TurretinFan interprets the lightning.

f light­ning strikes a tree, how do we know that it is ran­dom; where­as, if light­ning strikes an image of Christ, that is God’s judg­ment against idol­a­try? Per­haps Tur­ret­inFan, who is the lat­est to inter­pret the light­ning, will say that even the tree was not struck ran­dom­ly, and that its destruc­tion was ordained by God before all eter­ni­ty. Mr. X is a Calvin­ist, and Calvin­ists do not blow their nose unless it had been decreed by the God­head. But sure­ly God is not blast­ing with right­eous judg­ment every tree that gets struck. No, Mr X might say, but God does have a pur­pose in strik­ing the tree, even though we may not be able to dis­cern it. Nev­er­the­less, TF believes he can dis­cern the pur­pose of God when the image of Jesus is struck. This is selec­tion to suit a pre-made the­ol­o­gy: When some­thing Mr. X does not like is struck by light­ning, God is affirm­ing him in his dis­like. (Nev­er mind all the images of Jesus that don’t get struck.) When some­thing Mr. X is neu­tral about is struck, God just has His own pur­pos­es that are mys­te­ri­ous. If light­ning should strike Mr. X, would it be because God had final­ly grown weary of his blog, too?

Mr. X is par­tic­u­lar­ly struck (no pun intend­ed) with the fact that this is the sec­ond time the large stat­ue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro has been blast­ed by light­ning. God must real­ly be try­ing to make a point. The first time, there was no dam­age to the stat­ue. This time, its fin­ger was struck off.

Now, as it hap­pens, there is a pho­to­graph of this lat­est act of God. One hun­dred feet tall, sit­ting high atop the city at the peak of the Cor­do­va moun­tains, with its arms out­stretched that way, the stat­ue looks to me to be an invi­ta­tion to light­ning. In fact, there is a light­ning rod near by, but per­haps is not well-placed enough. Per­haps the promi­nent stat­ue inter­cepts the light­ning on its way to the rod. Who knows? Who cares? Light­ning strikes objects all the time, but when it is a reli­gious stat­ue, sud­den­ly Mr. X’s atten­tion is divert­ed from Ergun Caner long enough for him to prog­nos­ti­cate about the mean­ing behind it all and wag his fin­ger at graven images.

“The idol can­not pro­tect itself from light­ning!” Mr. X cries, as if any­one believed it can. And there­in lies a key mis­take that Calvin­ists make when con­demn­ing Catholics for their “idol wor­ship.” The assump­tion is that we think the reli­gious objects, as objects, have pow­er. The assump­tion is that we attribute God’s pow­er to the mate­r­i­al thing. But we do not. We know just as well as Mr. X does that the stat­ue can­not save us or answer our prayers. We know just as well as he that a cru­ci­fix is not a tal­is­man. What it does do is help focus our atten­tion on the God who is mere­ly rep­re­sent­ed (not replaced) by the object. God does not have to prove He has more pow­er than the stat­ue by strik­ing off its fin­ger, because no one sus­pect­ed that it had any pow­er in the first place.

Nev­er­the­less, Mr. X finds the whole inci­dent sim­i­lar to the one told of in 1 Samuel 5:1–5:

And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenez­er unto Ash­dod. When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. And when they of Ash­dod arose ear­ly on the mor­row, behold, Dagon was fall­en upon his face to the earth before the ark of the Lord. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again. And when they arose ear­ly on the mor­row morn­ing, behold, Dagon was fall­en upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the thresh­old; only the stump of Dagon was left to him. There­fore nei­ther the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon’s house, tread on the thresh­old of Dagon in Ash­dod unto this day.

Mr. X does not exact­ly say why this pas­sage is rel­e­vant in this con­text. No light­ning or cause of the destruc­tion of Dagon is men­tioned in this pas­sage. More­over, Dagon is not Yah­weh but a dif­fer­ent object of wor­ship alto­geth­er. Final­ly, Dagon is top­pled the first time and utter­ly destroyed the sec­ond. Where­as, in Rio, no dam­age occurred on the first strike of light­ning, and Jesus only lost a fin­ger the sec­ond time. If God sent the light­ning, as Mr. X claims, as a judg­ment upon idol­a­try, why would He not have blast­ed the stat­ue in Rio to bits? Why is light­ning not blast­ing stat­ues of Mary all over the Catholic land­scape? If God want­ed to make a point, why do so in a way that has all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of ran­dom hap­pen­stance?

No attempt is made to con­sid­er such ques­tions; we are meant to accept Mr. X’s dec­la­ra­tion that this is the judg­ment of God, based upon noth­ing oth­er than Mr. X’s own ipse dix­it.

That is not good enough. Unless Mr. X can explain how he is so sure this par­tic­u­lar light­ning strike has a the­o­log­i­cal mean­ing, where­as light­ning strikes against trees are inscrutable; unless he can explain why 99.9% of all reli­gious objects are left untouched by destruc­tion, yet the ones that are destroyed show the wrath of God; then he is just an anony­mous blog­ger in an an uniden­ti­fied base­ment, indis­tin­guish­able from Pat Robert­son, claim­ing the­o­log­i­cal vin­di­ca­tion at ran­dom events.