Is God Angry?

By Neil Earle

Katrina. Rita. Gustav and Ike.

What are news events to many of us are names that will chill some American psyches for decades. The storms raking the American Gulf Coast these past few years provoke all kinds of responses, from “Was Al Gore Right?” to “Let’s move.”

Inevitably, active Christians try to make Biblical sense out of all this. Some can quickly arrive at what Professor Pam Scalise of Fuller Seminary scores as “the Retribution Doctrine.” This takes the form laid out in such Old Testament passages as Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 – God says to ancient Israel, you do this and I’ll do that. Keep my laws and you are blessed, break them and you will be cursed. Even the New Testament seems to buy into this with the apostle Paul’s dogmatic, “people reap what they sow” (Galatians 6:7).

The Retribution Doctrine can actually be studied as a separate and recognizable literary genre. America’s Puritan pioneers incarnated this theme into what some students of rhetoric call “the Jeremiad,” named after the forceful, graphic warnings of the Prophet Jeremiah. Professor Susan Manning explains: “External disasters which best the colonies were interpreted as God’s chastisement of his chosen people for backsliding; the New England ministry made full capital of Indian attacks, fires and epidemics in a series of ‘Jeremiads’ – fast-day and election-day sermons in which the people were exhorted to repent and reform” (The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, Volume 9, page 11).

The last flare-up of this occurred after September 11, 2001 when some in the conservative Christian community saw the attack on that day as God’s punishment for abortion, gay rights and Hollywood movies. Subsequent “clarifications” did little to erase the stain from Christianity.

Unfortunately, few remembered an article I had authored (I jest!) in 1993, shortly following the Northridge Earthquake titled, “Did California have it coming?” where similar themes were addressed. The Gulf Coast happens to be the home of many Christian-based ministries and thousands upon thousands of churches. That should make us think. Right there.

Even the Old Testament questions the infallible workings of the Retribution Doctrine. The Bible is a big book and the tit-for-tat and seemingly smug argumentation of books such as Proverbs need to be set aside the wisdom of the Book of Ecclesiastes which speaks pointedly that: “There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve” (Ecclesiastes 8:14). The rabbis used to joke that proverbs gives us the rules and Ecclesiastes the exceptions! Whole Psalms in the highly spiritual Book of Psalms seek to answer the seeker’s complaint as to why the wicked seem to escape scot-free so often. Why is it that Psalm 34:19 says “many are the afflictions of the righteous?”

This gives us liberty to blunt the sharp edges of the Retribution Doctrine.

No doubt there are cause and effect principles that work in life. My mother taught me to avoid injury while crossing the street by reciting what happened to one little boy. She did this in stern cause and effect terms. She took me to the kerbside and bore down on what could happen – cause and effect. Thanks, mom.

However, too much of a good thing is sometimes too much of a good thing. While some proclaim these “storms of the century” as the sure evidence of divine displeasure, it is salutary to connect with history. Anderson Cooper finally told his audience about the Galveston Storm of 1900 in which perhaps more than 6000 people died. This was apparently the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. Yet this disaster came at the beginning of what some have called “the American Century,” the rise of America to world paramountcy.

There is more. Historians Gary Nash and Julie Jeffrey cite that horrific event in 1900 as initiating the commission form of city government whereby a city manager and his/her team are responsible for the daily running of the municipality as opposed to the revolving-door city officials. Apparently over 400 cities soon adopted this principle (The American People, pages 725-726).

Christians might say: out of evil good can come. Grace notes are often found in the aftermath of tragedy and that is one stream of America’s Judaeo-Christian heritage that is worth preserving. Jesus, too, heard reports of towers falling and to those among his disciples who made the sin/traqedy equation an absolute it is worth studying his answer in Luke 13:1-6. He used such setbacks as an opportunity to teach about the uncertainly of our physical existence but he did not label victims of tragedy untoward sinners.

Similarly, when he encountered a blind man his disciples were quick to ask: “Who sinned? This man or his parents?” Again Jesus answered in a way that outflanked the Retribution Theory. Read it in John 9:1-7.

Of course, there is a proper time to apply the cause and effect principle, to ask what or whether our human activities or human encroachments are doing to intensify these disasters, whether the death of the barrier islands in New Orleans or the removal of sediment that could be diverted to restore coastal marshes. See Time magazine’s “The Flood Next Time” for more information (September 15, 2008, pages 32-33).

The point to remember is that great tragedies can stimulate Christian compassion and relief efforts. Paul writes that when one suffers we all suffer. Christians are not “death watch beetles” waiting longingly for tragedies to strike so as to hasten our Lord’s return. No, Jesus went about “doing good” (Acts 10:38) and his call still echoes to be about our Father’s business.