Is God sending the solar storm? (Does He send natural disasters?)

Image by NASA

Many people think God sends natural disasters. Most recently it was talked about with hurricane Katrina that struck the New Orleans area with a vengeance. The logic of those who felt the storm was God sent said that the inhabitants of New Orleans and their visitors were being judged for their raunchy, sexually permissive lifestyle. Perhaps the Biblical justification for such thinking would be the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. God didn't like what they were doing there so He wiped them out.

Thankfully, the solar storm is not that devastating, but the question lingers—does God cause natural disasters?

In the Bible again, it says that 'God sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.' (Gospel of Matthew)

Hmm. Pretty ambiguous. And interesting. In this sense rain is referred to as a blessing. Which makes me wonder about when there's too much rain, and it becomes a flood that is a natural disaster. So how does that play out? God wields nature to bless or punish?

That would be my take on the Bible's interpretation.

But I can't see things working out that way in reality. On December 26, 2004, a 9.3 magnitude (the third largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph) earthquake rocked the Indian Ocean floor spawning a massive tsunami that killed over 230,000 people, mostly poor villagers and fishermen from third world countries.

So okay, God had a lot against the sleazy people in New Orleans and sent Katrina. Did He have even more against the poor villagers and fisherman of Indonesia and Thailand and other countries devastated by the tsunami?

And if God sent the tsunami, what about the sweep of it? 230,000 people! Were they all bad?

No. God doesn't send natural disasters. That sort of thinking's crazy.

Image used in this blogpost is CC-BY-SA-2.0

Is religion (not spirituality) the problem in the world today?

Image by Fres Festival

Jews vs. Muslims. Catholics vs. Protestants. Buddhists vs. Muslims. Mormons vs. Evangelicals. The list is endless. And the religious are supposed to be the good guys. The ones who are supposed to help us all get along. Where did everything go so wrong?

Fundamentalism.

Religious fundamentalism is at the heart of the problem. Sure, race, culture, skin color, language, anything that makes people groups seem different from one another adds to the problem. Politics adds to it, too, but the biggest offender by far is fundamentalism.

For fundamentalism has no give. With fundamentalism, and its attendant sacred text, there is absolutely no wiggle room, no inlet for accommodation. With fundamentalism it stops becoming people dealing with people and becomes my sacred book vs. your sacred book. My way or the highway.

Fundamentalism has tremendous allures. Believe in this sacred book and all doubt and uncertainty as to how to live your life vanishes. Believe in this book and join countless millions who believe the same thing. People who will welcome you, reinforce your faith, give you social connection and perhaps even economic benefit.

But with fundamentalism comes death-grip rigidity. When a problem comes up, your only option is to consult your sacred text. That's how you deal with it—there's no debate, no questioning, no changing your response based on circumstances, based on the welfare of your fellow human beings.

Oh, fundamentalists mock 'situational ethics' and lament non-fundamentalists' lack of 'absolute values,' but no human being needs a book to tell them that murder and theft and every other bad thing human beings do to each other is wrong.

So the fundamentalist dilemma boils down to 'my book vs. your book.'

Which is a mess.

People worry about the devil and maybe rightfully so. They ascribe all kinds of evil qualities to him. He's deceitful and a mocker. He's a tempter, an enemy of all that's good. But if there is a devil, his biggest weapon is none of those things. Because by far and away his biggest weapon is getting human beings to believe that they are fundamentally different from one another.

Picture a spaceship with aliens eyeballing the Earth from outer space. Guess what they see as the Earth's inhabitants?

Human beings! The same beings! Two arms, two legs, eyes, ears, nose, brain and heart!

But through fundamentalism we become convinced that we are all different.

What a needless tragedy.


Image used in this blogpost is CC-BY-SA-2.0.

What does God think of Ray Rice?

Image By U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Benjamin Hughes/Released [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARay_Rice_smiling_100817-F-8678H-031.JPG

It's funny. When I set out to research this blogpost I started to type Ray Rice's name in a search engine, and I inadvertently typed in Ray Rat. Freudian slip? Perhaps. Whatever it was, it was an indication of how I personally feel about him (I was going to say how I feel about the man but couldn't bring myself to). I couldn't even watch the video of him punching his fiancee. So much brutality in the world. I don't need to see any more.

