"Acts of God"

A sermon by Dave Weissbard

delivered at

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, Illinois

09/03/05

[The Evangelical theologian TonyCampolo and I have little in common theologically, but having met him, I know we have much in common humanly. I view the world differently, but found this piece informative.]

Whenever there is a catastrophe, some religious people inevitably ask, "Why didn’t God do something? Where was God when all those people died?" Among the answers we might consider is the one that Martin Luther gave as his wife asked a similar question upon the death of their infant son. Luther answered, "The same place he was when His son died!"

Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad answers. One such answer is that somehow all suffering is a part of God’s great plan. In the midst of agonies, someone is likely to quote from the Bible, telling us that if we would just be patient, we eventually would see "all things work together for the good, for those who love God, and are called according to His purposes." (Romans 8:28)

I don’t doubt that God can bring good out of tragedies, but the Bible is clear that God is not the author of evil! (James 1:15) Statements like that dishonor God, and are responsible for driving more people away from Christianity than all the arguments that atheistic philosophers could ever muster. When the floods swept into the Gulf Coast, God was the first one who wept.

There are still other religionists who take the opportunity to tell us that God is punishing America for its many sins. Undoubtedly, there are some al-Qaeda fanatics who right now are saying that Katrina is the hand of God, striking America for what we have done to the people of Iraq and to the Palestinians. Furthermore, there are Christians who, in the weeks to come, can be counted on to thunder from their pulpits that Katrina is God’s wrath against the immorality of this nation, pointing out that New Orleans is the epitome of our national degradation and debauchery. To all of this I say, "Wrong."

The God revealed in Jesus did not come into the world "to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." (John 3:17) There can be no arguments over the claim that, for a variety of reasons, our nation deserves punishment. But when the Bible tells us about the grace of God, it is giving us the good news that our loving God does not give us what we truly deserve. Certainly, God would not create suffering for innocent people, who were--for the most part--Katrina’s victims.

Perhaps we would do well to listen to the likes of Rabbi Harold Kushner, who contends that God is not really as powerful as we have claimed. Nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures does it say that God is omnipotent. Kushner points out that omnipotence is a Greek philosophical concept, but it is not in his Bible. Instead, the Hebrew Bible contends that God is mighty. That means that God is a greater force in the universe than all the other forces combined. . . .

Personally, I contend that the best thing for us to do in the aftermath of Katrina is to remain silent, and not try to explain this tragedy. Instead of asking "Why?" we should be asking, "What does God want us to do now?" The loving God calls all believers in the face of Katrina’s devastation to seek ways to express love in concrete ways towards those who have lost friends and family members; and to those who have lost homes along with most of their earthly belongings.

In the Bible, we read this passage: "And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice." (I Kings 19:11-12)

Instead of looking for God in the earthquake or the tsunami, in the roaring forest fires blazing in the western states, or in the mighty winds of Katrina, it would be best to seek out a quiet place and heed the promptings of God’s still small voice. That voice will inspire us to bring some of God’s goodness to bear in the lives of those who suffer.

Monday was a terrible day at our house. Some of you may know that last October, our two cats suddenly disappeared and there was no trace of them. After Christmas we got two new cats – George, a male tabby; and a beautiful black part-Persian female, Felicity. My daughter Hilary and Felicity were very bonded.

Monday morning, before Karen left for school, I commented on not having seen either cat, but Karen had fed them breakfast. I searched the house several times during the morning - upstairs and down, and the yard, although they were inside cats. No sign of them. Then at 2:30, George appeared at the front door. Still no sign of Felicity. When another search after Hilary came home from school revealed no cat, I took her to the animal shelter so we could file a report. When we came home, I opened the garage door and there was Felicity’s body in the middle of my garage.

Hilary was heartbroken. She dissolved in sobbing. Karen had arrived home first and seen the body and had called Colleen who came to console Hilary. [We learned from the vet that Felicity had been run over by one of the cars and had died from internal injuries.]

Hilary adored that cat - cuddled with her, shared her burdens with her, played with her. Hilary demanded to know why Felicity had been taken from her. Her world was shattered. I had to tell Hilary that there was no answer, so rhyme or reason. She found that very hard to accept. I foolishly tried to draw a comparison with the death of my first wife, Linda, or of my son, Andrew, to put her loss in context, but, of course, she could hear none of it. She had to stay home from school Tuesday because she feared she could not control her crying.

