Posted on 01/01/2005 4:22:44 PM PST by Pikamax
I think if he can come away with this with an even stronger faith in God more power to him. Though he should resign, with such fundamental doubts he can't honestly lead at this point.
I have that book!
I direct the Archbishop to the story of Noah and to Job.
If profesing Christ brought immediate wealth, health, and only goodies, guess what? Nah!--i started to say the libs and ACLU would even jump aboard, but that is not gonna happen.
vaudine
Please don't blame K Mart for this guy.
Thanks for posting the link. I took the liberty of posting the article:
God Isn’t to Blame for Asian Casualties.
December 29th, 2004
By Rabbi Daniel Lapin
President, Toward Tradition
With the final death toll in Asia yet unknown, analyzing the calamity can appear callous, especially in the light of ancient Jewish wisdom’s advice to refrain from even comforting mourners whose dead still lie before them, let alone analyzing their loss. Still, once we have, in some human way, associated ourselves with the disaster by means of financial or other contribution, we surely are obliged to try and learn something from it. Sometimes before the answers can be found, the right questions must be asked and there are certainly questions well worth asking. However it is as well not to be distracted by the wrong questions.
"What sort of God would have let this happen?” is one example of the wrong question. Firstly, it is a perfect example of narcissism. The questioners, including one columnist from The Guardian, convert an international human tragedy of mind-staggering proportions into a maudlin expression of their own spiritual angst. This question escalates self-indulgence to new heights of obnoxiousness.
It reminds me of the older man sitting in the next seat during a certain memorable flight I took back in 1980. As the flight attendants graciously served my special kosher meal, he began a conversation. “I am also Jewish” he unnecessarily informed me, as he tucked into his bacon omelet. I responded politely and he resumed. “I used to keep kosher but after Hitler, I could no longer believe in God.”
“And do you by any chance remember how old you were when you first abandoned Jewish religious observance?” I innocently asked. “Sure, I remember, it was my eighteenth birthday and I walked into a non-kosher restaurant for the first time.”
Later as our flight neared its destination, we exchanged further personal and family details. In response to another question of mine, he revealed that he was sixty-five years old. The arithmetic wasn’t hard to do. As we touched down, I leaned over and gently said, “Look, I don’t mean any offense but you didn’t abandon Judaism as a result of God allowing the Holocaust. You entered that restaurant in 1933, well before World War II began. Hitler and his Holocaust merely provided you with the excuse you needed to feel comfortable abandoning your faith.”
To find the same comfort, those who shape their lives according to the doctrines of secular fundamentalism, take an evident delight in stating the usual “Where is God now?” questions after tragedies, especially those natural ones like earthquakes that can’t be blamed on human actions.
While the casualties can’t be blamed on human actions, many of them can certainly be blamed on human inactions. Look, I know that it is nowadays considered distasteful to attribute any complicity in a problem to the victim. It is as if being a victim today, automatically confers moral virtue, but being that delicate can cost us truth. The simple truth is that American seismological specialists in Pasadena, California, and elsewhere were horrified that no warning systems are in place in these Asian countries by means of which residents can be alerted. Remember that there were several hours of warning available. “A warning centre such as those used around the Pacific could have saved most of the thousands of people who died in Asia's earthquake and tsunamis” said the US Geological Survey. Many lives could surely have been saved. Some countries have pleaded poverty, but that is not an adequate explanation. We are not talking rocket science here. We are talking about sirens on poles. Remember them from the cold war era? This is World War I technology and very inexpensive.
In 1953, nearly two thousand Dutchmen drowned when the North Sea breached a dyke and flooded part of low-lying Holland. Within a few years they had commenced the world’s largest civil engineering project and Holland has never flooded significantly since. Sadly, this is far from the first time that some of these nations have faced natural disasters in which people died by the tens of thousands as the result of monsoons, typhoons, flooding, and earthquakes. Yet few warning systems exist, let alone seawalls and evacuation routes.
