{"id":3515,"date":"2010-04-19T21:42:01","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T01:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=3515"},"modified":"2010-04-19T21:42:01","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T01:42:01","slug":"does-god-hate-icelanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=3515","title":{"rendered":"Does God hate Icelanders?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So a volcano erupted in Iceland,<\/strong> they tell me. I\u2019m always interested in what goes on in Iceland, because it\u2019s saga country, and I\u2019ve been there and enjoyed it. Not much good has been happening in those parts recently, which has provided the opportunity for many (including Rush Limbaugh, but he was joking) to ponder the question, as old as Job, of \u201cWhat have I (they) done to deserve this?\u201d<\/p>\n

It brings to mind a story from the sagas (I\u2019m embarrassed to admit I can\u2019t tell you which one; thought it was Njal\u2019s, but it\u2019s not) about the debate held at the Icelandic Althing (national assembly) around the year 1000, when they adopted Christianity by legislative decision. Word came that a volcano had erupted, and was threatening the farm of one of the participants. A heathen claimed the disaster was a threat from the old gods. Snorri the Chieftain (who appears in my novel West Oversea<\/a><\/i>\u2014you can read about it there) pointed to the ancient lava floes all around their meeting place and asked, \u201cAnd what were the gods angry at when this flowed?\u201d<\/p>\n

Because back then, it was Christianity that was hard-headed, skeptical world-view. <\/p>\n

My own church body takes a strong position against watching for signs. We believe that God has already told us everything we need to know, in the Holy Scriptures.<\/p>\n

And of course point of view makes a difference. It\u2019s not as if faithful churches and their members have never been victims of natural disasters. Somebody made up a song after the great San Francisco earthquake (I quote from memory*, so I\u2019ve probably got it wrong in spots):<\/p>\n

And if it\u2019s true God smote the town
\n
For being over-frisky,
\n
Why did He burn the churches down
\n
And spare McSweeney\u2019s whisky?<\/p>\n

And yet, and yet. When a tornado hit downtown Minneapolis last August (something that never <\/i>happens) precisely while the Very Large Lutheran Church Body That Shall Remain Nameless was deliberating the ordination of homosexuals, shaking up the convention center and knocking a cross off the roof of Central Lutheran Church (often called our local Lutheran cathedral) across the street\u2026 well, I tried not to see it as a Sign, but I find I\u2019m psychologically incapable of the operation. It looked to me like that scene from Young Frankenstein<\/i>, when Gene Wilder shouts, \u201cNo! Not that lever!\u201d and the camera cuts to Marty Feldman beside a big sign that says, \u201cNO! NOT THAT LEVER!\u201d Some things just cross the line into \u201cslapping you over the head with a Chick Tract\u201d territory.<\/p>\n

I think my own (not very dogmatic) view is that sometimes\u2014in extraordinary cases\u2014God does send a message through natural disasters. But only as a sort of legal notice, like the signs landlords put up on tenants\u2019 doors, telling them they\u2019re evicted after a certain date. By the time it gets to that point, nobody ever actually pays up, but the landlord has to do it so he can legally chuck the deadbeats out on the street.<\/p>\n

Which says nothing whatever about Iceland. To really be a sign, a thing needs to be unusual, I think.<\/p>\n

Volcanoes in Iceland aren\u2019t exactly what you\u2019d call unexpected.
\n

\n
*Memory of something I read. Not the actual event.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So a volcano erupted in Iceland, they tell me. I\u2019m always interested in what goes on in Iceland, because it\u2019s saga country, and I\u2019ve been there and enjoyed it. Not much good has been happening in those parts recently, which has provided the opportunity for many (including Rush Limbaugh, but he was joking) to ponder … Continue reading Does God hate Icelanders?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}