I will be donating what I can to the Canadian Red Cross, and I encourage everyone to do the same. In times like this, you unfortunately get fly-by-night pseudo charities asking for your change, and you have no guarantee that your money will get to the people in need. So stick with the groups you know, like the Red Cross, or as Chimera suggests, the Mennonite Central Committee of Canada. These are venerable institutions that will make sure your money gets put to good use.
In other news, I suppose one of the bigger surprises about Hurricane Katrina is that Fred Phelps kept his hateful mouth shut, for once. Or, at least, for now. Maybe he’s still out of breath after being chased out of Smyrna by residents somewhat ticked that he would show up to heckle funerals for local soldiers killed in Iraq. Or, maybe he’s just been upstaged.
The Green Knight posts on at least three “Christian” groups who have decided call Hurricane Katrina God’s punishment for… something
“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” stated Repent America director Michael Marcavage.
We love you too, Michael.
From: Columbia Christians for Life
The image of the hurricane above with its eye already ashore at 12:32 PM Monday, August 29 looks like a fetus (unborn human baby) facing to the left (west) in the womb, in the early weeks of gestation (approx. 6 weeks). Even the orange color of the image is reminiscent of a commonly used pro-life picture of early prenatal development (see sign with picture of 8-week pre-born human child below). In this picture, and in another picture in today’s on-line edition of USA Today*, this hurricane looks like an unborn human child.
Louisiana has 10 child-murder-by-abortion centers - FIVE are in New Orleans
Baby-murder state # 1 - California (125 abortion centers) - land of earthquakes, forest fires, and mudslides
Baby-murder state # 2 - New York (78 abortion centers) - 9-11 Ground Zero
Baby-murder state # 3 - Florida (73 abortion centers) - Hurricanes Bonnie, Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne in 2004; and now, Hurricane Katrina in 2005
You heard it right, folks: 9/11 has been justified. Columbia Christians for Life are standing with the terrorists.
At least one New Orleans-area resident believes God created the storm as punishment because of the recent role the United States played in expelling Jews from Gaza.
And here’s one that the Green Knight missed, by Reverend Lewis E. Logan II, senior pastor of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church:
“it is no a coincidence that it is exactly 50 years from the time of (inaudible) lynching and murder. That it is not a coincidence that the storm — s name is a sister. Katrina. For she represents the collective cries of mothers who have lost their sons to the brutality and the murderous grip of this racist white supremacist American culture.”
Geez, so many reasons, so little time. Maybe I can justify this act of God too. Let’s see: God destroyed New Orleans and the Gulf Coast… to see who would respond with compassion, and who would seek to use the deaths of hundreds (if not thousands) to justify hateful tirades that are going to send these so-called Christians to Hell if they’re not careful.
…OR, Katrina’s path was determined largely by chance and weather patterns, and if God is to be found, it is in the heroism of those who continue to put themselves in harms way in order to rescue the stranded and care for the dispossessed. God is, sadly, conspicuously absent from the minds of those who claim to know why God let this disaster happened.
And I mean it. These thoughts are plain evil, and I call on these individuals to repent, lest they send themselves to Hell. Green Knight puts it well:
See the problem with attributing things like this to an angry God? All these people are really doing is attributing their own personal beefs to God himself. Most disturbingly, they’re suggesting by implication that, by destroying the cities of New Orleans and Biloxi, God did what they themselves would have done if they’d had the chance.
…Or the power. For this reason, they do not know Christ.
Update
Phelps didn’t keep his trap shut for long. Hat tip to this guy for reading Phelps’ hatred so I wouldn’t have to.
Hands up here who wants to drive down to Westboro, Kansas to punch Fred Phelps in the nose? I’m thinking about organizing charters.
P.S. I heard from my friends in New Orleans who is safe and well, in Alabama, so that’s a relief. Sounds as though they were in the city through the hurricane, but had to bug out when it was announced that Jefferson Parish was going to flood.