Where Did God Go?
Disasters tend to bring out both the best and worst in humanity. We have witnessed this in the devastation wrought by Katrina along the USA’s Gulf Coast. There have been tales of heroism, of selfless action on behalf of others, of compassion towards those who are suffering. And equally there was widespread looting, reports of armed gangs firing indiscriminately, and within the refuge of the Superdome, incidents of assaults, rapes and suicides.
It’s the same with theology. A catastrophe on this scale evokes both the best and the worst kinds of theological discourse. The worst generally take the form of interpreting disasters like Katrina in thoroughly Old Testament terms which picture God wreaking retribution upon disobedient and sinful people. Given the popular tendency towards simplistic and fundamentalist religious tenets, it is not surprising to read that Katrina has prompted an outpouring of this kind of theological rubbish.
I trawled through the Internet to discover a few examples, and was not altogether surprised to see that some Christians view the destruction of New Orleans in the same biblically simplistic terms as the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s all to do with homosexual sin apparently. Thus Repent America, an evangelical and fundamentalist organisation opined that it was no accident that New Orleans was destroyed just a few days before ‘Southern Decadence’, an annual homosexual celebration which attracts thousands of people to the city, was due to be held. According to the organisation’s press release this gay festival fills ‘ the French Quarters of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars’. Said Repent America’s director Michael Marcavage ‘Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city . . . New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin’. He prays piously, ‘From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge’.
As if this parody of Christianity is not bizarre enough, worse was to follow in a diatribe emanating from God Hates Fags, the homepage of Westboro Baptist Church, in language much of which I wouldn’t want to reproduce in this blog. Under the banner ‘Thank God for Katrina’ this website proclaims ‘America is irreversibly doomed. It is a sin to pray for the good of this evil fag nation’ and ‘It is a sin NOT to rejoice when God executes his wrath and vengeance upon America’. And it urges its readers to ‘pray for more dead bodies floating on the . . . rancid waters of New Orleans’. Here is an instance of the cynical exploitation of religion. In this rejoicing over Katrina’s destruction and praying for a rising death count, religion has ceased to be a force for good. Religion has become evil.
So where was God in all this destruction? The answer is that there are no answers except that at many points in life humanity is confronted by the silences, ambiguities and absences of God in the world. In the biblical narrative of creation God invests humanity with mastery over creation and expects humanity to take responsibility for it. He intervenes neither to prevent the catastrophes we engineer nor to punish us for them. That we suffer the results of bad choices we make and the bad planning we execute is well illustrated by this latest hurricane which exposed both our complicity in global warming and the American administration’s failure to protect and provide for its people.
The signs of God I saw in this catastrophe were in the kindness of strangers, in the way that ordinary people became ministering angels, in the solace being offered to the lost, the lonely and the heartbroken, in public displays of the heights that humanity can aspire to in its finest moments, in the indomitability of the human spirit in the presence of tragedy and chaos.
When the prophet Elijah had his dramatic personal encounter with God, God was nowhere to be found within the forces of nature. He was not present in the raging storm which tore the mountains, nor in the shattering earthquake which followed, nor in the consuming fire. God was discerned in something unexpectedly less destructive and judgemental. God inhabits sheer silence. That silence may have been the immense silence of the desert where the only sound to be heard is the sound of one’s own heartbeat. But it may also have been within the sublime silence of the human heart itself.
It’s the same with theology. A catastrophe on this scale evokes both the best and the worst kinds of theological discourse. The worst generally take the form of interpreting disasters like Katrina in thoroughly Old Testament terms which picture God wreaking retribution upon disobedient and sinful people. Given the popular tendency towards simplistic and fundamentalist religious tenets, it is not surprising to read that Katrina has prompted an outpouring of this kind of theological rubbish.
I trawled through the Internet to discover a few examples, and was not altogether surprised to see that some Christians view the destruction of New Orleans in the same biblically simplistic terms as the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s all to do with homosexual sin apparently. Thus Repent America, an evangelical and fundamentalist organisation opined that it was no accident that New Orleans was destroyed just a few days before ‘Southern Decadence’, an annual homosexual celebration which attracts thousands of people to the city, was due to be held. According to the organisation’s press release this gay festival fills ‘ the French Quarters of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars’. Said Repent America’s director Michael Marcavage ‘Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city . . . New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin’. He prays piously, ‘From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge’.
As if this parody of Christianity is not bizarre enough, worse was to follow in a diatribe emanating from God Hates Fags, the homepage of Westboro Baptist Church, in language much of which I wouldn’t want to reproduce in this blog. Under the banner ‘Thank God for Katrina’ this website proclaims ‘America is irreversibly doomed. It is a sin to pray for the good of this evil fag nation’ and ‘It is a sin NOT to rejoice when God executes his wrath and vengeance upon America’. And it urges its readers to ‘pray for more dead bodies floating on the . . . rancid waters of New Orleans’. Here is an instance of the cynical exploitation of religion. In this rejoicing over Katrina’s destruction and praying for a rising death count, religion has ceased to be a force for good. Religion has become evil.
So where was God in all this destruction? The answer is that there are no answers except that at many points in life humanity is confronted by the silences, ambiguities and absences of God in the world. In the biblical narrative of creation God invests humanity with mastery over creation and expects humanity to take responsibility for it. He intervenes neither to prevent the catastrophes we engineer nor to punish us for them. That we suffer the results of bad choices we make and the bad planning we execute is well illustrated by this latest hurricane which exposed both our complicity in global warming and the American administration’s failure to protect and provide for its people.
The signs of God I saw in this catastrophe were in the kindness of strangers, in the way that ordinary people became ministering angels, in the solace being offered to the lost, the lonely and the heartbroken, in public displays of the heights that humanity can aspire to in its finest moments, in the indomitability of the human spirit in the presence of tragedy and chaos.
When the prophet Elijah had his dramatic personal encounter with God, God was nowhere to be found within the forces of nature. He was not present in the raging storm which tore the mountains, nor in the shattering earthquake which followed, nor in the consuming fire. God was discerned in something unexpectedly less destructive and judgemental. God inhabits sheer silence. That silence may have been the immense silence of the desert where the only sound to be heard is the sound of one’s own heartbeat. But it may also have been within the sublime silence of the human heart itself.
posted by MichaelElliott @ 8:53 AM
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