“There’s been satanic worship. There’s been sexual perversion. God is going to use that storm to bring revival. God has a plan. God has a purpose.”
If only this quote were from some Old Testament prophet in reference to the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sadly, however, this is not the case. The Rev. Franklin Graham, son and protégé of celebrity-evangelist Billy Graham, spoke these words to a crowd of the faithful in Lynchburg, Va. on Monday in reference to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He was speaking at the bulwark institution of modern evangelical thought in America, Liberty University.
While Frankie-boy is free to say what he believes, it is really appalling to me that there is actually an audience for this kind of insensitive speech in our day and age. It’s completely rash and self-serving of him even to present such a hypothesis in the wake of this tragedy of catastrophic proportions.
In a phone interview with reporters later that day, Graham came around with the second swing in his one-two punch against all that is decent, appropriate and sensitive when he said that New Orleans “is a city that has strong ties to the gay and lesbian movement, and these types of things.”
Still, I do not know that Graham is the only one to blame here. In reality, he would not be saying such things if there were not people willing to listen to this crap. The sad thing is that there is a demand for this kind of thought in our society.
Rev. Graham, if God punishes sinners, and he purges sinful cities, when is he going to send fire and brimstone upon the East Village or Las Vegas? What about Amsterdam? Is he going to flood Lantern Point?
And people of America, do not believe everything this guy says because he has a gentle smile and appears as unthreatening as your widowed great aunt’s handsome gentleman caller. Please take a moment to question his logic, and then see just how skewed and unfaithful to the message of the gospels it really is.
Jesus preaches that the faithful should love him, and love one another as they love themselves. How does gay-bashing and proverbial stone-throwing fit into this equation for Graham? People need to ask these important questions, and should question this man’s motive in projecting such an image of himself.
Since Graham has gone ahead and interpreted God’s intent in the devastating aftermath of Katrina, I’m going to venture to guess what Jesus might remind Graham when he gets up there and speaks from his comfortable pulpit wearing his custom-tailored suits: “Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 6:1.
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