Chuck Colson: Southeastern US drought is God's judgment on the American Church

In C. S Lewis’ allegorical tale entitled The Pilgrim’s Regress, John (the Pilgrim) gets a mixed message from the Steward (a priest) about the Landlord (God) and his attitude towards his tenants (people). The Steward wanted John to know that “… the Landlord was quite extraordinarily kind and good to his tenants, and would certainly torture most of them to death the moment he had the slightest pretext.”

What Christian has not felt this tension in reading the Bible? Is God fundamentally kind, gracious and compassionate or angry, judgmental and demanding?

Charles Colson has now weighed in on this centuries long debate on the nature of God’s dealings with mankind and it seems that God is pretty angry with the American church at the moment.

Colson has become convinced that the drought in the southeast part of the United States is the judgment of God on the church in America. To make sure that we understand that His displeasure is with believers and not with secular America, God has sent this drought to the most overtly religious section of the nation – the Bible Belt.

What is God saying in this drought? According to Colson, God is upset with us (his followers) because “… we have been disregarding His Word” and because “… we have been going to church to make ourselves feel good and have our ears tickled …” and also because we have allowed therapy to replace truth.

Colson believes that God is “… telling his people to repent, to get serious about what we believe, to hunger for the Word of God, to seek holy living, and to ask God’s forgiveness.”

We need repentance and forgiveness, in part, “… for looking for a political savior … for blaming the nation’s moral collapse on the gay-rights movement, or on the media, or on the politicians, …” Instead, we should “… look right at the people whom God expects to know better … you and I.”

His connection of the drought with God’s judgment grew out of a devotional Colson had with his wife over breakfast on December 9, 2007. After reading the story of Elisha providing food for the prophets of God in the midst of a famine (2 Kings 4), the devotional directed them to read Leviticus 26:3-5 which says “If you follow my decrees …, I will send you rain in its season ...”

A newspaper sat on the kitchen table that morning and a front-page article warned about new adverse consequences from the drought. Colson reports that he had been wondering for many months if the drought might be a judgment from God and the juxtaposition of the newspaper article with the reading of the passage in Leviticus convinced him that God wanted him to connect the two. He tells us that he said, “Okay, Lord, I get it.” What he “got” was that God is not sending rain because the American church is not obeying his decrees.

My initial reaction to all of this was to remember the famous words of one well-known church leader: “Well isn’t that special?”*

And, after further reflection, I have to confess that, unlike Colson, I don’t “get it.”

Let’s stipulate, for the sake of discussion, that Scripture seems to portray God as sometimes sending flood or drought or other phenomena as judgments. At the same time, the Bible also makes it clear that not all suffering and calamity are due to sin.

The story of the man born blind (see John 9) immediately comes to mind. The disciples apparently shared Colson’s tendency to connect suffering with moral failure. When they encountered a man who had been blind since birth, they asked Jesus whether his blindness was due to his own sin or the sin of his parents. They knew somebody had screwed up and they just want to know who it was!

Jesus did not accept their false dilemma. The correct answer to their multiple choice question turned out to be neither (a) or (b) but rather an option they did not consider – namely, none of the above. “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; …”, Jesus declared. In this story, Jesus clearly teaches that calamity is not always linked to wrongdoing by the individuals involved in the calamity.

Job is another example where suffering was not related to wrongdoing. He suffered as a righteous man and, interestingly, it was his misguided friends who chalked up Job’s suffering to some wrongdoing on his part. The friends were mistaken.

Furthermore, keep in mind that Satan was the immediate cause of Job’s misery and we see this same connection between misery and Satan being taught by Jesus. He cured a woman of a sickness that had kept her bent over for eighteen long years (Luke 13) and he told us that the Satan was the cause of that affliction.

In addition, Jesus discourages the natural human tendency to tie calamity to specific human sinfulness in a fascinating story told in Luke 13. In that story, some people told Jesus about the fate of certain Galileans. They were killed by Pilate and their blood was mingled with pagan sacrifices.

Jesus responds, "Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no ... Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, …"

I believe that Jesus is teaching many truths in this encounter but I’ve quoted the passage selectively to bring out the one truth that applies to our current discussion. If I had to paraphrase Jesus’ message here, it would go like this: “Look, if you want to find a reason for calamity and disaster in the actions of the people who suffer, you can always find it. Everyone is flawed and imperfect. There are no perfect people or institutions. When tragedy strikes, you can always relate it to some moral failure in the party affected by the tragedy.”

Thus, even this short examination shows that we have a number of concepts taught in Scripture: (1) Calamity is sometimes God’s judgment against wrongdoing. (2) Calamity sometimes has nothing to do with wrongdoing. (3) Calamity is sometimes the result of the activity of Satan rather than God’s activity. (4) Jesus seems to discourage us from asking the question of the cause of particular calamities.

Why then does Colson opt for the first principle in regards to the drought while ignoring other possibilities?

It is important to note that Colson stops just short of claiming that God has given him an authoritative message to give to the American church. While Colson himself is pretty certain that the drought is related to the church’s waywardness, he acknowledges that his reading of Leviticus immediately before seeing the newspaper article on the drought could have been coincidence.