On December 26th, 2003, over 30,000 victims perished in the Iranian earthquake in the town of Bam. To explain the vast death toll inflicted by an earthquake no stronger than that which struck the Californian town of Paso Robles within a few days, Iranian authorities pleaded poverty. It costs considerably more to engineer large-scale nuclear capability as Iran has done, than it costs to retro-fit buildings for safety in an earthquake-prone zone. The problem is not poverty, it is priority.
Here in the United States, the standard bearer of western civilization, we have two cultural imperatives imbedded deeply within our national DNA. Both flow from the Bible with which our founders were intimately familiar and by means of which they sculpted their world views.
Our first distinctive cultural imperative is to render ourselves less vulnerable to nature. We believed we were following Divine will when we developed medicine and medical technology to dominate disease. We found insecticides to protect our food supply, and we built dams to control rivers. We took seriously the commandment in the twenty-eighth verse of the Bible, “And God blessed them (Adam and Eve) saying ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.’ ” We never understood “subdue the world” to mean obliterate nature, or otherwise despoil the environment. We knew it meant responsible stewardship and making ourselves less vulnerable to nature which is not always benign. We knew we were pleasing God by making ourselves safer and more secure and this knowledge lent added urgency and meaning to our efforts which then seemed to be blessed. Not by coincidence did the overwhelming majority of these scientific and technical developments take place in the west.
Western civilization’s second distinctive cultural imperative is the importance of preserving human life. This too derives directly from our Biblical roots and distinguishes us from the peculiar fatalism toward death found in so many other cultures.
Together, these two values enshrined in the west in general and in America in particular, are chiefly responsible for the vastly diminished impact that natural disasters inflict upon our society.
God runs this world with as little supernatural interference as possible. Earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and yes, tsunamis happen. It is called nature, which is not benign. Fortunately God also gave us intelligence and commanded us to make ourselves less vulnerable to nature. He also implanted in us a culture in which each and every life is really important. That is why Deuteronomy chapter thirty states, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.”
God may have allowed the earthquake to happen, just as he has allowed germs to exist and just as he has allowed cold weather each winter. However under the influence of Biblical culture, people have defended themselves against germs and they have learned how to produce energy to defeat winter’s frigid conditions. A long time ago, in His book, God provided the incentive and encouragement to survive nature. He isn’t to blame for the deaths in the Asian disaster. Many of the deaths are attributable to slowness in adopting the western values that promote technical and economic development along with profound respect for each human life.
Radio talk show host, Rabbi Daniel Lapin,
is president of Toward Tradition,
a bridge-building organization
providing a voice for all Americans
who defend the Judeo-Christian values
vital for our nation’s survival.
So in other words he's saying, "I doubt the existence of God and you should too". What a weak person with a weak faith and he really shouldn't be leading anyone anywhere. I believe that when it's his turn to meet our Maker, he's going to have to account for all the souls he led astray.
Good point! He could always try to do an actuarial table on the influence of natural disasters upon faith.
Some say 'faith without works is dead', but never stop to think that 'works without faith are dead'.
AofC is a wuss. Evidently, his faith was predicated on some imaginary existence where horrendous things never happen. He's never cracked a history book...or even the Bible, apparently.
Sounds to me that this guy may be in the wrong kind of work. One thing that will always amaze me is the capacity of so many of us to tell God what to do and how to behave.
He shrugged off claims that he should have come home to take charge of Britain's aid effort, adding that he had been in touch "practically hourly" with Downing Street.
It's Blair's fault!
God didn't even save his own son from murder. Given that, I don't feel in the least bit special either.
Some say 'faith without works is dead', but never stop to think that 'works without faith are dead'.
Good point ... but before I give the Archbishop even that much credit, I'd like to see some good works that he's actually, personally, doing!
COOPER: It bears repeating that each night, we've been moved by the stories of people, people who have literally reached out and saved strangers' lives. Daylan Sanders is a U.S. citizen who sold his townhouse near Washington D.C. 10 years ago, and moved back to his native Sri Lanka, to build an orphanage, the Samaritan Children's Home.When the waves came on Sunday, he gathered all 28 children, put them in a boat, and raced the waves to safety.
