Divine Judgement

When New Orleans got hit by Katrina do you remember the reaction that conservative Christians had? They celebrated that God had cleansed this land of a plague because New Orleans is known for Mardi Gras and the immorality that happens there. Not everyone believed that answer, but enough did that it became a cry throughout churches all over the US. People praised God because God had decided to wipe out idolatry and wickedness in the US.

So many Christians forgot that people aren’t just classified into “wicked” or “saint” and we certainly aren’t segregated into separate cities of the holy and the evil. Along with those sinners every city has, countless innocents lost their lives, their homes, their families. Christians by the tens of thousands lost everything when that hurricane rolled through town. Yet instead of helping them, some of the most powerful Christian leaders and churches cheered and thanked God for the destruction of fellow believers because they saw the hurricane as the punishment of God on a wicked city.
Lately it has struck me that I am waiting for the exact same thing to happen to me. I am a pastor in San Francisco, and every time I tell other Christians where I am, they have an almost viscerally negative reaction just to the name. If one day I and my entire congregation died in a horrible earthquake not only some, but the vast majority, of Christians all around this country will cheer at my death and the deaths of those I love. They will cheer at my death, because the great plague of San Francisco will have been wiped out. Yet I, and thousands of believers striving to follow God, will have been killed.

San Francisco’s reputation makes New Orleans look like the city of God itself. Christians refer to “going to San Francisco” as a synonym for falling morality and “going to hell”. Far more Christians would see our destruction as a sign from God than even the destruction of New Orleans. There might even be dancing in the streets over my death and the potential deaths of thousands of believers, hundreds of thousands of people that God loves.

I suppose I could ask how a religion of love and acceptance became so laced with hate that the deaths of our own would prompt cheers. I could question how Christians have grown so twisted that they could relish death and praise God for the suffering of others. I could spend this time trying to figure out why so many believers want to see death of a troubled city instead of redemption.

But instead, I want to think about what we, who are the ones others will cheer to see dead, will do about this. Do we give up on them like they have given up on us? Do we spend our time ranting against those who would thank God to see us dead? No. It does not matter what others say or think about us. Whether they want us to die or succeed, it should not keep us from serving God.

The best thing we can do is not to return fire with fire, but to love and serve people regardless. Let’s not complain that people “don’t get us” and “don’t like us.” Let’s not use other believers’ fear and hatred as an excuse for why we can’t change the world. God has placed us here for a reason. The best thing we can do is serve each other and love people in a way that makes this city a place where no person, Christian or unchristian, would be glad to see destroyed.

We cannot hate back. We have to love anyway, and prove them wrong through our caring for others.