Posted in the St. Louis Post Dispatch Civil Religion Blog on 04/19/2008 2:47 am
I woke up early Friday morning to our house shaking. Realizing it was not in a tornado or something that required an immediate evacuation, I thanked God for the safety we were in and tried to go back to sleep. But this strange question popped up in my mind: Were there any gay parade scheduled in a near by city?Of course, this is not my usual reaction to geological phenomena. It just happened that a couple of months ago I read something linking gays to earthquakes, and I wanted to write a posting about it. The latest realignment of tectonic plates in the Midwest seemed to be the right backdrop for that posting. Here it is.
Religious people feel a strong connection with God. A personal and warm sense of proximity to our creator gives many of us comfort, strength, and enough boost to carry on when the going gets tough. Some people, unfortunately, get a bit too close.
I, like many others, may occasionally feel tempted to gage how much God is happy (or unhappy) with me. If I have a good week at work, is it because God is smiling upon me? If my car breaks down in a very untimely fashion, is it because I did not focus enough on my duties to God? I think a tiny little bit of that is not bad. Being aware of God’s presence, and that He notices us, is not a bad thing as long as we do not jump to conclusions about Him immediately responding in a divine fashion to every thing we do - that is to say, as long as we do NOT claim we KNOW why God did, or did not do, something to us or to someone else (for example, neighbors’ car stolen because they do not go to church, or a boss deserving a serious heart attack for being mean to his/her employees).