He joins me now on the phone from Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Thanks very much for being with us, Daylan.
You know, we talked to a lot of people, and when they first saw the waves, they instantly thought to run to higher ground, but not you. What made you think your best chances were at sea in a boat?
DAYLAN SANDERS, FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, SAMARITAN CHILDREN'S HOME: Because there are no words in human speech to describe what we saw. It was a 30-foot wall of sea, just bearing down on us like an angry monster. And it was coming at us at such speed, I knew that there was no place on ground where we could be safe. So I knew -- there was something in me that told me that instantly, that we've got to get on top of this wave if -- to stay safe.
COOPER: So how quickly -- how quickly...
SANDERS: So I came out, I called out for the children. They all came. We rushed. We had just 10 seconds to get into the boat, and that day the outboard motor stayed hooked to the boat. Usually, we take it off every night. And we got into the boat -- you know, it had rushed in. It has -- it just demolished everything that stood in its path. It came with such force. It just hit both of the garages. The garages just splintered in every direction. It lifted up my Toyota pickup vehicle, my Mitsubishi L-300. We had a three-wheeler, a motor bike. Everything -- it just pulverized.
And then when we got into the boat, it was just a few -- I would say about 15 feet away, and we were eyeball to eyeball with the wave. And immediately, a scripture popped into my mind. It said, "When the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall raise up a standard against it."
And I know from there, I got the courage. I just stood up in the small boat, and I lifted both my hands and I said, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, on the strength of the scriptures, that when the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall raise up a standard against him. I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to stand still. And I thought I was imagining at the time that the massive wall of water, it stood. It -- I'm not one given to exaggeration. I saw, as if something holding back, some invisible force or hand. It just stood.
And -- this was confirmed, because later on, when I met some of the villagers who had climbed on top of palmara (ph) trees and coconut trees and had survived this onslaught. They told me -- they called me father. They said, Father, we didn't stand a chance because the sea, when it got down to the beach and it crushed into the village, it came with the same speed and the same furry, and it just wiped us all out.
But when -- ours is a four-acre complex. We have a boys section, the girls' home, the staff section and everything. But when it got on your land, at one point, it stood still. It just slowed down. And that gave you the chance. What made it? Was it the density of the trees or the buildings? I said, there was no power on Earth that could have held it back but the power of God. I said, I called upon God, and I commanded it in the name of Jesus, who 2,000 years ago he commanded the waves, and they obeyed. He commanded the sea, and they obeyed. And this is the very same God did the same to us and gave us those precious few seconds that we needed to stop at the first yank, at the start, the engine just sputtered into life.
COOPER: And Daylan, I know your gamble paid off. You were able to take your boat really directly through the wave and rescue all the children in your orphanage.
SANDERS: By the way, they came up to us, and I told them that, you know, it's going to catch up with us and if it caught up...
COOPER: It's a remarkable, remarkable story, Daylan. Able to save 28 of the children in the orphanage. The orphanage itself, the buildings, the structures destroyed. But it's a remarkable tale. Daylan Sanders, thanks for joining us.
I'm reminded of a scene in the movie "Oh God!" where John Denver asks George Burns why He permits world suffering. George turns to John and says, "Why do you?"
If Abp Akinola sets up a rival church, it will be very tempting for those orthodox ECUSA members still in the fold.
What is this guy doing as chief prelate of a church if his faith is that flimsy??? He shouldn't even be a parish beadle, let alone an archbishop.
I went to Canterbury last Christmas and heard this man preach on Christmas Day. Incredibly he only mentioned the name Jesus or Christ maybe once or twice. He mostly focused on human things like men getting along with their neighbors etc and world peace. He hardly mentioned Christ at all. His focus is on man not Christ.
Just another bureaucrat with his collar turned backwards.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.