Between searches for the cats on Monday, I was glued to the television to CNN’s round the clock coverage of Hurricane Katrina. When we went to bed Sunday, it was a category 5 headed straight for New Orleans and the outcome was likely to be almost total devastation. A mandatory evacuation order was given. On Monday, Katrina had taken an inexplicable turn to the East and had diminished to a category 4: it appeared that New Orleans would be spared. It was still a terrible storm with much destruction, particularly in Mississippi, but there was much to celebrate – it could have been worse - so much worse.

Hilary experienced her loss as tragic, and it was to her, but it could not, by any stretch of the imagination, compare with loss of life, or having one’s home or business or community destroyed by a storm, but explain that to a 13- year old in the midst of unconsolable grief; some adults never grasp that. We can wrap our minds around the tragic death of a pet, or a parent, or a child, or a friend; most of us cannot truly comprehend the destruction of a community, the deaths of hundreds or thousands. Someone suggested it is a trap to think of a thousand dead people: you have to think of one dead person, multiplied by a thousand.

Tuesday morning, the real impact of the storm on New Orleans had materialized. While the eye of the storm and the most violent winds did miss the city and wreaked their havoc on smaller cities and towns, huge amounts of water did accumulate in Lake Pontchartrain, two of the levees gave way overnight and 80% of New Orleans was flooded. People who had a little water in the streets by their homes Monday night saw it climb to their second stories by Tuesday. It became an unmitigated disaster of the first magnitude.

We have a way of dealing with such tragedies: we refer to them as “acts of God.” An “act of God is defined as: A manifestation especially of a violent or destructive natural force, such as a lightning strike or earthquake, that is beyond human power to cause, prevent, or control. It is interesting how people who believe in a loving “father God” ascribe tragedies to his actions. [My use of the male gender there is intentional, not careless.]

As Tony Campolo pointed out in our reading, whenever in history a major natural disaster has occurred, there have been preachers and prophets who have ascribed them to the wrath of an angry God who was punishing humanity for its transgressions – and there are always sufficient transgressions to fill the bill. It was true of the Johnstown flood, it was true of the tsunami in December, it is true today. There are already preachers who are declaring that Katrina happened because of a gay convention scheduled in New Orleans for next week, or because of the loose morality associated with “The Big Easy,” or because of abortion in America, or because of same sex marriage. They have always been at the ready to tell us how we are responsible for provoking God into such heavy handed responses. “The rapture is coming!” some say.

There are others who hang on to divine omnipotence, God’s control over everything, by insisting that we humans are just too limited to understand God’s plan, but He has one and everything that happens, , including Katrina, is part of it.

In an unsigned piece in the internet called “Tsunami Theology for Dummies,” a writer observes:

[T]he truly dumbest theological statement that I heard in the wake of the tsunami was made by a white, American woman in her mid-twenties who avoided being counted with the tens of thousands less fortunate. Upon her return to the States, she ascribed her escaping the fate of so many others to her God saving her. While we don’t normally make the soundest theological statements having just avoided such a traumatic event, she and her listeners need nonetheless to reexamine her theology. It is way off the mark.

Think about how that statement sounds. Here is a young, white Christian, affluent, American tourist, who believes that God hovered over the raging tower of cascading water, spotted her amongst the hundreds of thousands facing drowning, and intervened on her behalf to rescue her. What is wrong with that belief? Do you really think that God selected this one gal for rescue? I’d like to know what she did or believed to have this special deus ex machina treatment from God.

What does that theological picture paint for us? God rescues someone who can afford to vacation in some Asian paradise and allows tens of thousands of others to perish—mothers who couldn’t save their children or fathers who couldn’t protect their families already on the lowest rung of the poverty ladder. Get real.

Another theological approach is to point out that nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures does it say that God is all powerful – in fact, Jews have often argued with God that he was making a mistake. And there are prominent Christian theologians who insist that it is poor Christian theology to ascribe absolute control to God – that, they say, is a product of Greek philosophy, not of Christianity. Try, of course, to convince most Christians of that.

a different and more vulnerable vision of God, one more in accord with the notion of God not as the one responsible for everything that happens, but as an emerging voice of compassion and love in the midst of a world not totally under His/Her control.In that case, and this conception aligns more closely to what I understand with my limited understanding, God is joining us in mourning for the victims of the Tsunami, not its cause. Or, to put it another way, God is the part of Being (including the part of us) that is yearning for a world in which this kind of suffering will be diminished and in which those parts of the suffering that can't be stopped will be accompanied by responses of generosity and kindness.

Many theologians, at times like this, point to the wisdom of my favorite book of the Bible, Job.

