So many people have commented on facebook about this thoughtful response by Greg Boyd to John Piper’s comments on the tornado in the Twin Cities that I thought I would add the link as a blog post.
On Wednesday, August 19, five small tornados formed in and around the Twin Cities. Included among the property damage was a broken church steeple. It just so happens that Central Lutheran Church was hosting the National Convention of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and that one of the issues they were discussing was their stance on homosexuality. According to John Piper, this is no coincidence.
In a blog that unfortunately managed to make it on the local evening news John offered “an interpretation of this Providence.” He claimed “[t]he tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin.” You can read his blog here.
Now, I appreciate John as a brother in Christ and respect him as a pastor working for the Kingdom. And I have no quarrel with his view that homosexuality should not be affirmed as God’s ideal. But when he publicly claims to discern a divine warning behind the behavior of a particular tornado, I feel I need to offer a public response, if only to remind non-Christians that not all Christians think like this. Read the entire article here
Filed under: blogs, Christianity, Kingdom of God, life | Tagged: ECLA, Greg Boyd, John Piper, Twin cities tornado |
Godspace 
Thanks, Christine. What John and others need is a public rebuke of such theology. I understand that he was probably channeling Pat Robertson at the time, but this is pretty off the mark as “Lutheran theology.”
Intellectually I disagree with Piper and find his comments and deeply-held assumptions about God to be bizarre and offensive, but secretly I am afraid that he’s right. Struggling with that really. Still recovering from Fundamentalism.
Troy it certainly sounds as though you are recovering from Fundamentalism. In situation like this the scriptures that come to mind Matthew 7:3 3″Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” The inference to me is that we are very quick to notice what someone else is doing wrong and ignore our own sins. There is far more said about judgement for those who do not show concern for the poor than there is about homosexuality and yet most of us do not see the financial crash as a judgement on our misuse of money. We are all very selective in where we see God judging others.