It should come as no surprise that I've been mulling this over since the event: was God finally drowned in the floodwaters of Louisana and Mississippi?
We've all seen the dramatic photos from the first Sunday after the storm: a few congregation members and their pastor gathering on the concrete foundation of what used to be their church to praise the Lord for his generosity. Really, it's a pretty powerful display of faith--and of course of the need for comfort--that some of those who were most directly affected by Katrina could sustain their belief in a God worth praising. Where's the Joban outrage? Why can't this raise some dissonance for believers?
Of course, it's easier to avoid that dissonance when you're not experiencing the loss--just as Job's peers couldn't understand his questions and scolded his doubt. It's just this kind of unwillingness to question one's own beliefs that I witnessed over Labor Day weekend. I sat with Courtney's family in a hospital waiting room, awaiting news on her ailing grandfather. We passed the time telling stories about their patriarch and talking about the Katrina news that was pumping in from the continuous CNN coverage. Then, when a doctor came in to say that Papa only had a few hours left, a certain member of Courtney's family made a remark along these lines: "Well, praise be to God that we've had this time to gather ourselves, that it didn't happen immediately, that we can brace ourselves."
In a word, I was incredulous. How could this person really believe that God would intervene to buy the family time to prepare for the worst of news, but that God wouldn't intervene to save the lives and lands of thousands of people?
Some people may never be capable of self-interrogation, but perhaps the fallout from the hurricane will lead some others to realize that progress is only going to come from earth-bound, collective action. If anything good can come of Katrina, maybe it's the emptying of some church pews across the country as people withdraw their energies from hymns and chants and redirect them to the business of looking after their brothers and sisters.
posted by wekkley @ 8:46 PM
3 Comments:
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It's interesting what people will excuse in order that they can ascribe "meaning" to their own personal situation. In the mind of a zealot, everything happens for a reason. Raped? God wanted you to learn something. Hurricane destruction? Shouldn't have been partying so hard. Father dies with everyone already in town? God wanted us to be together for this.
On the one hand, if you believe in an all-powerful God I guess you have to believe that he can be working in even the most insignificant of life's goings-on. But if you start trying to put a "reason" behind everything that happens everywhere you get to the conflict you're talking about: God put us as a family together but didn't save the lives and homes of a few million poor people?
Yeah, I gotta say I don't understand any of that particular brand of zeal. But, I know that I for one give my own life lots of meaning by attributing bad things to forces larger than myself or anyone else: namely, the forces of capital. Why do people fill their houses and storage units with meaningless bric-a-brac? Well, the forces of capital, clearly. In this case, it's hard to imagine that the world sucks because people really are that unreflective, or are willfully unconcerned with living a sustainable life. I wonder if that's really all that much different from the religious sort of zeal?
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