Thus, Colson is not claiming to be an Old Testament style prophet. Old Testament prophets gave the definitive and authoritative Word of God on events. The Israelites could be sure that their defeat in a battle or a particular famine was a result of their idolatry or unfaithfulness or some other shortcomings. Colson can provide no such assurance.

Which brings me back to my question: Why does Colson take one principle taught in the Bible and apply it to the drought while ignoring other possibilities?

For the life of me, I can’t tell you why. I can only tell you that his analysis seems to be an example of the kind of overly-simplistic theological reflection that is endemic in the evangelical community. People have a tendency to grab onto one idea and run with it without considering other passages that shed additional light on the topic in question. We need more holistic synthesis of the Bible’s message and less of the “Bible roulette” that Colson exemplifies in his analysis.

Apart from these theological issues, I have a number of practical difficulties.

First of all, I’m very confused by Colson’s claim that “we” need to repent of looking for a “political savior”. Who has urged more political involvement than Colson? He lobbies for prison reform. He seeks legislation and diplomatic initiatives to stop the persecution of Christians in Africa and China and throughout the world. He wants the government to ban embryonic stem cell research. And I could expand the list to include many other issues where he urges incorporation of Christian values into the political life of the country.

Colson has champion William Wilberforce as an example for all believers to follow. And Wilberforce’s efforts to end slavery were largely political. If Colson believes we have been too focused on a “political savior”, then this is truly a stunning reversal of much of his life and ministry.

If Colson wants to say that “he” needs to repent of this, I’d understand him. I’d have no problem with Colson’s commentary if every “we” was changed to “I”. If Christians have been too focused on political involvement in the cause of Christ, then Colson is a primary cause of this misdirected effort. He can repent of it and make restitution by modeling the proper kind of balance between political action and devotion to God.

Secondly, I wonder if Colson thinks that we should look for divine reasons behind all calamities. Was the Indian Ocean tsunami God’s judgment on Muslims for the persecution of Christians? Is AIDS God’s judgment on sexual misconduct? What is God trying to say to us in Katrina? What is the message from God in the terrorist attacks of 9-11?

In regard to 9-11, you may have noticed that evangelical Christians on the political right have sometimes suggested that the those attacks were God’s judgment on America for everything from gay marriage to the ACLU while evangelicals on the political left imagine that the attacks resulted from God’s displeasure with America’s materialism and failure to care for the poor. This game has endless possibilities.

Finally, if we do identify a particular calamity as the judgment of God, how should we respond? Perhaps we should not work to alleviate the suffering caused by such events. After all, if my friend is punishing his daughter by grounding her and taking away her cell phone and music and computer, I probably should not be sneaking up to her bedroom window at night and handing her an IPOD.

If the drought in the southeastern US is God’s judgment on the American church, then perhaps we should just let those people suffer until they get the message and “get their poop in a group”. And, if the drought is God’s judgment, then water conservation and the construction of new reservoirs and the development of new water management practices will not alleviate the problem. We need repentance rather than civil engineering.

Here is the bottom line: For both theological and practical reasons, the whole tone and premise of Colson’s commentary is misguided. If Colson has a prophetic revelation from God and can tell us with certainty that God has sent the drought to punish the American church, then we have a different issue that we need to discuss.

Absent that, his speculations do no good. Do we really need tsunamis, epidemics, hurricanes and terrorist attacks to tell us that God is not in favor of religious persecution and sexual misconduct and materialism?

And, has there ever been a time when the church was fully living up to its calling? The Christian community has always been imperfect and always will be. As a result, we can always imagine that a particular man-made or natural disaster – global warming, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, AIDS, a Category 5 hurricane, etc. – is God’s judgment on His imperfect church.

In fact, the unfaithfulness of the church has been a constant and favorite theme of Christian leaders since I became a Christian in 1972. Since day one, I’ve been told that we are not studying our Bibles enough; we are not praying enough; we are not giving enough; we are not dedicated enough. ENOUGH!

The message of judgment and condemnation has not worked. It has not brought transformation and it never will. As a Christian community, we have preached the mixed message that John got from the Steward and we have reaped mixed results as a consequence.

So let’s try something different and let me start with Colson. This is what I know for sure: God loves Chuck Colson. He loves all that he has done for prisoners and for those who are persecuted. Despite his many imperfections and failures, God is at work in Colson’s life and he will continue to work in his life in spite of his mistaken message about the drought. After all, God didn’t abandon Colson when he committed criminal acts in the Watergate era.

And, the same is true of everyone who is reading this right now. God loves you. He loves the good you have done down to the smallest kindness. Every evil thing you have done or that has been done to you is something that He is working to cure and heal and redeem.

“Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus said (Matthew 5) and James reminds us that “mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2). Let us hope that the Christian community soon becomes know for its mercy rather than its tendency to look for the judgment of God in every current event.

As always, your comments, both favorable and unfavorable, are welcomed, appreciated and desired.


*For those of you who might be challenged in the area of modern American pop culture, the phrase “Well isn’t that special?” is one of the catch phrases of Dana Carvey’s self-righteous Church Lady character from Saturday Night Live.

Look here to read Colson's article on the drought.

Author's Note on January 1, 2008: Wayne's deleted comment below was deleted because it was an accidental duplication of his original comments. Wayne's comments are always welcome.