Wow! I can't believe how long it's been since my lst post!!
Anyway, I've been reviewing God's Judgment: Historical Interpretation and Christian Faith by Stephen Keillor. The book attempts to answer a question that Christian historians/history teachers either answer glibly or not at all: Does the Bible have anything to say about how God judges nations today? Many of you have probably heard comments about 9/11 being some kind of judgment of God on America for its immorality and turning from him. And that may be true. It's difficult, however, to make a case since God has not told us as he did the prophets which nations he is judging and why. Is he actively judging or just using natural events in his work? Does his judgment also include restoration? How do we know?
Yet the Old and New Testament both provide examples and models that show us when and how God "sifts" the conduct of nations over long periods of time. Keillor uses the Hebrew idea of misphat (sifting) as a template for evaluating how God judges. He then discusses aspects of US history and asks whether these case studies exhibit God's judgments or not.
What do you think? I'm trying to cull Keillor's insights into a lesson plan(s) for my own history students and I'm interested in your own thoughts.
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I recall Chuck Colson once wrote a book called "Who Speaks for God". Part of the premise of the title essay was that people line up on either side of a question like, "Is AIDS God's judgment on the homosexuals?" The problem is in knowing something that God has not revealed in Scripture. Mind you, we're not talking about whether homosexual conduct is sinful (it is), or whether God will judge the wicked (He will), but whether the specific disease called AIDS represents God's special judgment on a certain kind of people who commit a certain kind of sexual sin. How on earth can we know, and would knowing (or thinking we know) the answer really change anything?
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