Katrina NOT Gods wrath upon New Orleans
Posted by: henkf <henkf@...>
Katrina – NOT God’s wrath upon New Orleans
Surfing the net and perusing satellite channels in the aftermath of Katrina showed me a number of preachers shaking their fists as they described the wrath of God. That wrath has come, they told their attentive congregation, on the crest of a terrible storm named Katrina. God has shown his power and his might by smashing a wall of wind and water into cities along the Gulf Coast.
Strangely, some people gain comfort from this. Not that God has inflicted suffering on our neighbors. Comfort comes from the belief that God is in control. Things happen for a reason. We are not at the mercy of random forces of wind and weather. Only God can make a storm.
In an effort to find security and a sense of purpose we ascribe to God a terrible anger that lashes out from time to through a tsunami or earthquake or plague. God has been angered by our sinfulness and a price must be paid.
And we find biblical precedents. The story of Noah certainly portrays an angry God all too ready to unleash the forces of weather against obstinate people. And didn’t Sodom and Gomorrah get destroyed in a storm of fire and brimstone? And during the time of Elijah didn’t God use drought and famine to punish his people for their idolatry and injustice?
When big bad things happen it is hard not to believe that God is the cause. And because pain often feels like punishment, how can we help but ask what it is we have done to bring down the divine anger?
There is however another portrait of God found in the Bible.
It is the image offered by Jesus. God, according to Jesus, is like a loving parent. This parent is so attuned to the needs of creation that even the fall of a small sparrow is noticed. This same attention is also lavished on the human part of creation. “For God so loved the world,” Jesus said once.
This God whom Jesus tells us about is full of grace. He is like a farmer who hires people all day long to work in the fields. At the end of the day he pays those who have only worked one hour the same wage as those who worked all day.
This God whom Jesus tells us about knows anguish over the suffering and despair of the weak and vulnerable. Speaking for this God, Jesus said that only when we have cared for the “least of these” in this world can we claim to have known him.
Writing later in the life of the church the Apostle Paul asks rhetorically "what can separate us from the love of God." His answer is "nothing can separate us from God's love."
So how do we reconcile these two different views of God? Traditionally, for Christians, it has been our practice to allow Jesus to have the final say. And if that is true, then we must conclude that the storms that blow against us (the tsunamis and the Katrinas) are not from God. They are part of the natural order which follows a course of natural law.
But if God does not send the storm, where is God in the storm?
God is where God is always found--standing beside the weak and the broken, comforting those who have lost everything.
Somewhere a preacher was calling down the wrath of God. But God is not there. God is in New Orleans and Biloxi and Gulf Port, and other devastated cities, binding up the wounds of his hurting children. And He is waiting for you and for me to care and feed and house and “do unto the least…”
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