If God sent us a message, would you know what it meant?

How about the following:

Collapse of Brazil church roof kills 9

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia, and Sao Paulo, Brazil — Fire department officials in Sao Paulo sorted through tons of debris Monday as they tried to determine what caused the roof of an evangelical church packed with worshipers to collapse just as evening service ended, and the toll in the disaster climbed to nine dead and 113 injured.

Inspectors theorized that the Sunday collapse of the building owned by Renascer, one of Brazil’s fastest-growing evangelical sects, may have been caused by the weight of air-conditioning ducts.

Rescue officials worked late into Sunday night pulling victims from the ruins of the neo-Pentecostal church, a converted movie theater built in the 1950s in the middle-class Cambuci neighborhood. All of those killed were women. 

The collapse occurred as 600 people were filing out of a service that included a videoconference address from church founders in the United States. Without warning, tons of roofing material fell on top of the assemblage.

Now, if this was a message from God how would you interpret it? That God disapproves of air-conditioning? That God doesn’t like it when too many people pack into one of his churches? Maybe those nine women were not being submissive enough, as made plain by 1 Timothy 2:11-12: “Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.”

Or how about the interpretation of Patricia Madi Farelli?

Patricia Madi Farelli, 19, told Globo television that she and her mother arrived late to the service after a stop for coffee. As she stepped from her car, she heard a noise that sounded like a “hurricane.”

“The dust came up. I wanted to go in and help people, but my mother wouldn’t let me,” said Farelli, who on Monday passed leaflets asking for blood donations. “God saved us. Maybe with a cup of coffee.”

Ah ha! That must be it! God selectively chose Farelli and her mother to save from a catastrophe that He knew was going to happen rather than “miraculously” saving everybody – not even, say, by using His mastery over the laws of physics to hold the roof up at least until everyone exited the building – which they were in the process of doing when it collapsed. No – according to Farelli, she and her mother are extra special in God’s eyes, the people who were merely injured by the falling debris kinda special, and the 9 killed deserved what was coming to them. Or, maybe in an even more twisted sense of logic, God saved Farelli and her mother so that they could solicit blood donations for all of those other people He decided not to save. How special.

Perhaps God caved the roof in on this Church as a sign that He disapproves of this particular brand of Christianity and is warning others to stay away from neo-Pentecostalism and return to the One True Church (whatever that is)!

Or maybe this is really a sign from Vishwakarma, the Hindu God of Architecture, that he simply will not allow such sloppy building practices to go unpunished.

How much do you want to bet that Farelli has not even considered these last two interpretations? Leave your chips along with your comments – the odds here look pretty good.