Professor David Pleins of the Religious Studies Department of Santa Clara University, in a panel on the tsunami, observed:

Across the board, regardless of background, people from all religious traditions fall back on trite explanations, preconceived schemes, and preposterous views in an effort to make sense out of what is simply tragic. . . .

The book's vision is not one of karmic payback, fundamentalist end-times chronologies, signals from Allah to do good, or even scientific scenarios for plate tectonics. It is instead a vision, where pointed questions get asked, faith is shaken to the core, injustice is railed against and God is called to account.

It was my original expectation that this sermon would expand on the relevance of what I believe is the message of Job, namely the reality that we do not control the universe, that it does not play by our rules, and that we only kid ourselves when we expect it to. Our only real option is to accept that terrible things happen and to do what we can to be humane in the face of suffering. There is truth in that, and I will come back to it before we finish. Had I written this sermon without digging further, I would be going there now. But there is a flaw in that acceptance of inevitability– there are several flaws.

The truth I believe we must face is that only a part of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is natural: much of it is the result of human activity and inactivity. We are responsible, in several ways. Ted Steinberg, an environmental historian at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University and author of Acts of God, a book on disasters points out:

There's a tendency to see these events as chiefly the result of natural forces beyond human control. And obviously a tornado is a physical phenomenon. But what's disastrous about these events is that to a certain extent they're within human control because of policies we put into effect. We have a situation where natural forces lead to calamitous consequences that might otherwise be avoided.

Some of the things the Army Corps of Engineers did over the years to prevent flooding by the Mississippi resulted in the degradation of the delta. When I was in grade school, we were taught that the delta was expanding. No longer. The Gulf of Mexico is 20 miles closer to New Orleans than it was in 1965. That 20 miles means that hurricanes that hit are likely to be stronger when they reach New Orleans today than they were then. Coastal erosion has cut down the barrier islands which protected the city.

The first President Bush enacted a policy which promised no net loss of wetlands. The Clinton administration strengthened those regulations. They have been decimated by the current President Bush. Under his administration, according to a 2004 report issued by four environmental groups, developers have been allowed to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.

The American Progress Action fund cites a recent Associated Press report of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis that shows that "major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific … have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent" since the 1970s, trends that are "closely linked to increases in the average temperatures of the ocean surface and also correspond to increases in global average atmospheric temperatures during the same period." That in spite of the Administration’s insistence that global warming is not an issue.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

I would suggest to you that what is most tragic is not the devastation caused by the hurricane, but the degradation of humanity caused by the demonstrated incompetence of the government in responding to the tragedy. America has squandered its credibility in the world because of our dismissal of international treaties and the lies told to get us into Iraq. This week our government’s inhumanity and our blatant classism has been hung out on the line for all the world to see, and it has been seen and commented upon.

Three years ago, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published a powerful series of five articles under the title “Washing Away” by John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein. [http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/]. It is hard to distinguish this prediction from the reality that has transpired.

The reporters and their sources saw it as most likely that the levees would be breached and that an evacuation would be only partly successful because the poor have no means of transportation. (One quarter of the people in New Orleans are too poor to own a car.) The reporters foresaw:

Amid this maelstrom, the estimated 200,000 or more people left behind in an evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter in New Orleans for people too sick or infirm to leave the city. Others will end up in last-minute emergency refuges that will offer minimal safety. But many will simply be on their own, in homes or looking for high ground.

.. . . Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days.

Stranded survivors will have a dangerous wait even after the storm passes. Emergency officials worry that energized electrical wires could pose a threat of electrocution and that the floodwater could become contaminated with sewage and with toxic chemicals from industrial plants and backyard sheds. Gasoline, diesel fuel and oil leaking from underground storage tanks at service stations may also become a problem, corps officials say.

Harold Gorman, executive director of the Sewerage & Water Board, said his agency thinks it can get most of its pumps working in a month, based on its experience in Hurricane Betsy in 1965. . . .

Getting the water out is just the first step to making the city livable, officials say. "Imagine the city of New Orleans closed for four to six months," said Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri. "We'll have to re-evaluate all our sanitary systems, completely evaluate the water and purification systems, evaluate half to two thirds of all buildings to see if they were structurally damaged by water pressure and wind. Restoring electricity will be another complicated problem. Will houses catch fire when they throw the power switch All that's going to have to be handled."

With few homes left undamaged, Red Cross and FEMA officials will have to find property for long-term temporary housing for a possible 1 million refugees. After Hurricane Andrew, some of the 250,000 residents of south Miami-Dade County forced to find temporary housing remained in federally financed mobile homes for 2½ years.

