Last week, a gas leak caused a strip club in Springfield, MA to explode, decimating the building and injuring 21 people. According to local pastor Scott Lively, all this was an answer to his prayers.
“We are giving Him all the glory and praise for this occurrence, since it is only by His power that any of our prayers can have any effect,” Lively wrote in a post titled ‘SCORES and the Power of Imprecatory Prayer.’ “We also thank God that no one was seriously injured in this blast, though it was enormous.”
So to be clear, in Lively’s calculus, the injury of twelve firefighters responding valiantly to an emergency call after an “enormous” explosion is a small price to pay for the destruction of a strip club. Of course, that’s not all that happened.
Though nobody was killed in the explosion, a number of people – including over a dozen firefighters and several police officers and utility workers – were hurt, and many more were left homeless.
Even that’s not all, though.
The explosion also dealt a devastating blow to the Square One Children’s Center at 155 Chestnut St. In the wake of the explosion, Square One officials scrambled to find new childcare placements for 98 children.
If Scott Lively wants to share credit with God for the destruction of a strip club, he’s also signing up to take the blame for everything else.
Frankly, a person like Lively is hardly worth taking seriously, or even listening to at all. However, he is useful as a cautionary tale. Don’t be like this, folks.
