New Ventures

Well, here goes. I've told by people with varying degrees of influence that I need to begin blogging. They have prevailed, even if long after their initial suggestion.

My first thought was to use the initial post as an invitation to suggest topics upon which to alternatively comment, muse, wax eloquent, offer my perspective, or crassly pontificate. And that offer is indeed hereby extended. But the events of the past 30 or so hours in and concerning Haiti have led me to a topic I'd like to engage and invite your responses.

We have heard of the devastating earthquake in one of the world's poorest nations, one not terribly far from our shores. It has spawned grief, desperation, pain, and helplessness the likes of which few if any of us have ever known. I pray that we will have our hearts open to God's promptings to provide what form of assistance He suggests to us.

Perhaps you have also heard of the comments from Pat Robertson, declaring that the tragedy is really God's retribution for a turn by this lowly nation toward the devil some 200 years ago. As many of you, I decry the unabashed hubris of the declaration. How does he come by such an assessment--not by any means the first of its kind from Robertson? Yes, the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures told of disasters to come upon a stubbornly sinful and haughtily rebellious people. But they spoke before the disaster, not with hindsight and a large dose of prideful grasp on the mind and intentions of God.

But my larger question is the perennial one of who speaks for God. What are the boundaries between proclamation and hubris, and how do we discern their crossings? Who gets to proclaim, and what is the content of that word? Is it only an exegetical explanation of the scripture? Does it extend to application in culture, or even into the specific events in the world, natural and humanly perpetrated? Quite frankly, it is a question we as Protestants, and more especially we as evangelical protestants, have long ignored--other than to say that "God told me to say this" in one form or another. Does it strike our notice that no one outside our already established boundaries is listening--except when a Robertson or a Falwell pronounces certain events as God's retribution at work? Or when a Baptist church in Kansas uses military funerals as occasions to declare God's hatred of homosexual persons.

There you have it. My initial foray into the blogging world, more as question posed than as position established. Let the opinions come forth.