The Top 10 Christian Responses to Typhoon Haiyan

Here is a recent CNN news report about the devastation. I hurt for the victims don't you? Why doesn't God? From my experience the following are the top 10 Christian responses (i.e., excuses) to it in descending order:


10) "Let's send help. God has no hands but our hands." Yet just once I'd like to see God actually DO something.

9) "Let's pray for the survivors." But prayer does nothing to help. It makes believers who pray FEEL like they're being helpful and that's it. For instance, have they not already been praying for the children of the world, for peace and less suffering? Then those previous prayers were not answered. So why do they think doing more of the same will get better results?

8) "God knows what is best, ours is not to question but believe. God will work it all out in the end." (Romans 8:28). Just once I would like God to reveal what he knows, but he doesn't. Believing in the midst of clear signs that God either doesn't exist, cannot do anything about it, or just doesn't care is irrational. But that's the nature of faith. It is a vice not a virtue. If God will work it all out then for whom is he going to do this? The little girl trapped under rubble who slowly and painfully dies in a few days? The mother who loses all her loved ones and everything she owns? The lover who was just about to be married whose fiance is permanently disfigured and disabled? Just ask these people at the end of their lives, if given a choice, would they rather not experience this present pain? Many of them will never get over such a huge loss.

7) "God cannot alter the laws of nature even though he knows these disasters will happen sometimes." Then God cannot be the creator either. God supposedly created the universe out of nothing, so if he cannot alter what he created (the lesser deed) then he could not have created the universe in the first place (the greater deed).

6) "God gives life so he can take it away." Then he never gave us life in the first place. For once a gift is given then the giver of that gift, by merely giving the gift, doesn't have a moral right to take it back. Just think of a blood donor. After giving the blood he has no moral right to take it back, even if he doesn't like how the recipient of his blood behaves, and even if the recipient is ungrateful for the blood.

5) "In times of disaster people are more likely to become Christians, so this can be a good thing." Then let's have more and more disasters! Bring 'em on. If this is a good thing then God isn't producing enough disasters. Let 'em rain down on us. The fact is though, that while disasters do produce believers, the faith embraced by the survivors is going to be the ones found inside their own cultures.

4) "This is all due to the first pair of sinners in the Garden of Eden." But even the Christian God says the sins of the fathers are not to be placed on the sons (Ezekiel 18:19-20). Apparently that was said before the Garden of Eden story was even written or known by the prophet Ezekiel. Evolution destroys the notion there was a first human pair anyway. We even find many similar myths in the ancient Mesopotamian world that predate the Genesis story. This tells us these myths were the warp and woof of those cultures.

3) "Any Christians who die will be in heaven so what's the big deal? The ones who died would probably never believe during their lives anyway." I've argued that Christians who accept this justification are pro-death. Life doesn't matter to them so much as going to heaven. They are too heavenly minded to be any earthly good. If that's Christianity then I don't want anything to do with it, and neither should they.

2) "Their sins caused it so they personally got what they deserved." Just think Pat Robertson here. I predict he may say the same thing with regard to Typhoon Haiyan. He's a laughing stock. Lost on him are the children. What did they do to deserve this? Such a God, if he exists, is genocidal in nature and should be rejected by all civilized people.

1) And the number one reason is, "Praise God! I wasn't harmed! Isn't God good?" This might be said by some Christian who lived through Typhoon Haiyan and escaped death. I have never known a more delusional statement of faith. You see, the person who makes this statement thinks of himself as the center of the universe, someone who is more important to God than everyone else. He is a self-absorbed arrogant person. I wouldn't want to be his friend. His Mama should spank him right now in front of us all.

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