Brotherdan can't you see what is actually going on here? Amos is just one of many pre-exile prophets who saw the world from a childish perspective. The assumption was that good things happened to good people and vice-versa. The books of Psalms and Proverbs was full of this sort of stupidity.
So when bad things happened to the pious there had to be a reason and one of the OT answers was that they were being punished for not obeying god sufficiently. Its the same obnoxious attitude that Pat Robertson & his ilk resorted to at the times of the when the Asian Tsunami and the Haiti earthquake. Surely we are more intelligent than to view the world in such simplisitc terms?
Sadly its also the inevitable position of millions of evangelical christians who daily pray for the immediate death of billions. "come lord Jesus"
The god of the bible is a blood-thirsty monster and to say otherwise is an uphill strugggle for the believer's credulity