Theology 101

There are certain religious leaders in this country who like to say that catastrophes are God's way of smiting us for one thing or another. After Katrina, for example, they said the storm was the lord's way of punishing New Orleans (ignoring that Mississippi was hit even harder by the storm's full fury) for that city's lax attitude toward morals in general and gays in particular. The idiots known as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell once said the 9-11 attacks were God's way of punishing us for giving gays more rights. And then there's the assholes at Westboro Baptist church who like to show up at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with protest signs saying that the wars are God's punishment for America giving gays more legal rights.

If you ask me, religious leaders spend a suspicious amount of time thinking about homosexuals, but that's a post for another day.

So how do they explain what's been happening in the south during the last 24 hours or so? Massive storms have hit a number of southern states, spawning numerous tornadoes, and killing dozens of people in Tennessee and Arkansas.

America's south is known for being very conservative and pious. Heck, that's why it's called the Bible belt. If there's on thing these people hate it's lax morals. Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, who recently suggested that the U.S. Constitution should be changed to better reflect "God's laws," even served as governor of Arkansas for several terms.

So then why is God punishing the south? Shouldn't he have sent those tornadoes to where the gay people are, like Massachusetts and California? What happened? Was it a shipping error? Bad intelligence? Did His GPS malfunction? Why does God even need GPS? If He made the Earth in six days, shouldn't he pretty much know the place like the back of his hand? Does God even have hands? How does He keep them busy? Aren't idle hands the devil's tools?

Guess the lord really does work in mysterious ways.