Tornados and Twitter Timing
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Pastor John, you were in the process
00:00:08.080 | of moving to Tennessee the week
00:00:09.200 | of the Moore, Oklahoma tornado.
00:00:10.660 | And in the last podcast, we talked about the pastoral side
00:00:13.840 | of why you address natural disasters.
00:00:16.400 | In this episode, I want to address those
00:00:17.900 | who agree with your theology.
00:00:19.220 | They agree that God ordains all that comes to pass,
00:00:22.620 | even a category five tornado for the millions
00:00:26.000 | of good and glorious ripple effects
00:00:28.220 | that will ultimately result because of this tragedy.
00:00:31.960 | But they disagree with your timing.
00:00:34.140 | When you write blogs or post Twitter updates
00:00:36.420 | in the midst of the destruction,
00:00:37.920 | what would you say to these individuals?
00:00:40.320 | - Right, that's a good question.
00:00:42.280 | So let me give just a bigger picture
00:00:45.960 | and then I'll be very specific in the way
00:00:47.880 | to answer that question about how I feel
00:00:50.040 | about those couple of tweets and that timing.
00:00:54.160 | There are at least four reasons as I've thought about this,
00:00:58.300 | why people might oppose saying something
00:01:02.560 | about the sovereignty and goodness of God
00:01:05.300 | in the midst of calamity.
00:01:07.560 | Number one, they just don't agree with it.
00:01:10.240 | And you're not addressing that person,
00:01:11.820 | but I'm gonna mention that person anyway.
00:01:13.700 | They don't agree with it.
00:01:15.820 | They don't think God is sovereign in the sense
00:01:20.380 | that he's ruling the wind and governing nature
00:01:25.380 | so that who is killed and who's not killed
00:01:30.160 | is decided ultimately by God.
00:01:32.440 | They just don't believe that.
00:01:34.360 | I heard a sermon recently that said that explicitly.
00:01:39.360 | That this world is cursed, the pastor said,
00:01:42.560 | which of course is true.
00:01:44.040 | It's replaced the creative world with a cursed world.
00:01:46.960 | And all those bad things are owing to the curse.
00:01:50.160 | Well, my answer to that is yes, they are.
00:01:53.460 | And God is the one who subjected the world to futility.
00:01:56.520 | And not only that, he didn't just do it like a clockmaker
00:01:59.200 | who said, okay, I'm gonna make this clock go bad now.
00:02:02.700 | And then steps back and watches the clock go bad.
00:02:05.340 | He is involved in nature, as the Bible says,
00:02:09.060 | everywhere repeatedly governing the natural processes
00:02:12.200 | like Jesus stopping the storm so that the disciples say,
00:02:16.060 | well, who then is this who rules,
00:02:17.560 | who commands the winds and the waves and they obey him,
00:02:20.040 | which he does in Oklahoma as well as Israel.
00:02:22.800 | So that's first.
00:02:23.640 | They might just disagree entirely
00:02:25.280 | with my view of God's sovereignty.
00:02:27.120 | Number two, they might think that the way you say it
00:02:32.120 | is helpful or unhelpful.
00:02:34.720 | So you might say, you might choose language like,
00:02:37.960 | God killed your children, that's really harsh.
00:02:40.860 | Or you might say, God took your children,
00:02:43.480 | that's a little softer.
00:02:44.800 | Or you might say, your children are gone
00:02:47.800 | and God is still sovereign.
00:02:49.040 | You hear the different flavors and nuances
00:02:52.240 | in each of those.
00:02:53.520 | It's how you say things really matters.
00:02:55.720 | So what I said, the two tweets that I tweeted were,
00:02:59.280 | number one, I quoted Job 119,
00:03:02.240 | your sons and daughters were eating
00:03:05.680 | and a great wind struck the house and it fell upon them
00:03:09.360 | and they are dead.
00:03:11.040 | And what I meant and hoped by that would be
00:03:16.340 | that the raw biblical statement that it happened to Job
00:03:20.820 | who was blameless and upright and feared God
00:03:23.100 | and turned away from evil and was not a bad man,
00:03:25.660 | that it happened to him is that we would all say,
00:03:29.100 | there it did, it's again, again, again, they're dead,
00:03:32.080 | they're dead, it happened to Job, it happened to us.
00:03:34.660 | Oh God, how long?
00:03:36.020 | In other words, just the raw factuality was expressed.
00:03:39.580 | And then secondly, five minutes later,
00:03:41.260 | I tweeted, then Job rose, this is Job 120,
00:03:44.820 | Jen Job rose, tore his robe, shaved his head,
00:03:48.060 | fell on the ground and worshiped.
00:03:50.820 | And my heart in this was,
00:03:52.620 | this is what parents are doing in Moore, Oklahoma.
