Incorrect Explanation #23749 for the Bridge Collapse

That’s exactly why we shouldn’t try to cure AIDS, or give your kids the HPV shot, because disease, and bridges collapsing, are God’s way of punishing the wicked. You should not be allowed to sin without fear.

Oh. My. God.

I hope that above quote is some sort of sick joke. Otherwise I second Rasputin.

I suppose if god is willing to have his son tortured and killed for no good reason, I shouldn’t feel surprised if he kills a bunch of random people to basically tell the rest “Behave.”

Ah, the god of “love.”

I never did like that term, “God-fearing.” Why do you have to fear him to believe in him? A relationship with God is portrayed in the media as an endeavor of love….but how can you love something you fear?

It seems there are some people who will take whichever explanation most closely supports their own agenda under the guise of “gospel truth.”

When the bleep are people going to grow up? No god was responsible for the collapse or was sending anyone a bleeping message.

Yeah, when I first say Friendly Atheists’s blog on the bridge collapse I wondered where the ads at the top of his page came from. The link to the Pastor’s blog where he talked about reading Luke something that night didn’t make any sense to me. — Is it just that I wasn’t born Christian, or more than that the two stories seemed incredibly unrelated.

In the Luke story, Pilote intentionally slew several rebels, in the bridge collapse people were just unlucky wrong place wrong time. Hmm maybe we could repair the damaged bridges.

Hello. I am new here, though I’ve been reading for a while. Nice to meet you all.

I didn’t find any place I could reply on the article, but I wish I could’ve asked this: “You say a sin is against god is a thousand times greater than a sin against man. If god’s so great, shouldn’t it be a thousand times more difficult to piss him off?”

As for what Tim D. says… I personally find the encouraged love/fear relationship with a diety to be warped. If you had a loving and fearful relationship with a human that would be an abusive relationship. But if it’s a god, somehow it is the greatest holiness that can be.

The bridge collapsed for a mundane reason. It was neglected in its maintenance. Many people cannot accept that death happens for stupid, unimportant, mundane reasons. Bridges are big symbols to us. They carry us over barriers of danger and fear, to places we cannot see. People see their faith as a bridge to “over there.” So this man made the association.

I can only feel sorry for this man. He’s trying to shore up the collapsing of his bridge, his faith, to brace it with cliche rationalizations that he was taught by his parents. He abdicates his adulthood right in front of his daughter, reducing himself to her level. That’s not what she needs. She needs an adult who can take responsibility for the things that happen around them. Responsibility means the ability to respond, not the blame. Responsibility is an adult concept; blame is a child’s concept. But what he tells her is not child abuse, it’s multiple generational victimization by a primitive world view. He’s a victim too. He’s doing what he was taught to do. It is almost impossible for him to not do it.

Most people can take the responsibility for the collapsing of their car, their marriage and their business, but they pass life, death and bridges to the jurisdiction of God. Suddenly this man, who is probably a very responsible adult in other areas of his life, when confronted with the inescapable honesty of his little girl’s questions of why do such things happen, falls back on his training to “be as a little child” and hands his ability to respond to life, death and neglected bridges to his invisible surrogate parent. But he can’t help it. He was brought up that way. Don’t be angry with him any more than you can be angry with his beloved little girl. Coax him, or at least her toward accepting the ability to respond to her life.

John Piper is a well known Calvinist preacher in conservative Christian circles. There are also a lot of Christians (such as myself) who strongly disagree with his extremist theology. Already the Christian blogosphere is reacting negatively to Piper’s comments as well. This is not the only Christian response to the tragedy and you atheists are not alone in your distaste for Piper’s comments.

Question: If a Christian says, “I believe the Bible and the Bible tells a Christian to indoctrinate–“put doctine into”– our children” but does not do just that, would you not call him a hypocrite? It seems to me that either way a Christian acts he is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. The LEAST someone could admit is that Piper is being conistent (and I strongly suggest reading the entire post, not just the excerpted pieced posted here) with what he says he believes to be true. Even the more, while the idea of indoctrination is distasteful to many who frequent this site, it is only considered abuse because you do not agree with it. If one indoctrinates a child in the belief that there is no God, which I believe to be incorrect and dangerous, I would not call it child abuse. I would call it foolish. (As a matter of fact, indoctrination is what Dawkins sets out to do in “The God Delusion”–and that is CLEARLY stated from the outset.) We can disagree on it all day long. I am fine with that. In fact I welcome it. But, the moment a person says, “I believe this about the Bible,” but does not LIVE it, this site and others like it will be the first to cry foul. Case in point, if I say, “I believe God says we are not to have sex outside of marriage,” and I participate in it, would you not call me a hypocrite? Would you not hold me up as yet another example of a Christian not practicing what he preaches? Here is my ultimate point, agree with him or not, agree with Christianity or not, agree with the Bible or not, Piper is being consistent with what he believes. And when you call him WRONG or SICKENING, what are you measuring this against save for personal distaste, rather than an overarching litmus for whether his indoctrination is right or wrong? I know many will not agree with me on this, but I think it is food for thought. Give me feedback and something to chew on myself. YHWH’s pax.

