I'll confess: I have very little patience with the notion that we can "kick God out" of anywhere.
As Robert De Niro says in my mother's favorite comedy ever, Meet the Fockers: "I'm everywhere, Focker."
(God, in this case, is Robert De Niro. Who would make an interesting choice to play God in a movie sometime. But I digress.)
More to the point, if we believe that God can be anywhere and/or everywhere, then to say we can methodically kick Him out the way a landlord evicts a tenant implies that we can manipulate God.
Which is a notion that I am very much not okay with.
So...it was hard for me to stomach the comments of Christian heavyweights Mike Huckabee and James Dobson in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
I alluded to this in my sermon on Sunday, but it is impossible to use God's presence or lack thereof as a barometer for bad things happening to someone or to somewhere. For one, some of the most loving, faithful, compassionate Christians I know are people who have been kicked to the curb time and time again by the world we live in. They have not, by any standard, been protected the way, say, I would want to be protected. But they are some of the best people I know.
So that can't be it.
Nor can it be that God has simply picked up His ball and gone home. After all, dispelling precisely that notion is the point of so many of the nevi'im--the Old Testament prophets. They prophesy of a God who remains faithful to us DESPITE our derelictions, who will, always come back for His children (or His bride, if you're reading Hosea).
More to the point, though, I serve a congregation I absolutely love for their commitment to mission. We just finished our holiday donation drive for the Cowlitz County Emergency Support Shelter, which houses women and children escaping abusive households. We donate both necessities (clothes, diapers, toiletries) and Christmas gifts (toys, makeup, etc) for the families there, and we offer food to create a Christmas dinner for them. It's one of the greatest and best things we do all year.
But in the midst of that particular mission, we were invaded, vandalized, and our walls, floors, and hymnals set on fire.
That cannot be because we are somehow unworthy of divine protection--after all, my church consists of loving, Bible-believing, and compassionate Christians.
More importantly, though, we are God's children.
Just like the people who were shot and killed in Clackamas.
Just like the children and their teachers who were murdered in Newtown.
Just like the victims in so many other gun-related massacres this year, both in America and abroad.
Regardless of the version of the Bible we use, or whether we believe in predestination or free will, or whether we believe in God at all, as Ecclesiastes says, time and chance happens to us all.
Time and chance happens to us all.
Time and chance. Not wrath.
After all, even Jesus says that the person who hears His words but does not follow them is not judged until the end times (John 12:48, though, granted, if you believe the Mayans, the end times may just be upon us, but that's another can of tuna).
God executing immediate judgment? Sorry, but I'm reserving judgment on that one. Not only because it is a Biblically murky question, but because honestly, when you do what James Dobson did and blame the gays for the Newtown massacre, and you say that the massacre represents God allowing judgment to come upon us, you sound an awful lot like Fred Phelps and his hateful Westboro Baptist Church (yes, the "God Hates F*gs" church).
I'm not exaggerating here. If there is a substantive difference between what the Westboro hatemongers preach (that dead soldiers are God's judgment for us being inclusive of gays and lesbians) and what James Dobson just said (that dead children are God's judgment on us for legalizing marriage equality), I cannot see it.
I wasn't originally planning for my initial post after the Newtown massacre to be a theological takedown like this--I'm still praying, reflecting, and trying to process all of the evil that has taken place.
But what these two guys are saying amounts to theological malpractice. And far be it for me to criticize fellow ministers, but that may be the only way to expose the flaws in their logic and in their theology in this instance.
There's a lot of people saying a lot of things about this tragedy. You owe it to yourself, and to your faith, to examine those things critically.
Please continue to pray for all of those affected by the plague of mass murders in 2012.
Yours in Christ,
Eric
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