In Theory:

The God of my Universalist ancestors was understood to be a loving, creative God — not a God of vengeance and violence. And it is personally enraging to hear that some would add “insult to injury” by heaping the burden of what is assumed to be divine dissatisfaction upon the wounds and sorrows of people already disastrously displaced.

Aside from being cruel, insensitive and unhelpful, such accusations make me wonder about the role of humility in our religious traditions. Are we really so in tune that we can be certain of God’s existence, will and reasoning? Are we really so mean-spirited that we would compound another’s sufferings with these self-serving “insights”?

We would do well to set aside such conjecture and turn our attentions instead to the sufferings that we are empowered to ease.

THE REV. STEFANIE ETZBACH-DALE

Unitarian Universalist Church of Verdugo Hills in La Crescenta

According to the same “some people” who say that Haiti’s earthquake was punishment by God for voodoo practices, Hurricane Katrina was punishment for sexual license and abortions in New Orleans; the Indian Ocean tsunami was God’s judgment against pleasure seekers on island vacations; the AIDS epidemic was God’s punishment for gay people; and Sept. 11 was God’s punishment for, well, you know, everything that’s wrong with America today.

OK. That’s it. I hereby decree that you must apply for a license in order to call yourself Christian. You have to prove that you actually love your neighbor — or can at least fake it. You have to take an oath not to label your personal agenda with the name of God. And if, in a time of unimaginable pain, grief and devastation, you open your mouth to pour down poison and shame on the heads of suffering people, your license to use the name “Christian” will be revoked.

Oh, wait; this is America — free speech and all. Besides, I don’t have time to personally oversee the licensing process, and I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it.

OK, new decree: From now on, the media who report these vile pronouncements can’t simply use the word “Christian” for the people who make them, without attaching a qualifying adjective, or string of adjectives: Radically Conservative Christians, or Morally Paranoid Christians, or Just Plain Nasty Christians.