And today, U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota made just such a comment.
Ms. Bachmann, who draws many of her religious ideas from frightening fringe writers, said today that Hurricane Irene was God's judgement on Washington, D.C., for not being fiscally conservative enough.
She lashes out like a hurricane against Washington for spending too much public money--on the poor and ill and old, on schools, on research, on the unemployed, on food safety, on protecting the environment.
Her politics and religion, as recently reported, are more in line with the atheist proponent of selfishness Ayn Rand than with Jesus Christ. For more on her world view, read Ryan Lizza's profile of her in the New Yorker on August 15.
Ms. Bachmann believes God is destructive, angry, punishing. He uses nature to inflict pain and suffering on people who disobey his will, and his will coincides remarkably with her own.
She has created a god in her own image, which is the biblical definition of idolatry. John Wesley, the Anglican priest of the 18th century, once told a man who believed in such a god: "Sir, your god is the devil."
Unlike Ms. Bachmann's god, the one true God is bringing creation and order out of chaos. Natural disasters like Hurricane Irene are evidence of the disorder of creation. Creation is fallen, as are human beings, but God is raising up a fallen creation in redemption.
Despite what Ms. Bachmann believes, God's final word to humankind is not destruction, but new creation.
And new creation comes in Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior. Jesus brings order out of chaos. He begins this work in his life--remember the stories of his calming of the seas?--in his death on the cross, and in his resurrection. And he continues his saving work through the Holy Spirit until the end when he will come again to bring all things to their perfection.
May Michele Bachmann turn her heart from the proponents of selfishness, division, and hatred to the one true God who is revealed in Jesus, who says he has come not to judge and destroy the world, but to save it.
