God and Weather

A person would have to be one of Rip Van Winkle’s progeny to not be aware of the unprecedented number of natural disasters that have afflicted our nation during the past couple of months: wildfires, tornadoes, and flooding. If you think this is going to be about global warming, surprisingly it is not.

In the past, we’ve heard the reflexive proclamations by Pat Robertson, John Piper, Daniel Blair, Mike Heath, and others of similar visibility and theological view that certain natural disasters were warnings from God, as examples of God’s anger being directed at the sinful among us. Of course, in their minds, the ‘sin’ was that some people are homosexual, that some denominations were rising above the anti-homosexual agenda, and that (in their minds) some locales seemed to be havens of promiscuity.

So when New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, it was God’s wrath being directed upon that city. When Minneapolis was struck by a tornado in 2009 at the same time that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was meeting to discus, among other things, the suggestion to allow ordained gay clergy to serve its member churches, it was described as a “warning” from God “to turn from the approval of sin.” When Haiti was devastated by an earthquake, the declaration is that it was God’s wrath because two centuries ago the Haitian people sold their soul to the devil. Earthquakes in the San Francisco area were also declared to be evidence of God’s hatred of sinful people. When Maine was experiencing bad weather and a resultant potato blight, it was declared to be caused by same-sex marriage.

Of course, when it was pointed out that at the same time of the Minneapolis tornado communities in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana were struck no interpretation was forthcoming. When it was pointed out that many other communities – along with their churches – were destroyed by Katrina, no interpretation was forthcoming. When it was noted that an earthquake devastated Lisbon in 1755 and an estimated 60,000 people, mostly Christians, were killed by the quake and resulting tsunami, no interpretation was forthcoming. And the great potato famine that pushed many Irish persons to the brink of starvation goes equally ignored.

You get the picture. Natural disasters are equal opportunity destroyers. Churches are destroyed along with bars. Bookstores that sell Bibles are destroyed as well as porn shops. Christians lose their lives at the same time as atheists lose theirs. And (please forgive me for using these wretched, disdain-filled labels) the lives of ‘conservative’ Christians are devastated to the same degree as are the lives of ‘liberal’ Christians.

Americans – and many others in the world – have the most unfettered access to information the world has ever known. Anyone with an awareness of the natural world in which we live knows simply by observation that Jesus’ words ring true: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” [Matthew 5:45a]

I always wonder why any media outlets of repute bother giving these ‘angry God’ peddlers the exposure their egos so desperately want. And it shocks me beyond description when I hear Christian people repeat any such proclamations as if they have some measure of validity simply because they were spouted by a high-visibility person that’s hooked in with a network of radio stations.

That’s what I think. What do you think?