God and the Aids Crisis

After all the years we have been dealing with the AIDS problem and how it originated, society still seems to be polarized into two opposing viewpoints.  Many Christians still see AIDS as God’s judgment upon homosexuals who refuse to abandon their lifestyle (the vast majority of all new cases come from practicing homosexuals and promiscuous heterosexual practices). The opposing view says God has nothing to do with the AIDS problem whatever and if He did, who would want to serve a God who wreaks such physical devastation on His subjects. 
I would suggest a third view.  Suppose a parent continually warned his child against playing in the street. But the child, enjoying the forbidden habit, paid no attention to his father’s commands and was eventually struck by a passing car. Would it be fair to blame the parent for the damage done to the child?  Hardly! And yet Scripture is filled with warnings against both homosexual practices and sexual promiscuity. Our loving God has always known what we are just finding out—that, among other things, these are both dangerous practices which He has long pleaded for us to avoid. But we are living in an “enlightened” age where Scripture is no longer looked upon as authoritative, but rather as a quaint relic from a superstitious past.  God has been relegated to the mythical and religion is seen as a carry-over from more primitive times. And as long as this view continues to hold sway over the more “enlightened” we will also continue to see more “rebellious children killed in traffic.”
On the other hand, one of the implications of this view is that we who respect the authority of Scripture can not stand by and smugly say “I told you so.”  That attitude is nowhere commended in the Word of God. Instead, as in every case where the careless sowing of wild seed produces a terrible harvest, God’s children must be ready to act with pity and compassion. If our loving Father doesn’t distinguish between sins, neither should His children distinguish between those who receive our compassion and those who do not.