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Is NPR perhaps also responding to the public attention that another
passenger on that same flight has already gotten?

Now might be a good time to reread Lincoln's second inaugural address,
available at <http://www.nps.gov/linc/memorial/inscript.htm#second>. As I
read it, I suppose it is questionable whether he intended, in the fourth and
next-to-the-last paragraph of his address, to suggest that divine will had
brought the war on both the North and the South only due to the guilt of the
South, or because both were in some measure guilty of the offense of
slavery. Lincoln's own religious leanings may be a puzzle. Upon his
assassination, some would have nearly beatified him. Friends protested that
he was a committed deist, and did not call himself a Christian. It does not
appear that he would have put himself in either of the same camps as Falwell
or Robertson. But his second inaugural address seems to state a belief "that
he gives to both North and South this terrible war".

Another historic ruler, David ben Jesse, king over Israel, had his own son,
Absalom, foment an insurrection against him. As David fled Jerusalem, Shimei
came out and cursed him, saying that this insurrection was divine punishment
for all the spilled blood of the house of Saul (the previous king of
Jerusalem). David's men were ready to kill Shimei, but David would not have
them do so. The account can be read in 2 Samuel 16. However, on his death
bed, he instructed Solomon to see that Shimei died a bloody death in 1 Kings
2. While Solomon would have allowed Shimei to live under certain terms, but
Shimei did not hold to those terms, at the cost of his life.

That one's personal or even national calamities may be divine judgment is an
ancient notion. One should be careful about assuming this to be the case, as
Job's good friends and miserable counselors did, something easy to do when
the troubles are someone else's. But neither should the question be
dismissed out of hand by those who believe that there is such a thing as
divine justice. For another perspective on this, see Luke 13:1-5. For those
who do not limit their attention to the New Testament, some attention to and
careful reading of the "minor prophets" (the twelve shorter ones) of the
Hebrew Bible, especially Amos and Habakkuk (who lived when Jerusalem was
falling to the Babylonians), could be thought-provoking. They can probably
all be read in a decent translation in about five or six hours, although
pondering them can apparently go on indefinitely.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com
I have a feeling that some who disagree
may suggest I go some place further away than Afghanistan

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