We’ve only got a little bit more to go in our discussion of non-violence, though really the conversation could continue for quite a while.  I’ve got another guest-blog on the way and some concluding remarks of my own.  I appreciate your willingness to stay with this topic through the dog-days of summer.  Hopefully you’ve found something here that is helpful or interesting.

Today, though, I just got home from vacation and read an interesting news story and then blog and thought it was worth mentioning if you aren’t aware of it.   The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) was discussing this last week the role of homosexual congregants in church and leadership at their convention in Minnesota.  Coinciding with this conference, a few tornadoes appeared in the area causing damage to parts of the city.

As commentary to these two events, John Piper (who I’m not a huge fan of for a whole list of theological reasons) wrote a blog entry proclaiming it as the divine judgment of God.  It is as irresponsible and backward a commentary as you can imagine, but you need to read it for context.

You can read his blog HERE.

Now, while I have read multiple other blogs from a wide variety of writers addressing Mr. Piper’s thoughts, our last guest-blogger, Dr. Gregory Boyd, wrote an excellent response.  In fact, he sums up my own feelings on the events so well, I’d like to direct you to his blog.  If you aren’t already a reader of his blog, you will want to add it to your favorites.

You can read Greg’s blog response HERE.

Anyway, check out the story and the blogs.  Very interesting conversation.  And incidentally, it is vaguely related to our non-violence discussion, though it deals with more the idea of whether God Himself uses “physical violence” to achieve His own means rather than our mandate to use it or not.

We’ll finish the rest of our non-violence discussion over the next few days.   Have a great end of the summer!