Necessary Roughness

When they link natural disasters with moral behavior. Again from the UK Telegraph:

One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless.

While those who have been affected by the storms are innocent victims, the bishops argue controversially that the flooding is a result of Western civilisation’s decision to ignore biblical teaching.

I will be the first to affirm that not following God’s law has consequences. How much simpler life would be if everyone had one mother and one father who lived in the same house, always faithful to each other? What if we were to never steal, lie, murder, or covet? And that’s just the second table…

The truth is, we are not to obey God’s law in order to stave off his wrath. That’s not the God of Christianity. You and I already earned the wrath from God, the temporal and eternal punishment of hell. Christians are saved from that wrath by an act of God, the God-man Jesus Christ on the cross and out of the tomb.

Christians are to obey God’s law, but for a different reason: we do it out of thankfulness of being saved and thankfulness for what he has given us.

If a wave-making machine were stolen and used to create floods, then yes, I would concur, not obeying God’s law did in fact create a natural disaster. The effects of pro-gay legislation come in a different arena. Children benefit from learning from their parents just how boys and girls should behave. We spend significant time in schools and in life trying to teach boys and girls how not to be boys and girls, rather than appropriately using the gifts each is blessed with.

The legalization of gay “unions” will be similar to the legalization (or lack of enforcement) of adultery. The public will lose the will to enforce it, and we will learn years down the road the effects of this behavior prohibited in God’s wisdom. The permission of adultery has wrecked the nuclear family and introduced us to the abortion of “unwanted” children. Civil unions will break it down further. Without state support of the pre-ordained order of things, it leaves us with one more thing to pray about. That should be something bishops should be experts at, rather than climate control.