Christian Carnival XCI

I spent a week away from blogging in order to keep my uncle Don's memorial at the top of the site and observe an appropriate mourning period -- especially since I cannot attend his memorial service. I would have done at least as much for my mother, who passed on 18 months before her brother, had I been blogging then.

It's time to get back to bloviation, however. Life, even in its ugliest aspects, must go on. I'll start out mildly, with Christian Carnival ExSeeEye, which is up at Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage.

It seems there is a lot of speculation in Christian circles about whether the late run of powerful air disturbances, armed adversarial conflicts and rumors thereof, and a cranky lithosphere betoken the Beginning of the End.

Jeanette at Oh How I Love Jesus says that ol' Br'er Matthew 24 might be a'knockin' on the door. Diane of Crossroads even speculates if the Earth itself might react to sin. Personally, I liken such thinking to the Looneytoon Left's blaming recent hurricanes on GeoDubya's refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocols. I think James Lileks summed up this train of thought admirably:

By this theory, Gaia is mad at us because we cut down trees and buy sneakers. Gaia is peeved because people want to drive to work in offices heated by nuclear power. We should all push a donkey cart up a rutted road and sit in the market all day waiting for someone to buy our withered tubers, so we can buy a small piece of burlap soaked in sugar to feed our nine children. Gaia hates capitalism.

And Christianity too, I imagine. I should note that Diane does not buy into this line of thought herself , but some of her commenters do and I know the thought is going around in the back of many a Christian's mind: "Well, New Orleans was such a den of lazy indolence and devil-may-care nekkid-drunken iniquity that it deserved what it got and I bet God Hisself called in the storms!"

I hope the end times are coming soon, but I don't think Scripture supports divination of the eschaton before it happens. Quite the contrary:

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father...So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

And I do not believe that God often deliberately visits destruction upon the iniquitous. It is clear that He chastens those who are His whom He is shaping; all, however--His and others--are subject to the rules and rulers of this world, which He will not directly rule until the Son of Man returns.

Hurricanes happen, for "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

Thoughts?

Monk