Did God Send a Tornado to Warn the ELCA?

Don Heatley over at Creatio Ex Nihilo posted an interesting blog today. You can read it at http://www.donheatley.com/2009/08/so-we-still-believe-in-a-storm-god-1.html.

Although I have tremendous respect for John Piper, I can't help but wonder, along with Don, about the obvious problems associated with Piper's theology. An argument that God, motivated by anger over humanity's sin, orchestrates natural disasters to warn or punish us, paints a picture not of a God of love, but a God of wrath; and frankly, I struggle with that picture.

Too many innocent lives have been lost in natural disasters that occur all to frequently for me to place the blame for those kinds of events on a God who according to Elijah, wasn't in the fire, wasn't in the quake, wasn't in the wind, but was in the whisper.