Turning God into a deistic teddy bear

TGC 420 — On Cross Bearing - YouTube

"A lot of Christians will turn God into in into an inactive kind of deistic teddy bear by saying 'oh well no God doesn't uh you know...' like when Hurricane Katrina happened and lots of Christians were saying 'well this is because of the Mardi Gras' then you have the other Christians who come to the rescue and the Lutherans who come to the rescue and say 'well don't be an Enthusiast it's not because of Mardi Gras' ... Why not? Are you serious? I mean why we don't believe that God punishes, is it also because of your idolatry in your heart? Maybe you should examine that. I mean I I'm not saying that we that we are able to perfectly pinpoint everything and know the ways of God: the spirit blows where he wills and you know God holds the wind in his hand right, but at the same time we shouldn't act as if God doesn't punish as if He doesn't bring disasters because of because of sin. This wasn't questioned at all by Lutherans, and I wonder if it was actually after World War II when Christians started getting kind of weak on this. During the world wars it was very common to hear people talk about God's judgment on our country. War was seen as a judgment. It's really alarming that people are so reluctant to speak of God's punishment when afflictions happen."

...

Let us thank God for sparing us the greater punishment last night.