00:03:55.640 | They're not discussing, they're not preaching,
00:03:57.500 | they're not reading books, they're tearing their hair out.
00:04:00.580 | They're pulling on their clothes,
00:04:02.920 | they're falling on the ground and weeping their eyes out.
00:04:07.260 | And by grace, many of them are worshiping as they weep.
00:04:12.220 | That was the gist,
00:04:13.380 | that was the point of trying to just say
00:04:16.740 | what I believed was happening for many.
00:04:21.060 | And I know Tony beyond the shadow of doubt
00:04:24.660 | that weeping and worshiping go together.
00:04:28.420 | I've experienced it, I've watched people experience it,
00:04:31.340 | Job experienced it, so that's number two.
00:04:34.420 | A person might simply say, you didn't say it helpfully.
00:04:37.940 | Third, the timing might be off.
00:04:40.740 | That's the one you mentioned.
00:04:42.420 | And surely that's a crucial consideration.
00:04:45.260 | I mean, that's why Ecclesiastes 3 is written, right?
00:04:48.220 | For everything there is a season,
00:04:49.940 | a time to be born, a time to die, a time to weep,
00:04:52.660 | a time to laugh, a time to mourn, a time to dance.
00:04:56.280 | And if you get it wrong, you can really be hurtful.
00:05:00.220 | And the last one is a person might disagree
00:05:03.580 | or disapprove of what you say
00:05:06.060 | because the medium is just not the right place.
00:05:08.860 | In other words, Twitter is just not a good medium
00:05:11.780 | that can bear the weight of such serious issues.
00:05:14.220 | I think some people would say that.
00:05:16.780 | So looking back, here's my answer to your question.
00:05:20.020 | Looking back, especially on those last three,
00:05:23.300 | the way you say it, the time you say it,
00:05:25.220 | the medium you say it,
00:05:26.340 | I wish that those three had been perceived by me
00:05:31.700 | differently than I perceive them in the moment.
00:05:33.860 | I think the way I said it was fairly raw
00:05:38.860 | and I get help from that, but not everybody does.
00:05:41.180 | The timing was immediate.
00:05:43.020 | It was 11 o'clock that night and the medium was risky,
00:05:47.500 | Twitter, because you can't hear any tone of voice,
00:05:50.060 | you can't get a broader explanation.
00:05:53.140 | It finds people in situations that are all over the map.
00:05:56.460 | So while I love the truth that I spoke
00:05:58.820 | and I believe in it with all my heart
00:06:00.500 | and it gives me help in the midst of my calamity
00:06:03.700 | and gives many people help,
00:06:04.780 | I think that was a misjudgment on my part
00:06:07.620 | and I'm sorry that I did it.
00:06:09.980 | I pulled them down, but I pulled them down way too late
00:06:12.700 | and so it caused all the ruckus that it did
00:06:16.020 | and I just hope the Lord will take all that
00:06:18.900 | and turn it for good.
00:06:20.700 | I'm sure that this will happen again.
00:06:22.940 | That is, I hope that I won't judge
00:06:27.780 | and then misjudge, I mean misjudge
00:06:29.860 | and then pull things down again.
00:06:31.340 | I hope I can avoid that.
00:06:32.900 | Oh, by the way, there's another lesson I learned.
00:06:36.260 | I mean, I knew it, but this taught me it.
00:06:38.660 | I don't think Twitter is ever designed
00:06:41.620 | to do tweets back to back.
00:06:43.660 | That's just a bad idea.
00:06:45.180 | I blew it when I said, okay, I'll get the people
00:06:48.260 | to understand tweet number one by reading tweet number two.
00:06:52.180 | The medium is not designed for that.
00:06:54.860 | I think the reason I tweet is because I think God himself
00:06:59.420 | is a tweeter in the book of Proverbs
00:07:01.980 | and that he means for those Proverbs to be self-standing
00:07:07.180 | and if you can't make yourself relatively clearly understood
00:07:12.180 | or appropriately provocative in one tweet,
00:07:16.060 | you better just not tweet.
00:07:17.340 | You better use a blog or something else.
00:07:19.820 | So I think I made a big mistake in trying to put two
00:07:22.900 | back to back and hoping they would be coherent
00:07:25.500 | and of course people can separate them out
00:07:27.940 | and then that doesn't work anymore.
00:07:30.780 | - Thank you, Pastor John, for addressing these topics
00:07:34.180 | and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:07:36.260 | If you have questions, please email those
00:07:37.980 | to askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:07:40.500 | At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands
00:07:42.260 | of other free resources from John Piper.
00:07:44.380 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:45.300 | Thanks for listening.
00:07:46.340 | (upbeat music)
00:07:48.920 | (upbeat music)
00:07:51.500 | [BLANK_AUDIO]