Peter M Howard ::

wintermute.com.au

Acts of God

04January2005 [myth]
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some good and some bad in the responses to the tsunami…

I’m very impressed by the fact that Aussies are realising that our Asian neighbours are people too… That seems to be forgotten too often (eg, the earthquake in Bam, or the fact that terrorist attacks happen with terrible regularity in SEAsia, not just when Aussies die). Tim Costello said that he’d expected the disaster to disappear from the news within a couple of days - I’d not have been surprised, but fortunately…

Amazingly the US have acknowledged that aid DOES help fight terrorism. Haven’t heard much out of Alexander Downer - he tended to argue vehemently that poverty/famine &c. were not major causes, now that the States have admitted it, I wonder if he will also…

But what I can’t stand is that the media have jumped at every opportunity to make religious leaders (and Christians in particular) look stupid - they’re presenting the ‘Christian’ response as a claim that the tsunami was an Act of God. Poor (Anglican Dean of Sydney) Phillip Jensen is being dreadfully misquoted - looks like someone (digging for a response) asked him if the tsunami was divine punishment. He worked his way out of that hole gracefully, suggesting that disasters were a sign of God’s coming judgement. Somehow that wasn’t enough, or the media has their grammatical tenses mixed up, and is reporting his claim as some fundamentalist (OT) divine retribution for an as-yet-undiscovered horrible sin by the people of South Asia!

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