The Divine Role in Natural Disasters

By Russell Shaw
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 9/29/05)

An act of God—the words express a judgment about the divine role in disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Heard often in recent days, it goes like this: Katrina was God's way of punishing sinful New Orleans for decadence—the Big Easy got its just deserts from the Man Upstairs. As this is written, it's too soon to say what theological interpretation will be placed on Rita, but chances are good some people will claim the Texas Gulf Coast was at fault.

If they're right, many other places had better don sackcloth and ashes before it's too late. And while that might be a good idea, the notion that those places are at risk of divine vengeance resembling what befell New Orleans and the Gulf Coast couldn't be more wrong.

It won't make much impression on people wedded to a quasi-Calvinist notion of God, but it's worth explaining why that's so.

For one thing, if murderous hurricanes were God's way of punishing sinners, God would be shockingly inefficient. Most of those who died in Katrina were poor, sick, elderly, or all three. The sinners escaped. Is that divine justice?

More fundamentally, pseudo-explanations of the ways of the Almighty assume an understanding of divine causality we don't possess. The assumption is that God does things pretty much the way we do—for the same reasons and by the same means. This really is the Man Upstairs. But whoever God is and however divine causality works, we can be sure it's not like that.

Yet there are religious and moral lessons to be learned here. One concerns the fact that the fundamental purpose of government is to protect people. The Katrina disaster reflects a massive failure by government—city, state, national—to do what government ought to do. And although it is common, and correct, to speak about poor planning and incompetent execution, the failure was above all moral— a failure to put protecting people ahead of politics, budgets and image.

One can only hope it will occur to our leaders that the calamity on the Gulf Coast is a wakeup call about what could happen in the event of another largescale terrorist attack. By all means, let's prevent that if we can. But if prevention fails, let's be ready to respond to massive human need. Are Congress, the White House, the state governors' mansions, and mayors' offices throughout the nation listening?

Another lesson, a happy one, is that solidarity is alive and well. It's visible in the huge upsurge of compassion expressed in efforts large and small to alleviate suffering and help people build new lives. Much of this has been a private sector response, especially by churches that mobilized quickly to do what government sometimes appeared too clumsy and wrapped in red tape to get done.

Finally, though, there's the question of where God really does fit into something like these events. To say this was an instance of God's "permissive will" at work—i.e., God allowed it—is true but not a terribly helpful explanation.

A more satisfactory answer, I think, is only possible in light of Christ. Without attempting a fullscale exposition here (I once wrote a book on the subject called Does Suffering Make Sense?), I suggest that the key lies in something Pope John Paul II said: "At one and the same time, Christ has taught man to do good by his suffering and to do good to those who suffer. In this double aspect he has completely revealed the meaning of suffering."

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