On Knowing the Wrath of God

Robert Parham speaks for a lot of us who are fed up with all the pious pontificators who presume to know that the wrath of God is being revealed by disasters. Here's a quote from today's Ethics Daily:

"Blaming God for natural disasters, diseases and destruction is far too popular in American culture, and especially within faith circles," said Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics.

Parham said Christians "would do well to remember the words of Jesus, who taught us two things about judgment in the Sermon on the Mount."

In the New International Version of Matthew 5:45, Jesus says that God "causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous," suggesting that weather-related phenomena are unconnected to morality.

Matthew 7:26 describes a man who built his house on sand, where it was unable to sustain storms, instead of a rock. The man in the parable "brought judgment on himself for his foolishness," Parham said. Likewise, failed levees blamed for much of the destruction in New Orleans were caused by human failure, not God.