Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 1, 1993 TAG: 9307290054
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In one poll, 20 percent of respondents said they believe the nation is being judged for its wickedness. News reports say some people calling radio talk shows in St. Louis figure the approval of riverboat gambling accounts for the floods.
Certainly, there is a long and honored biblical tradition of seeing God's hand at work in the vicissitudes of nature.
The story of "The Flood" is probably the best-known example.
You remember Noah - the last righteous man in a world of wickedness. God spared him and his family - and all those animals - in the Ark while the Earth was cleansed by the waters.
Then God promised never to do that again, renewing his pledge every time the rainbow appears.
Whether you believe the description is literally true or not, it is a wonderful story with parallels in numerous religious traditions.
But that story and others like it also have caused problems since the time they were first told.
One of those lies in trying to decipher every natural disaster in terms of its punishment quotient.
Were the floods of 1985 here brought on by the wrath of God? What did we do to deserve that?
Is a forest fire that destroys life and property evidence of the purgative inclinations of God? What if the fire was set by an arsonist?
Does a hurricane represent the breath of God clearing a path to holiness? What does it say about the perfect will of God to claim - as Pat Robertson once did - that prayer diverts such natural disasters from one part of the country to another?
Can the divine need to punish explain the death of children?
A week or so after the death of our first child, my wife got a ride to work with her boss - a lay leader in a religious group that doesn't ordain any clergy.
The man felt compelled to share his belief that the death of a child was the consequence of some sin in the parents.
I assume even he didn't believe that a 14-month-old could be guilty of a sin that demanded such punishment. Besides, our daughter had been born with an inherited genetic defect that precipitated her early death.
I don't remember now if he knew that our daughter's death had occurred on her mother's 25th birthday, but I expect he would have found some significance in that as well.
The fault had to be ours.
Today I'm sure that man truly believed he was sharing an essential theological insight, but the cruelty of such an assertion is immediately evident to almost anyone.
As a matter of fact, the inappropriateness of that position has been debated at least since the time the story of Job began to be circulated.
That ancient tradition tells us the punishment explanation doesn't always work. That's the whole point of the story of Job.
God is described as having allowed Satan to inflict all sorts of misery on that good man as a test of Job's loyalty.
His "friends" and neighbors wanted to blame Job himself for the disasters befalling him. Even his wife urged him to curse God so he would be destroyed and his suffering ended.
But, the story tells us, God knew Job would be true and eventually rewarded Job for his steadfastness.
The universal truth of that lesson, of course, is that we may well need to be tempered by suffering to gain real strength.
Even when we confirm its validity, however, such a lesson is not easy to take. And sometimes it just will not satisfy when someone else suffers for our edification.
Which leads me, personally, to the God vs. Nature explanation.
At some point we have to distinguish between the activity of nature and activity of God.
The hand of the Creator may be evident in all of nature, but must we believe that the Deity controls every act of nature?
Did God decide that my first daughter would suffer from the genetic defect my wife and I harbor harmlessly in our cells?
Does God single out every person who is struck by lightning?
Would a benevolent God allow innocent children to be drowned in a flood that affects most of the Mississippi basin?
It seems more logical - more Godly - to believe that a natural order was established by God and that it runs a course set by the Creator.
Nature, then, may have purpose, but it has no conscience. It cannot be either good or evil. It is simply "natural."
From this viewpoint, the death of a child from a chromosomal abnormality becomes simply part of the natural order of things, not a punishment. Likewise, the destruction brought on by a flood is evidence only of excessive rainfall, not divine retribution for real or imagined sin.
Of course, this bit of theological theory has its own problems. Can we believe God sometimes counters the natural order - to provide physical healing, for instance - but doesn't act on other occasions? How can a Christian - whose faith is rooted in the belief that God became human - not believe that God can manipulate nature as he pleases?
Perhaps that can be answered the same way many people of faith understand active opposition to their religion. The argument is that God is powerful enough to compel anyone to believe, but that he chooses not to.
Obviously there are no easy answers. And what's worse, eventually most of us will have to struggle with questions like those raised by the flood.
It may be a little comfort to those in the Mississippi Valley to know that humans have been wrestling with these same questions for thousands of years.
For some, perhaps, there is a bit of solace simply in our collective, plaintive, "Why?" - even when no answer seems to come.
Cody Lowe reports on issues of religion and ethics for this newspaper.
by CNB