I received an email from one of our church’s missionaries in Japan. She asked our church to pray that God would use the earthquake and tsunami to save the Japanese people. I had heard such statements before, but for the first time it struck me how distasteful such a request is—especially for what it says about the missionary’s conception of God. I see at least three disturbing implications in the email concerning the nature of God:
1. The Divine Rube Goldberg: God is apparently unable to simply communicate with individuals, offering them proof of His existence. Instead, like the elaborate contraptions envisioned by Rube Goldberg, tectonic plates and tsunamis are the best methods God has to get people’s attention. (Anytime you hear someone claim that “God works in mysterious ways,” they are referring to this kind of God.)
Of course, our missionary wouldn’t claim that God caused the earthquake to save people. (At least, I hope she wouldn’t), which brings us to the next conception of God implied by her request.
2. The Divine FEMA: God doesn’t cause natural disasters; He just shows up afterward to help people get through them. I don’t even think the missionary is aware that this conception of God is very different from that of the omnipotent creator God who controls the universe. The dilemma seems unavoidable: either God can control earthquakes, and He chose to unleash one on Japan; or God cannot control earthquakes, and is therefore not omnipotent. (The latter is Harold Kushner’s view of God, as expressed in When Bad Things Happen to Good People.)
But the missionary didn’t just ask us to pray that God would comfort the suffering Japanese people; she asked that God would use the disaster to save them, which leads to the final conception of God.
3. The Divine Ambulance Chaser: God takes advantage of people’s suffering, catching them in a moment of weakness to manipulate them into converting to His religion. This implication is what disturbed me most about the missionary’s email. It is the same as the preacher who uses a funeral to preach about salvation to the survivors. (I’m sorry to say that I have sat through such funerals.)
Whether or not our missionary believed that God was somehow involved in what happened in Japan, she revealed astonishing insensitivity by thinking about such a tragedy in terms of furthering her own religious agenda.
