Category: Greg Boyd
Gregory Boyd Responds to John Piper Regarding the Tornado
I think Gregory Boyd has written a fair-minded response to John Piper regarding the Minneapolis, MN, tornadoes, which Piper understood as a warning from God, to the ELCA, regarding homosexual ordination here. I will quote his final two paragraphs:
Far from supporting John’s speculation about why a tornado broke a church steeple, it seems to me this passage directly assails it! It makes me want to ask John, “do you think that the folks at Central Lutheran church are more guilty than you or any others living in the Twin Cities?” And the only answer this passage allows us to give is an unequivocal “no!” In the fallen world in which we live, towers sometimes randomly fall; bridges sometimes randomly collapse; and tornadoes sometimes randomly do property damage – even to churches. That’s all there is to be said about it.Rather than speculating about how God is judging others through natural calamities, Jesus tells his audience they should be concerned with their own relationship with God. “Unless you repent,” Jesus said, ” you too will perish.” Jesus boldly confronts our tendency to find a speck in another’s eye and our temptation to assume God is involved in their misfortune as we overlook the two-by-four sticking out of our own eye (Mt. 7:1-3). Instead, we should follow Paul’s example and consider ourselves worse sinners than others (1 Tim. 1:15-16) and concern ourselves with the judgment we ourselves will receive if we don’t repent and throw ourselves on God’s mercy.
It’s a warning I think we all do well to adhere to.
