"Are Disasters Really God's Punishment?"

Religion in Daily Life (c) By the Rev. Edward Chinn, D.Min. Rector, All Saints' Church 9601 Frankford Ave. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19114 (215) 637-5225 Written 18 October 2001 http://www.allsaintstorresdale.org

A tower collapsed. People were killed. Some people said that the disaster was a sign of divine displeasure. God's spokesman said "No" to this line of thinking. In the spokesman's way of thinking the tower's collapse and the people' deaths were not signs of God's anger. I am not writing about the September 11 destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City. I'm referring to a tower in Jerusalem. God's spokesman, Jesus of Nazareth, pointed to a recent disaster. "And what about the eighteen men who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them? Were they the worse sinners in Jerusalem? No!" (Luke 13:4, NLT).

People today also jump to the conclusion that disasters are signs of divine displeasure. Fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell singled out gays and lesbians, abortionists, and liberal advocacy groups as the cause of the terrorists' destructive acts. He said that God allowed us to get "probably what we deserve." A week later Falwell apologized for his remarks. On his 700 Club, Pat Robertson agreed with Falwell's judgment, though he, too, later backed away from equating the disaster with divine displeasure. Though these spokesmen for Fundamentalist Christianity retracted their statements, their mindset on the disaster is significant.

"Many voices throughout the years have described misfortune and disaster as signs of divine displeasure," wrote Andrew Murphy, a Senior Fellow in the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School ("Sightings" 10/17/01). Murphy cites clergy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1600s) who warned that moral decline would bring God's wrath. You can see this same thinking in the reaction to Ben Franklin's invention of the lightning rod. "In America the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed . . . to Franklin's rod" (Andrew White). A Boston pastor of the period tied earthquakes to divine displeasure at lightning rods.

Of course, there are physical and moral consequences to our behavior. Excessive speed leads to auto accidents. Smoking may produce emphysema and cancer. A pregnant woman endangers her fetus by drinking alcohol. The law of cause and effect does operate, but it is wrong for us to conclude that a bad event spells God's anger. Sometimes people suffer because God did not endow natural processes with freedom of choice and knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes people suffer because of their own choices. Sometimes (as in the terrorists' attacks) people suffer from other people's choices. There is a mystery of evil in the world. I agree with Lutheran bishop Gustav Aulen who wrote: "Faith refuses to attribute to God that which the Gospel attributes to Satan."