Is this God’s judgment?
Are the storms that have been battering the eastern United States this past week God’s judgment for gay marriage? That was what one caller to Radio 5 Live had suggested. Needless to say, the suggestion was dismissed and laughed at. One wit even suggested that God needed a new atlas, since San Francisco was basking in warm sunshine.
The problem, it seems to me, is that the idea of God judging our world at all is made to look ridiculous. It is most instructive to see how Jesus handled a similar question. Eighteen people had died in a place called Siloam when a tower collapsed and fell on them. Not exactly a storm, but a terrible thing all the same. Jesus first deals with the thought that God was judging those who had died because they were especially wicked – and he seems to rule out that possibility: “Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!”
At the same time, he refuses to rule out the idea of God judging at all. How could he? He himself will be the judge! So he goes on to say, “But unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:4-5, NIV). In other words, such disasters are not so much an opportunity for us to see God judging others as they are for us to hear God warning us all of his judgment. Let God judge; let us repent and ask for mercy – for ourselves, and for everyone else.