The ELCA and the Minneapolis Tornado

On Wednesday, August 19, 2009, a tornado damaged the convention center and the Central Lutheran Church of Minneapolis, MN. There is a video on YouTube claiming that the tornado was sent from God to punish the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America for deciding that they would allow homosexuals in committed relationships to be ministers in their churches. There are a few problems with this interpretation of the events that day.

First, the tornado struck on Wednesday. The ELCA voted on Friday. This was an attempt by somebody to credit God with this event. Clearly God does not punish people for acts they have not yet committed. This would negate free will.

Second, the tornado did more than damage just the ELCA’s event. As tornados do, it created a path of destruction before it finally ended. Surely, God did not want to punish everyone and everything in the tornado’s path that day. God does not throw out the baby with the bath water as he demonstrated at Sodom and Gomorrah when he promised to not destroy the cities if even one righteous person could be found there.

Third, there was nothing miraculous about the tornado. It’s not like the tornado destroyed the convention center on one side of town, lifted up into the sky, and then descended on the Central Lutheran Church on the other side of town, destroying both and touching nothing else in between. I would freely admit that those circumstances would seem miraculous, but this is not what happened.

The convention center and the church were across the street from each other. It would have been strange indeed if one were damaged and the other not. Furthermore, the damage was not extensive. Though thousands of dollars of damage was done, the buildings are still there, no people were killed, and the convention went on after the tornado passed.

Fourth, if God had sent the tornado, two days before the vote, with the intent to do something about it, you’d think that he would have sent one severe enough to put a stop to the vote. He didn’t. The vote took place two days later as planned with only minor disruption during the debate phase due to the evacuation order.

Finally, the claim was made that the tornado was a freak event, unanticipated by weather experts, and that therefore it must be an act of God designed to show his displeasure with the ELCA’s activities. However, there must have been some warning. The convention center was evacuated. Hundreds or thousands of people were evacuated to safety. Clearly, the conditions were right for a tornado and the event was not a freak event explainable only as an act of God.

I believe in miracles, both large, public ones, and the small, every day ones we experience all the time. However, it sickens me to think that someone has cheapened all God’s miraculous works by inventing circumstances to make it appear that God has furthered the video author’s agenda. No matter how much I agree with the author that God does not approve of the ELCA’s decision (And, I do disagree with the ELCA. See my previous blog post on this topic, The Lutheran Frog in the Water.), it does not relieve him from himself adhering to God’s laws, specifically the one about refraining from bearing false witness.