If What You Have to Say is Stupid, Don't Say It
As I was watching the heart wrenching news from Haiti this evening, an alarming thought crossed my mind: Some preacher is going to say something really stupid about this.
Sure enough -- Here it is.
Of course, this nothing new. Every time we've had a national or international tragedy, some reverend's mouth opens wide enough to insert a foot.
Instead of trying to fix the blame for such human suffering, (insinuating they deserve it somehow) we ought to be responding with compassion.
I like Craig Uffman's compassionate and Christlike response to the question, "Where Was God in the Earthquake."
Theologian David Bentley Hart offers the best answer I know in his book The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? He wrote it upon reflecting on the great tsunami that struck Asia in 2004.
Hart reminds us that "we are to be guided by the full character of what is revealed of God in Christ. For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God."
(HT Chuck Warnock)
Sure enough -- Here it is.
Of course, this nothing new. Every time we've had a national or international tragedy, some reverend's mouth opens wide enough to insert a foot.
Instead of trying to fix the blame for such human suffering, (insinuating they deserve it somehow) we ought to be responding with compassion.
I like Craig Uffman's compassionate and Christlike response to the question, "Where Was God in the Earthquake."
Theologian David Bentley Hart offers the best answer I know in his book The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? He wrote it upon reflecting on the great tsunami that struck Asia in 2004.
Hart reminds us that "we are to be guided by the full character of what is revealed of God in Christ. For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God."
(HT Chuck Warnock)
It is better to keep your mouth shut, and let people think you might be an idiot, then to open it and prove that you are!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, comments like this so-called preacher made break my heart. But, he has definitely been joined by others of so-called status or fame.
What scares me the most is that when people speak without thinking, or without a script, they are probably speaking what they really feel. When they take the time to think, they say what they think their audience wants to hear.