I'm rewinding the tape a couple weeks to go back to a pair of posts. One was from John Piper on the bad tornado outbreak of early March from a somewhat hyper-Calvinist vantage point and a Internet Monk bashing of said post.
Who do we blame for such "Acts of God"? It's easy to give God credit when he's taking out your enemies; I recall Piper getting some rhetorical points when a tornado ripped through a liberal Lutheran church when the ECLA was meeting down the road from Piper in the Twin Cities. However, I don't see such put-the-fear-of-god-into-them with the most recent outbreak.
There's a non-trivial overlap between the Bible Belt and Tornado Alley. If this is God's vengeance, God must be a liberal Democrat, for He keeps whopping down stuff in red states.
On one end, we have your reformed-types who want to give God credit for everything, good, bad and ugly, lest that dreaded free will get into the mix. That can lead to a bad case of fatalism, for we can do nothing on our own. That makes sense from a salvation stand point, but from a day-to-day living standpoint, it can be discouraging, especially if circumstances don't seem to fit into any good plan for your good.
On the other end, we have your more Arminian crowd who puts the onus on the believer to get things done. When you couple that with a hands-on God of charismatic thought, you get a Word of Faith framework that gives God the credit and the faithless the blame; if you were truly faithful, God would bless you, and since you're not being blessed, you must not be faithful. That's not encouraging to the person struggling through things like bad health or depression.
Somewhere in the middle is a livable spot where things are. Not due to a lack of faith or a micromanagement from above, but just are. Rather than blame yourself or blame God, it might be more comforting to have bad things just happen.
Our faith then is walked out by making the best of whatever happens. When bleep happens, make some fertilizer out of it, getting things to grow despite the bleep.
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