[Vision2020] Katrina as the Wrath of God?

[Nick Gier]

Hail to the Vision:

This column will be submitted to The Sandpoint Reader and New West on-line, 
but I wanted you to be the first to read it, that is, if you are 
interested.  It is, in part, an answer to Ed Iverson's last column, which 
appeared to reduce human responsibility to almost zero.   Nick Gier

THE GOOD LORD JUST DONE GAVE US A WHUPPIN'!
KATRINA AS THE WRATH OF GOD?

         Protestors outside the national headquarters of the Gay, Lesbian, 
Bisexual, and Transgendered Alliance held signs such as "Thank God for 
Katrina" and "New Orleans: City of Sinners and Sodomites."
         A Mississippian interviewed on NPR just after Katrina hit 
exclaimed that "The Good Lord just done gave us a whuppin'," but the 
Governor of Texas declared that "By the grace of God we were saved."  What, 
for God's sake, is going on here?
         Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the wicked get 
away with murder and the innocent die in disasters such as Katrina and 
September 11?
Following Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the protestors above claim to 
have a pat answer: all of us are being punished for the sins of a 
few.  Most of us, however, are repulsed by such an outrageous and poisonous 
diagnosis.
         My first philosophy of religion textbook contained a footnote that 
showed a long term study of tornado damage in the Bible Belt.  Far more 
churches were hit than bars and houses of prostitution.  If these are "acts 
of God," what on earth is God trying to tell us?
         The problem of evil has bedeviled philosophers and theologians for 
at least three millennia.  It is most cited reason by those who do not 
believe in God.  But even most believers are not willing to admit that God 
judges us with such horrendous violence.  This makes God a moral monster.
         In Agatha Christie's Then There Were None, one of the characters 
opines that those who had been murdered were "struck down of the wrath of 
God."  Justice Wargrave was not convinced: "Providence leaves the work of 
conviction and chastisement to us mortals."  Ironically, it was Wargrave 
who planned all the murders!
         Let us see if we can actually reconcile belief in God with the 
existence of unmitigated evils. The first thing to note is that Justice 
Wargrave is a good Confucian or Stoic in holding the doctrine of General 
Providence.  In this view God presides over a world that operates by 
natural laws and in which humans govern their own affairs.  Most people 
don't realize that this is the view that Darwin held in the first edition 
of the Origin of Species.
         On the other hand, the Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, 
and Islam-- believe in Special Providence.  This means that God chooses 
particular prophets or saviors that embody divine authority, and God then 
intervenes in history as an expression of divine will and judgment.
         Philosophers and theologians make a distinction between moral 
evils and natural evils.  The first is the result of humans choosing to do 
good or evil.  For orthodox Christians the prototypical moral evil was Adam 
and Eve's choice to disobey God in the Garden of Eden.  All the other evil 
in the world started with this fatal decision.
Natural or physical evil is defined as that which is not the result of any 
human will: disease (both physical and mental) and natural disasters.  In a 
theology in which God is all powerful, it can only be God who wills these 
conditions and events to happen.
Even though some Christian legislators in Oklahoma tried to change the 
language of their insurance law, calling natural disasters "acts of God" is 
correct orthodox theology.  The Oklahoma law makers, however, recognized 
the logical implication of such a view: it made God responsible for what 
all of us would call evil acts.
I suspect that the Oklahoma legislators really wanted to say that Satan 
causes all the evil in the world.  But this is the heresy of Manicheanism, 
a view that compromises God's power by holding that there is another cosmic 
power that is the source of evil.
Following the Book of Job, where it is clear that Satan operates only with 
the permission and delegated power of God, Christian theologians have 
consistently declared that even Satan is empowered by God.
Martin Luther expressed the point most clearly: "Since God moves and does 
all, we must take it that he moves and acts even in Satan and the godless; 
. . . evil things are done with God himself setting them in motion."
How do Christian theologians justify God doing evil?  Here is the 
rationale: God cannot abide the moral evils committed by humans, so God 
must show that justice must prevail.  Causing natural disasters are simply 
dramatic previews of the Last Judgment, when divine justice will finally be 
done.  If God is performing justice, then God is doing good not evil.  We 
would call a judge who let all criminals off the hook a bad judge, wouldn't we?
Let's take a closer look at this solution to the problem of evil.  There is 
something important that has been forgotten.  When the theologian Augustine 
discussed the Fall of Adam and Eve, he made a very interesting concession: 
"our first parents fell into disobedience because they were already 
secretly corrupted."
Adam and Eve were already corrupted because they had "deficient 
wills."  But who was responsible for their deficient wills?  They could be 
only if they had created themselves.  The only answer is that God created 
them finite, fragile, and corruptible.
An engineer friend of mine was once hired by an auto insurance company to 
analyze the steel in a broken drive shaft. He discovered that it was some 
of the cheapest steel that Chrysler could have bought for this crucial part 
of the chassis. Now it would have been absurd for Chrysler's attorneys to 
state that the company was responsible for the positive elements of the 
steel but not its deficiencies.
At the same time it would be unfair to demand that the steel manufacturer 
make sure that there were no deficiencies at all. This we could demand 
solely of an omnipotent Creator. As the exclusive manufacturer of all 
natural things, the orthodox God is fully responsible for the deficiencies 
in his products.
I submit that General Providence is a much more coherent view if people are 
going to continue their belief in God.  The Confucians and Stoics also 
believed that God is not a Creator.  Rather, God is coeternal with a 
universe that operates according to natural laws and contains rational 
beings that freely choose their own destinies.
Following Justice Wargrave, we are solely responsible for our own 
"convictions and chastisements." Instead of blaming God, we can focus on a 
president who refuses to admit to global warming, who appoints unqualified 
people to important offices, and who gives tax cuts to people who don't 
need them.
Blame must also be laid at the feet of a Congress that has for years 
refused to fund necessary infrastructure repairs and maintenance.  Finally, 
Louisiana and New Orleans government officials are responsible for not 
being prepared for the big storm they knew was coming.  And God had nothing 
to do with it.
Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 
years.  For more on these issues see www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/305/home.htm.

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