Hurricane Irene has passed, and it has not spared the great state of Vermont. And yet we hardly got hit in New Hampshire. Why?
Noah, the namesake of our third child, was someone who knew a thing or two about floods. And yet his whole story, at a very basic level, is very disturbing for anyone who thinks 1) of God as loving and benevolent, and 2) of so-called natural disasters as being "natural." Here, for instance, is the passage from Genesis 6:5-7 that sets up the story for Noah, his infamous ark, and the flood which made it all possible.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’
Today, as I tried to make my way from my home in Lyme, NH, on the western-most side of New Hampshire, to Vermont Law School in the near-center of South Royalton, VT, it was hard to think anything benevolent behind the devastation I saw.
Roads gone.
Homes destroyed, and carried downriver.
Bridges taken out. Farms flooded. Cattle dead.
Human lives -- at least three so far -- destroyed.
Towns and neighborhoods trapped -- unable, for now, to reach the rest of the state and region.
What kind of God would allow this occur?
Students of religion know this kind of question is not new. Why does God permit suffering? Why do wars or worse (e.g.,the Holocaust) occur?
It's a complicated set of questions, and the responses which come forth are not easy to summarize in a blog post. Some argue that God uses these moments as a test, not simply to separate the wheat from the chaff but to help us see the divine. Others suggest God is not so involved in the day-to-day of human affairs, and that these events occur either because God permits human agency or the randomness of life unconnected to the divine. I'm strongly inclined to towards the latter point-of-view, but the existence of suffering nevertheless poses really challenges to anyone who cares both about divine and the human condition.
How to reconcil?
It helps, in this situation, to have a bit of historical perspective on how we, as a species, have reacted to natural disaster. Simon Winchester's very interesting book from 2006, A Crack in the Edge of the World, outlines two very contradictory but important responses to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. On the one hand, it led to an increased interest in a scientific explanation for earthquakes (keep in mind that the initial theory plate tectonics, now widely accepted, dates only to 1968). At the same time, the earthquake helped to fuel the growth of the Pentecostal religious movement, which began just four days earlier on Azusa Street in Los Angeles.
No wonder Michelle Bachmann, a Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota who does not believe in evolution, has claimed that Hurricane Irene was, duh, a wakeup call from God to "get the attention of the politicians." Sure, less than 24 hours after making the statement, Congresswoman Bachmann now claims this was a joke (judge for yourself here: http://wapo.st/qTlfYP), but even the most devoted of believers in her Presidential campaign would admit that her comments nevertheless tapped into the deep ambiguity we feel regarding floods and other disasters that don't appear to have the direct hand of human intervention.
What hath God wrought?
Tomorrow morning, I will drive to Vermont Law School in South Royalton, VT. I will take the long route from I-91 to I-89 because the shortcut over VT-132 and VT-14 are gone. And once I get off the highway, I will travel along the Back River Road -- past the farms whose fences are bent and destroyed, past the field with the boat in its far corner, and past the mobile home half-filled with silt and mud from the White River.
Before I travel, though, I said nightly prayers with my son (the same Noah). It was a prayer which we say every day. After thanking God for our family and friends and asking God to keep them safe, it ends with these words: "Please mind all of those people who don't have safe home like our's tonight."
Did that prayer work last night? Did God listen?
There's a lot more to say on this subject, but let me suggest one approach: God listens, but does not dictate. More specifically, floods such as Irene happen for a 1,001 reasons, but our faithfulness (or lack thereof) is not among them. Yes, we are sinners. Yes, we must do a better to lead lives that are closer to God. God forgives and, most importantly, does not specifically stage events like Hurricane Irene in order to test us. Such an understanding of the divine involves trivializing that which cannot be so diminished.
