Thursday, September 01, 2005
BLAMING GOD
On the evening news yesterday there was an interview with a woman--a pastor of a Christian denomination, though I didn't catch which one. It doesn't matter. She made the claim that the devastation in New Orleans is the result of God's wrath, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was the result of His anger. This pastor spoke of once living in New Orleans and of having first-hand experience of what she was talking about. In her mind New Orleans is sin city extraordinare. While she was talking, clips of Mardi Gras were shown that illustrated her points. Alcohol, sexual promiscuity--in short a city that turned its back on God's laws.
Listening to her, I recalled a blog I had read recently which expressed horror that anyone could think this way--that anyone could blame God for what has happened. I recall it as one of Amy's blogs, but I've tried to find it again, and it's not there. Perhaps it was some other blog. In any event, commentors were all lined up against such thinking, some in stronger terms than others. Posters all condemned those who would say that this was God's fault or God's doing.
The September "New Oxford Review" came yesterday. In it is a guest editorial by Abbot Joseph, of Holy Transfiguration Monastery, a Byzantine rite monastery in California. In it Abbot Joseph talks about what God's compassion means:
To show compassion to the hungry is to give them food; to show compassion to the homeless and unemployed is to help them find housing and work. If you wish to be compassionate to the sick or elderly, comfort and assist them. But if you want to be like Jesus in showing compassion to sinners, invite them to repent.
Christ came into the world to save sinners. He didn't come to make sinners feel good about themselves or to instruct us on how to blur the distinction between good and evil...
Is it compassionate to gloss over the sinfulness that was such a part of New Orleans? Must we ignore the obvious connection in the Old Testament between transgressions and punishment? Must we deny that God is capable of wrath?
There are Catholics who answer "yes" to those questions--who refuse to make the connection between sin and punishment. Abbot Joseph writes:
Sometimes compassion is equated with a sort of nebulous, ineffectual "kindness," one that ends up refusing to let someone know that his soul is in danger. God's kindness is different: "Do you not know that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (Rom. 2:4). We are not being compassionate if we allow friends or loved ones to walk the broad path to perdition simply because we are too "kind" to upset them by attempting to awaken their consciences. Today's "kind and compassionate" people say that God loves us as we are, but I once heard a wise and necessary addition to that statement: "but He loves us too much to let us stay the way we are."
There is not likely to be one resident of New Orleans who is unchanged in any way as a result of Katrina.
On Tuesday the Governor of Louisiana called for a day of prayer. It took the kind of devastation we are seeing on the evening news for our society to allow a state governor to make that request. Once man discovers that he is powerless to save himself, he quickly turns to God.
Is God trying to get our attention? Does it take this degree of destruction and loss of life--this degree of helplessness--to persuade our culture to give Him His due? Will this wake-up call be adequate, or will there need to be another one?
If we are to deny that God punishes, will we also deny the Old Testament? The Book of Revelation? To deny that God may have sent the tragedy in New Orleans is to question His very sovereignty. Does God control the elements, or are they outside of His control? To place the elements beyond God's control would be to assume the role of a Deist--to believe that God set the world in motion and then withdrew. A Catholic believes that God is intimately connected with His creation, that He holds the world in His hands, that He sustains each individual life from moment to moment.
Could a God who cares for the lilies of the field be powerless to stop a raging storm? It seems unlikely. Jesus calmed the storm that frightened the apostles who were in a boat with Him. Jesus mastered the elements. Yet God did not master Katrina.
Frightening elements in our culture, elements of evil, we believe are the result of God's permissive will. If we place a hurricane within God's permissive will, we must then posit that some other entity or force is in charge of nature. Do we have any basis for such a claim? Did man cause Katrina? Did the devil? If not man or the devil, then who? In order to deny that Katrina was God's doing, must we invent new doctrine?
It is often said that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Yet the God being championed by those who would deny His hand in the destructive elements of nature also by default deny that we have anything to fear from God. When we abandon fear of the Lord, we relegate God to a background position. He becomes a pet God; a predictable God who defines goodness in terms of human earthly well being; a God that we can control. Such a God is inferior to man. The Lord of history was never such.
