God's injustice, or ours?

Pastor Ken Klaus' Oct 29 Devotion was entitled "Maybe, Maybe Not."

In it, he spoke of how the story of Anne Frank deeply touched his heart. He spoke of how he saw a dramatic production of her diary where Anne is portrayed watching a wedding. Pastor Klaus says this image deeply tore at his heart, because he knew how her story ends. Then Pastor Klaus immediately launches into a religious lesson.

Good, he should do so, I say. If our religion isn't influenced by or has an answer to the worst horrors around it, how can it be either useful or from the divine? I myself was thinking, yes, I remember hearing about Corrie Ten Boom's sister was bald, naked, miserable, and lice-covered in an concentration camp. How can we think that anyone deserves such treatment, even today? (We do have our own concentration camps. Even liberal TV personalities joke about how something awful-sounding ought to be played to Guantanamo captives; Alabama prison officials are dreaming up new ways to torture inmates. )

The problem is that Pastor Klaus spoke of the injustice of God and not the injustice of people. He said that the holocaust that awaits unbelievers in hell is far worse than the holocaust of the Nazis. Again, he speaks of the injustice of God and not the injustice of people. This is the conservative heresy.

On the contrary, I say people are unjust and God is just. Suppose:

A nut on the street were to tell you a giant space dragon is angry at you, YES YOU, in that you are complacent with the torture and sexual humiliation of detainees at Guantanamo, but that he sent his only baby dragon to earth, and it too was tortured & killed at Guantanamo, and if only you believed in the dragon, he'd forgive you.

This is entirely different from what we have seen from Pastor Klaus:

There's a space dragon that has prepared a living hell for all the inhabitants of earth and the only way to survive is to pay tribute to its baby dragon.

I imagine you'd have an entirely different reaction to our two hypothetical nuts. Heaven and the promise of salvation are for people who are in hell because of their sins. For those who know they are living decent lives, you're not going to get very far with such a brick to the head. Carlton Pearson, a former evangelical preacher featured in a "This American Life" episode, said he used to turn to the person sitting next to him on airplanes and say, "You're going to hell." This is essentially what Pastor Klaus has done.

The order for Confession of Sins found in the red hymnal of the Lutheran Church- Missouri Synod says,

I confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee and justly deserved Thy temporal and eternal punishment.

This is a basis of witnessing.

As I've said before, in certain evangelical circles, Damnation is the primary problem and the Act of Believing is the primary solution. In a Theology of the Cross, Sin is the primary problem and the Cross is the primary solution.