from a natural disaster is punishment for something they had done.
The column's final conclusion: The heavy hand of God presses down on men. Let us be wise to know how to respond when it does.
A definition of sadism commonly contains something like:
The deriving of gratification from inflicting pain or emotional abuse on others.
This article apparently sees nothing wrong with giving God a sadistic personality. We are told that God brings misery to people so that the survivors will beg for mercy. The article recognizes that it can be difficult to ascertain why people were subject to such physical and emotional anguish but we must believe that all disasters are part of God's plan and we must remember that God's actions are always designed to elicit worship from men, as they beg for mercy.
Whether this article represents just one particular person's world view or not (the fact that it is published on the Breakpoint web site implies it must have passed some approval process), I am totally astonished that such a stated belief in a sadistic supernatural being is not in some way a sign of psychosis. A definition of psychosis commonly includes: A severe mental disorder characterized by loss of contact with reality.
A number of authors have investigated the origins of the ancient religions (the authors and their articles and books are noted elsewhere in this web site). Through the discovery of common themes they have theorized possible natural events for those myths that marked the major transitions in those religions. They also suggested that the survivors of ancient catastrophes were so awestruck by the disasters that rather than believing that nature could be so apparently random (since they did not understand the natural processes in geology or astronomy) they felt that perhaps it was something in their own actions that resulted in their punishment by the gods.
Scientists all over the world continue to make progress in our understanding of the natural processes of this Earth. Hurricanes and tornadoes can be monitored in their development and movement allowing for those in their path to be warned. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are less understood but certainly it is the expectation of the scientists in those fields that eventually the secrets of those processes will be revealed as well, enabling those at risk to be warned as well prior to the actual event.
As stated elsewhere in this site (acceptance of life), each person can either feel part of nature or feel detached from this world (such as when living one's life to suit a perceived direction from ancient writings or from prayers). The teaching that we must beg for God's mercy after any natural disaster is comprehensible by only someone that feels detached from their natural existence (as a member of the human community living on the planet Earth).
The original link in case the article ever returns to Breakpoint:
(http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Columnists &TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=17232)
created - Jan. 2006
last change - 01/02/2006
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