Note: While I do not necessarily agree with all of Piper’s theology or with his ultimate interpretation of the bridge collapse, my argument is that he is CONSISTENT in his belief and that indoctrination is not incorrect, but that you disagree with the indoctrination of children in the tenents of religion–especially Reformed theology.

I’ve seen many posts like this on this blog, about “crazy mean Christian says or does ‘X”,” but I’m not sure how “friendly” that is, or what the goal is.

There will always be people who pervert (what I believe to be) the word of God, saying and doing all kinds of things. If the point of these posts are to prove that Christians aren’t as perfect as others believe that Christians believe they think they are, then you win… Christians will always sin and look like complete idiots, but that has nothing to do with disproving the existence of God. The two are mutually exclusive events.

God watches while people thumb their nose at him, AND while people that supposedly know the truth do even worse. I don’t understand how he can be so merciful but that gives me hope because I wouldn’t last long otherwise.

The message of the gospel is in John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The message of the gospel is not “become a Christian so you can be perfect and judge people” The common meme is that Christians say these things (I even supported that at a time), but it’s not true for the vast majority I’ve met.

Don’t get me wrong – I like the accountability this blog brings and think we need it, but I’d like to get back to some of the better flagship content you had that made this blog so good, and move away from the “dopey Christian” pieces. Those people aren’t reading this blog anyway (unfortunately).

Mike C. might disagree with John Piper, but Piper is only reflecting the values of Luke 13.

‘Repent or perish’ said Jesus (allegedly)

Who can blame followers of Jesus for following Jesus?

…I fear that extreme or hate-mongering ideologies will try to wedge themselves into our society under the guise of religious doctrine. For this reason, I believe in holding people who say things like what that guy said in the blog post accountable for their words; we need to hold people accountable for doing terrible things, whether they’re religious in nature or not.

Hate-mongering. I think that’s a rather strong word. While I disagree with Muslims and the like, I can hardly say I’m surprised by the things they do because of their indoctrination. I call them “evil” not in that they are following their faith as best they know how, but rather in that Islam disagrees with the words of Jesus. However, to say that Piper’s words are “hateful” or “hate-mongering” I’m not exactly sure where you’re seeing that. Piper is not being hateful. He’s agreeing with what he believes Scripture teaches. Scripture teaches that God is sovereign and answers to no one, whether we disagree with His actions or not. Scripture is rife with people disagreeing with God’s actions. This is no different than a math teacher agreeing with 2 + 2 = 4 in a system of ten. He is simply in agreement. However, as none of us live in an absolute monarchy, it is difficult for us to understand the nature of sovereignty, especially on the level of God’s sovereignty.

I wish more atheists would, as Hemant has done, make it clear that destroying religion is not their intent.

I too wish more people would realize this. However, as long as the main spokespeople for atheism (i.e. Sam Harris and richard Dawkins) are antagonistic and people here champion them as the saviors of the world from religious thought, it will be difficult to see the friendly side of atheism. I understand that atheists feel persecuted, and their writings and the teasing here is reactionary to that. On the flip side, Christians feel persecuted also. Some might argue that because Christians are in the majority and atheists in the minority, the persecution Christians experience is invalidated. We, however do not use this argument when it comes to the Nazi minority persecuting the Jewish majority or the white minority on plantations beating and raping the black majority. Furthermore, the Islamic majority in Muslim countries constantly persecute Christians. The atheistic majority in China persecutes, jails, and systematically murders Christians every day. All this to say, many here align themselves with those who are hostile to religion in general, Christianity in particular (though, to be fair, I have seen news slices looking at other religions), thus communicating that while they are “friendly” in theory, they are not friendly in practice. I do not claim you are without morals. I do not think you are stupid. I do not think you are worthless. I simply think you are wrong. That is said with as much hatred as a math teacher telling a student he has gotten his sums wrong. We can dialogue about it. But, please don’t pretend to not be hostile towards religion when this site and so many like them are clearly hostile, just as I do not pretend that a majority of Christians are hostile to the idea of atheism.

@ Calvin:

I went back and re-read the original blog post, and I suppose I can see where you’re coming from; perhaps the term “hate-mongering” in this context isn’t necessarily accurate. Not to divert responsibility from myself, but I would attribute that to my feelings about the “love/fear” relationship with God that is portrayed in the media (see my earlier post). More accurately, I attribute it to the shock I feel when I hear someone say that. If I may once again “drudge up” my perspective on such a relationship, I don’t feel it’s any different than battered wife syndrome. On that, I feel we can reach a respectful disagreement.

On a slightly different note, though, I will say that I don’t exactly agree with the idea that teaching children interpretations of religious ideologies is “child abuse,” no matter how harsh those beliefs might be. What I do consider to be child abuse is when a parent actually abuses their child (go figure) in an attempt to instill religious belief (basically, inflicting any manner of punishment that legally qualifies as child abuse). That is what I specifically had in mind when I was talking about hiding terrible actions behind religion; I don’t think there is any excuse for child abuse, whether it’s religious in nature or otherwise.

