Tragedy and Bad Theology

We are all sickened by the senseless murder of so many people, both children and adults, in Newtown, Connecticut. While we mourn, we also have to hear the dime store God “experts” share their not-so-humble opinions about why this devastation occurred. Facebook and blogs are filled with smug responses surrounding the crisis – ideas like: “What do you expect? We kicked God out of our schools.” and “that’s what we get for making prayer in school illegal”.

Please stop this kind of rhetoric. It is hurtful to the families of the victims, it gives God a bad name and it is unbiblical.

It is bad theology to say that we removed God from our schools. True, we disallowed public prayer, but rest assured, God was right there in the heart of every child who lost their life. God was there. How dare we think that we can control where God goes and doesn’t go. Reminder: He is omnipresent (everywhere at the same time). We cannot confine Him. God is close to the brokenhearted (Ps. 34:18), no force in nature can stop that. The arrogance that assumes we can answer such mysteries is unfathomable.  As one friend, Eddie Robbins said, “If folks believe that, how do they explain so many shootings in churches?” Humble down, people of God. This is no time to grind an axe.

True, prayer is not allowed in most public arena today, but I guarantee you that there was a ton of prayer going up in Sandy Hook Elementary School today. God was there, He was with every victim and He is with all of the survivors. To believe otherwise is heartless and in conflict with the nature of God.

We need to refute bad theology. People need to stop saying hurtful things to try to prove a point. But now is the time for mourning and praying, not arguing.