To get back on topic—this post isn't about what I think. It's about what God thinks of Ray Rice. Of course I don't know what God thinks. But from my subjective experience of spirituality this is what I think God might think.

He would be outraged at what Rice did. That a highly conditioned and muscled (look at the size of his bicep) would punch in the face a woman, his fiancee no less, would be abhorrent to Him, as would all violence. (Maybe God wouldn't watch the video either.) God would probably have a momentary twinge of wanting to knock the crap out of Rice. Again, like most of us. And God would certainly see that justice was served (which amazingly many are saying Rice is being scapegoated by being fired from his team and banned from football). Yes, there would be no escaping justice in God's eyes.

But any similarities to what God thought and I thought would end there. Because I think God would still love Rice—and I wouldn't. First of all, being God (granted, that is an assumption and belief that many of you don't maintain) He wouldn't be surprised by what happened. First of all because He's all-knowing, but secondly because He knows of the hardness in people's hearts. Which maybe, despite my earlier claim that God's and my opinions would separate, I would recognize in Rice too. I would recognize it because there have been times in my life that I have done abhorrent things too. Things I'm ashamed of to this day, even though they happened decades ago.

Which doesn't justify Rice's or my behavior. It just makes Rice's behavior understandable. To me anyway.

No, Rice is God's creation just as you and I are. God wouldn't be turning his back on His own. Punishment, yes. (And I think Rice will pay—as I have for my abhorrent behavior—and I don't just mean getting booted from his team and losing his salary.) Heartache, yes—God would feel heartache for what happened. But withdrawing His love, no.

Where would any of us be if God withdrew His love when we did what was abhorrent to Him? And I'm not toning down my personal repulsion to what Rice did. I'm just saying God's quite a bit different from me.

And that's a good thing. For Ray Rice—and all of us.

Have we become a nation of humiliators?

Image by Pierre-Yves Beaudouin / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AP%C3%A8re-Lachaise_-_Division_2_-_Pascal_04.jpg

Movie star's private nude photos exposed on-line. Politician caught on secret video smoking crack. Celebrity DUI photos on-line. News reporter's comments when they thought they were off-the-air broadcast. The list goes on and on.

On the opposite side of the coin from all this is a saying: a friend hides a friend's shame.

Whatever happened to that? Today, people want to see people humiliated, ridiculed, defeated, at their worst. Like motorists forming a "gaper's block" we eye the tangled mess of humanity with our mouths hanging open.

Can't we do better than this?

Life is too short to be drawn into such base pursuits as glorying in others' shame and misfortune. All the major websites offer the latest salacious, lurid, titillating stories they can find, begging your attention to click to drive up their advertising revenue. They'll do anything for more. More of your attention. More of your money. More of, ultimately, your life.

Don't give it to them. There's a higher plane to be lived on. Like the saying 'Take the high road—there's very few people traveling on it.' Protect people from shame, rather than taking part in exploiting it. Resist the siren-like, magnetic pull of the media. Realize that these people are consciously, calmly, cold-heartedly setting out to control you, to suck you in.

Humanity is a great thing. A noble thing. Do human beings fail? Do they fall? Of course, but we need not participate in celebrating it. Celebrate instead people's nobler actions. There are good people everywhere doing good things. Find them. Be edified by them.

And do good things yourself. People are either building into this world or taking from it. Be a builder. Contribute. Claim your part in a grand vision of just how wonderful humanity can be—and ignore the gutter.

You're better than that. We're all better than that.

Is it fair to dump on celebrities when they die?

Image By Eva Rinaldi [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARobin_Williams_2011a_(2).jpg


Robin Williams was recently trashed on an airing of TV evangelist Pat Robertson's "The 700 Club." Robertson claimed Williams' life was lost because he was a "heathen" trapped by the Hollywood "idols" of money, power, fame and drugs. Williams suffered from severe depression and the early stages of Parkinson's disease. He was sober at the time of his death.

Robinson ended his trashing by calling for people to accept Jesus.

