Last night, in the discussion of God sending storms and earthquakes in response to my comment that I did not realize those states were so godless New Orleans was mentioned as an example of people deserving of God's wrath. God apparently needs a new gps because he missed the French Quarter. It is not true every event comes from God. If a child dies of crib death, it's God's will. If my home is destroyed by a tornado it must be part of Gods' eternal plan and we, the object of God's wrath, have no right to complain.
Such allegations suggest God is as likely to main and kill me as he is to save me. That is not very comforting and I don't believe it. But apparently I am in the minority.
Remember the story in John about the blind man and the disciples asking if the man had sinned or his parents? That is an odd question. How could the man sin before he was born? I wonder if the disciples were that gullible or does life begin before conception? I believe the view of the majority at GSMCOC is that the man was born blind just so Jesus could heal him. How would you like that; a life of blindness just so Jesus could have someone to heal? Imagine all those people killed and injured and all that damage and in his wrath God missed the French Quarter.
Making God both the cause of blindness and the source of healing is a dangerous theology. Munchausen-by-proxy is a condition in which a parent secretly harms his or her child in order to gain the attention and praise for the child's care and healing. When humans do this we call it a mental illness. Yet we, as the disciples did, attribute this behavior to God. God becomes the source of evil and pain but cleverly redeems himself by healing the very ones he has stricken.
We need to take the Old Testament for what it is, history.
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