Memo: Horrific Earthquakes Don’t Discriminate

Hi, my name is Ken, and I’m a recovering self-help junkie. 

 

I was wondering today in the light of the lame and reprehensible comments Pat Robertson recently made—where were all of the promoters of karma, the converts to the laws of reciprocity and “The Secret” addicts when it came time defend such views… I mean isn’t it one and the same, doesn’t the door swing both ways? 

 

What’s wrong with saying “they got theirs”, when basically, it’s the very line of thinking you’ve been peddling all along?  It’s like saying there’s only one kind of racism instead of acknowledging that the knife cuts both ways.  Seems to me Pat was merely repeating a line out of some best-selling postmodern book on why bad things happen to bad people and only good things will happen to you when you are good (now, raise your hand if you’re one of the good people… no, come to think of it don’t).  

 

Your gurus can’t say everyone gets what they have coming to them and then slam the door on a guy just because he’s a “preacher”, a conservative, a bible thumper, he’s not on your team—or because he doesn’t look, dress or talk like you. 

 

Where I come from they call that a double standard.

 

Truth is, we all deserve hell.  And that God spares any of us from dying under the rubble of a building decimated by an earthquake is sheer mercy—deal with the devil or not.  If a deal with the devil is criteria for an earthquake Pat, what’s the criteria for Septemeber 11, 2001?  So much for deals with the devil. 

 

Now, you can blame God for an earthquake if you like, but you better be sure too thank him for the air you have to breath too if you’re going to travel down that road. If you want to talk about the devil and who he targets, well, he’s too busy chasing down those who are a threat to his vast empire to worry about those he already has is his fold.

What I’m really wondering is this: Just how big of a rock is in front of Pat’s cave?  Seriously, there’s like a million abortions a year that take place here in our country every year. We have more run-away greed, excessive consumption and needless waste than any other country I’d bet.  And the pace at which the pornography industry is expanding in the U.S. the last couple decades surely rivals the speed at which our national debt is climbing.  America isn’t “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet”. 

 

Now, if you’re going to agree with Pat’s comments you’ll have to throw out the book of Job while you’re at it. What about the Jesus loving Christians in Haiti who were killed when their church collapsed on them while they were at choir practice?  God could have spared them but he didn’t.  He may have reached out his arm and helped rescue a heathen instead, who is to say?  

 

We don’t know why earthquakes happen some places and not other places, other than that fault lines play a major role.  And we don’t know why some parents have children who are stillborn and others have healthy children. 

 

Why did Paul the apostle barely have shoes on his feet as he went island to island preaching the gospel, beaten and left for dead?  And why did Jesus himself have no where to lay his head?  Are we to applaud today’s charlatans who fly around the globe in their own private jumbo jets wearing Armani suits snacking on caviar while half the world goes hungry—teaching financial prosperity and seed theology as the height of Christian doctrine at the expense of people’s eternal destinies?  If God was going to see to it anyone was the victim of an earthquake, wouldn’t it be those snake oil salesman?  Were Paul and Jesus cursed by God for some pact they had made with the devil?  How about those we read about in Hebrews 11 who were sawed in two for their faith in Christ?      

          

Just as terminal cancer can strike the most positive young woman you know and an untimely stroke can happen to the healthiest man you know (and not because they failed  to follow some law of attraction), likewise, horrific earthquakes and other unexplainable disasters don’t discriminate.