First, with a spectacular display of cognitive dissonance:
"Imagine what would have happened if [New Orleans] had taken a direct hit," he tells BP. "The levee did not break until after the storm was clear and the winds had died down and the rescue workers were able to get out." Had the levee given way during the hurricane, he says, "untold thousands of people" would have been killed.
"It's a terrible tragedy," Kelley says of the devastation in and around New Orleans, "and we still don't know the scope of it -- but the evidences of God's mercy are there. We rejoice in the fact that He has got the whole world in His hands, including the city of New Orleans and [the seminary]."
Gee, God, thanks for destroying a major city and only killing about a thousand people, instead of tens of thousands! You're the greatest!
Another strategy: it's The Flood II! Hooray for Jeebus, Destroyer of Worlds!
The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as "Southern Decadence" -- an annual six-day "gay pride" event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week -- God's judgment would be felt.
“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says. "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."
And here I would've thought the pagans would be the ones to start sacrificing people to calm the wrathful god. It reminds me of a certain prayer and hymn.
2 comments:
Unfortunately the government is going to waste tens of billions of our hard earned tax dollars rebuilding New Orleans and environs. No. Don't. Stop. Abort.
How about we do something totally different. After all, the swamps and the sea will eventually take back the land. Well, just give it up to them. Move the people out of New Orleans. Abandon it. Go to higher ground where it would make more sense to have a city. Same for all the other places hit this way.
Mega-waste of lives and money. Just leave.
Right, the same way it was a complete waste to rebuild San Francisco after both of its devastating twentieth-century earthquakes. The same way it was a complete waste to rebuild Chicago or Washington, DC after they burnt down. Or any major European city -- they've pretty much all been completely destroyed at some time or another over the past thousand years. We should also just abandon Venice and the Netherlands now, and probably shouldn't bother building a new skyscraper or memorial at the former World Trade Center site -- the way things are going, it's liable to just get destroyed again. Plus, when you start thinking in the really long term, in a couple hundred billion years the universe is going to undergo heat death, where the average temperature of matter in universe goes down to just above absolutely zero. Might as well roll over, go back to sleep, and wait for the inevitable.
Of course, there are couple small practical problems with your specific plan. New Orleans isn't at the mouth of the Mississippi because a bunch of dumb French aristocrats thought living in the swamp sounded fun. People built a city on the mouth of a major river because it's a great port. Haven't you ever wondered why cities and towns are often built right next to navigable bodies of water? Boats are still the cheapest way to ship anything, especially internationally. You can't just rebuild a major historic port city twenty miles inland and expect it to thrive. Not until the international maritime fleets have largely been coverted into antigravity hoverboats, at least.
Thanks for stopping by.
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