Now undoubtedly some people succumb to the Hollywood lifestyle and clearly could use something to pull them out of it, but that's not the point here. The question here is, Is it fair to use a celebrity's death as a soapbox to comment, and let's face it, trash a deceased person?

A second question would be, Is it effective?

Would people really accept Robertson's call to accept Jesus because of what he said about Williams?

To me that seems unlikely. And although perhaps I'll give Robertson credit for wanting to help people mired in drugs etc., what about Robin Williams' memory and the feelings of his family? Don't they deserve respect and compassion in their time of loss?

You see it all the time. John Lennon. Freddie Mercury. Kurt Cobain. A celebrity dies and a preacher (or their ilk) jumps on a soapbox and attempts to make hay of their tragedies.

Personally, I think it's pathetic. What do you think?

Guaranteed writing success!

Everybody wants to be successful—why not you too? Well, you can. And it's guaranteed. Just send me five bucks (kidding). It really is guaranteed, and I think you'll agree that it will work too. The first question you need to ask yourself is, 'Why are you writing?' After that it all falls into place.

For some people, making book sales is everything. A long time ago a high school friend told me there were two kinds of doctors in the world—the ones that really cared about people and wanted to heal them, and the ones that would switch to selling kiddie porn if they thought they could make more money that way. I leave it to you to surmise the analogy to writing.

Writing is such an opportunity for everything. To think of it in only terms of making money is a waste. Is that all your life is about—making money? Don't get me wrong. I know to live requires money. And I know that all writers (including me) want to sell and be read. But to focus exclusively on that is to miss so much of all that writing offers.

Writing is a way to live life. It is a way to discover yourself, who you really are. It is a way to impact the world. It is a way to stretch yourself, a way to open up new worlds in your mind.

I believe there are basically two kinds of writers. The writers that are writing only to make money and the writers that are writing to live a full life.

Here's an example. A long time ago I took a writing class with a writer who is now wildly successful in the indie world. I was submitting query letters for a novel, and I asked him what happens if a literary agent requests a three month exclusive to read my entire novel? What should I tell other agents?

He said simply, "Lie."

I was really pretty surprised by his answer and not very surprised at all. The guy writes schlock mysteries, full of torturing psychopaths, written to market. All he thinks about is making money.

That wasn't the road I wanted to go down.

Hemingway was obsessed with writing success. He drew a 'writers as prizefighters' analogy and considered himself a "contender." Now Hemingway wrote a lot of great books, and I know his personal history was exceptionally complicated and he suffered various physical ailments and from depression, but the fact of the matter also was that he was distraught that his creativity had dried up and allegedly his final words before he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger were, "It won't come."

Then there's the writers that once they find a touch of success become slaves to following that same path. They're into "branding." If you write one successful book, make sure to stay in the same genre. "Give them what they want/expect."

Well, you can learn about yourself writing a series, but you can learn much more writing different kinds of books. The latter type of writers really are more artists, always stretching themselves and delighting in discovering new creative outlets. The truly great writers are not satisfied with repeating themselves or copying others.

How do you want your writing to affect the world? What sort of writing "footprint" do you want to leave? Does it even matter to you?

It does to me. I'll admit I've been inconsistent about it. I've tried to write to market. I've tried to cash in. But ultimately it wore on me, and I had to admit to myself that that just wasn't me. It wasn't the message I wanted to send to the universe. I want to make the world a better place through my writing. Sure, my contribution to doing so might be slight, but it will nevertheless be my contribution. Not my subtraction.

I still seek success, but I seek it on my terms, and according to my definition of success. I want the rich full life that the writing life promises. I want to discover who I am, to discover the new worlds of creativity that lie within me. And I want my writing to make the world a better place.

The great thing about all those desires is that I am guaranteed of achieving them.

But what if no one reads what I write? The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson answers this question elegantly:

'Work,' it saith to man, 'in every hour, paid or unpaid, see only that thou work, and thou canst not escape the reward: whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn, or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought: no matter, how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.'

Are you writing your autobiography? No? Yes, you are.

We've all heard it before: all writing is autobiography. It's the notion that who you are comes through in your writing no matter what you're writing. I think it's true. So the next question in the logical progression of things would be: who are you?