My strongest case for this is actually Hemant, of all people; he says he was raised in a very religious family (going by what I read in his book), and yet he was able to make his own decision to leave his faith and become an atheist (much like I was). He was exposed to very in-depth religious sentiments left and right (though not fanatic or abusive), and yet he hasn’t become a hate-mongering religious fanatic. I believe it’s very possibly for a child to grow up in an even harsher religious environment than that, and still arrive at an educated conclusion about his or her faith (be it the same choice his/her parents made, or something else entirely, like atheism), so exposing one’s child to religious beliefs doesn’t really constitute “abuse” in my book; in fact, it might be a good thing in the long run, even if the child doesn’t turn out to be of the same faith–at least then, he or she will have some knowledge about religion, and won’t have to choose between the popular interpretations so often seen in popular religious (or non-religious) literature.

I also find truth in the (correct me if I’m wrong) 5th Commandment, “Honor Thy Mother and Father.” I believe that the very essence of freedom of religion is exemplified by keeping the government out of personal religious matters; as long as there is no physical or mental abuse taking place (examples include child beating, torturing, etc.), I don’t see much wrong with exposing one’s children to religious ideologies; I believe the very foundation of society is that the child is exposed to the parents’ limitations until he or she comes of age, and then he/she is allowed to leave home and create their own life, free to discard or carry on their parents’ religious legacy as they please.

As a follower of the teachings and way of Jesus, I, like you all, are disturbed that John Piper would exploit such a tragedy. I think his comments are silly and wretched and severely distort the character of God.

I find it very odd that Piper would think there was some special message for the Twin Cities through Luke 13:1-9. When I read this I thought, “This is what God want’s to say to Minneapolis? If Jesus was walking around the twisted metal jutting from the ends of the bridge, wading into the Mississippi around the the chunks of concrete, and moving through the throngs of injured THIS is what he would say in the midst of this gut wrenching scene? Are you kidding me?

For me, there is a wonderfully instructive story in the Scriptures that describes a scene that Jesus encountered. Lazarus, “the one [Jesus] cared for” was sick. Jesus didn’t go immediately, when he was told, and when he later went to Lazarus’ house he was met by Martha who was beside her self and angry Jesus had not come sooner. And when he left her and entered the village, Jesus was met by Mary. John writes, “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.”

And then he wept.

When Jesus encountered the scene of emotional chaos, saw the emotionally fragile state of Mary and felt the lament of Lazarus’ friends over his death, Jesus’ soul was overcome by the moment and in a very authentically human response Jesus cried. He had no words when he stepped into the confusion of the moment. Instead he simply sat with Mary and the Jews and joined in their weeping.

And I can’t help to think Jesus would have responded in the same way, not with a lecture or scroll full of words about sin and instructions on Minnesotans eternal destiny, but rather with the raw human response of tears and embrace.

May we Christians simply join in with the Minnesota community and grieve. May we express gritty, earthy, human emotion and weep. May we simply be present, as a human, and leave the bumper sticker theology for another day.

-jeremy

Not to bash anyone else’s faith here (as you have, I am simply stating my beliefs), but I believe only one thing about the afterlife: I believe that I don’t know what awaits me in the afterlife. Therefore, I follow my “gut” instinct about things that happen in this life. I don’t allow that belief to get in the way of my relationships with other people (the singer in my band is a Christian, and he really believes in his faith, yet we get along very well). The only time religion really offends me is when someone uses it as a reason to distance themselves from me, or sets it as a “condition” for my interaction with them. I treat others with respect, and while I don’t really expect the same back from them (if I did, I’d be disappointed a lot, for obvious reasons), I am a bit taken back when people use this talk of “being damned” to distance themselves from me.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll use a more specific example; I was watching TBN the other day (that’s Trinity Broadcast Network), and Kirk Cameron was talking about religion. He was pleading–desperately, I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, but he seemed desperate–with viewers to be more aggressive in converting family members. He actually said one thing that struck me in a very negative way; he said (and this is not an exact quote, but it’s close), “We can’t use the excuse that, ‘well, I’m going to love them anyway.’ How can we love someone, if we’re not trying to save them from eternal damnation? How can we say we love someone if we’re not trying to save them from hell?”

That offended me, because it says my beliefs are an “excuse.” My belief is that religion is a personal choice, and that everyone should be able to believe whatever they want, no matter how offensive (in this case, I respect Kirk Cameron’s ability to believe what he does, as offensive as it is–I don’t expect anyone to take him off the air for saying it, is what I mean). I believe he should be able to have his faith and speak it. However, I disagree with the way he uses Christianity as a wedge between people; he teaches the ideology that, if you can’t convert someone peacefully, you need to find other ways to do it. He creates conflict with his faith, and he does it knowingly; and other people do the same, whether it’s under his influence or on their own altogether. THAT offends me.

Now, I understand that someone else will probably say, “Your ability to believe the way you do offends HIS beliefs,” because Christians are interested in “saving” everybody. To that I say this: Your right as an American is to believe whatever you want to believe, free of government intervention. Your right is NOT to have to government ENFORCE your faith; if one person uses faith to encroach on another’s peaceful enjoyment of life, then I believe that person is wrong.