The detail the reporters went into was remarkable. It was not refuted; it could not be. It was not alarmist; it was prescient.

Thousands of people were indeed taken to the Superdome, where they were left without toilets, water, food, power, or order for days. 15,000 were in the convention center which Michael Brown, to whom Maureen Dowd referred in the New York Times as “the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association” didn’t know about until Thursday. 15,000 people in one place unnoticed in the midst of a disaster.

The world could see on live television that most of New Orleans white minority made it out of town safely before Katrina hit. Those left in the Superdome and the convention center were overwhelmingly black and poor. When the buses belatedly arrived for evacuation, the national guard troops pushed aside the poor folk who had been standing in line to give precedence to the hite guests and staff guests from the Mariott Hotel. It was appalling!

And would you believe that FEMA had actually rehearsed how it would respond to just such a tragedy in New Orleans? According to CNN:

Last week, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN his agency had recently planned for a Category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans.

Speaking to "Larry King Live" on August 31, in the wake of Katrina, Brown said, "That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it." Brown suggested FEMA --part of the Department of Homeland Security –was carrying out a prepared plan, rather than having to suddenly create a new one.

That is how they respond when they rehearse. What do they do when they are unprepared?

And what do the media focus our attention on? How small groups of people in the face of utter despair break first into stores to get food, and then when it is clear that there is no law anymore, break into others stores for things they will never be able to use anyhow. But the message is, these people who “chose to stay behind” are scum, animals, not worth our concern. Tens of thousands isolated and suffering human beings and we judge them by the few lawless ones. What a propaganda victory!

The President, meantime was vacationing at his ranch, playing his guitar, speaking out against war protesters, raising funds. He was finally persuaded that he had better get back on the job and during his flight to Washington, the plane dips so he can look out the window. Friday he went in person to the afflicted area. As Maureen Dowd commented, he “drive his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn’t dry. Bye,bye American lives.”

I know I am a skeptic but did you see his touching encounter for the cameras with those two black sisters? Knowing how he is never permitted to encounter anyone who might show him disrespect by disagreeing with him, how many suspect as I do that those young women were actresses flown in from New York or Chiacgo for the photo op so the President could demonstrate to the world how Massa cares about his darkies? No one was going to risk the President’s being exposed to people who had not had food, water or baths for four days, and might be carrying who knows what diseases, much less anger at our government’s blatant disregard for them.

The President told Diane Sawyer more than once, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breech of the levees.” Yes, just as no one could have imagined flying planes into the twin towers, or that the Iraqi’s would not welcome us with flags waving, or that there would be no weapons of mass destruction. No one knew, except those who knew anything. It may well be true that the President’s staff did not tell him, but that does not mean it was unknown to those who read.

We attribute our inability to afford flood control or preparations for tragedies to the cost of the war, but we can afford to pour billions in the pockets of the wealthy through tax giveaways. Where did that money really go? What are our priorities? What kind of a people are we?

Do I sound angry? You bet I am, and I hope you are too. If you’re not, there is something dead inside you.

I want to go back, now, to the point at which I was talking about the lesson of Job. The question is, how do we respond?

There are many, like Tony Campolo, who good heartedly insist that we need to stop asking “Why?” and get on with the compassionate response of helping. I believe that helping is essential. We cannot go on as if nothing significant has happened. Our own humanity is at stake. Some of you may already have given generously, but some could do more.

There are many organizations to which you could give. The Unitarian Universalist Association and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee have announced a joint campaign for relief of the tragedy of Katrina. A panel of Unitarian Universalists on the scene will be administering this aid. The minister of our church in Baton Rouge is Steve Crump, a former member of this congregation, is very likely to be involved in administering this aid. This is not a time for token giving, but for significant generosity. I have written a check for $100 which I am sending to this fund. I invite you to add what you can - you can make checks out this church and note Katrina on the memo line – I will accept your support at the door, and we will send the funds on. In just two days that UUA fund has grown to $175,000.

One family called me to ask about volunteering to house a displaced UU family, and I know of another one that has registered to do that. The word I have from Steve Crump is that over 300 UU families from around the country have registered to provide housing and that is likely to be more than enough for displaced Unitarian Universalists. It is a matter of demographics and numbers that most of the people in the greatest need may not share our religion, just our humanity.

There is a second dimension to our response from which I hope we are not distracted. There is a need for a revolution – a peaceful one, I hope, but a revolution nonetheless. We must clean house of those legislators who believe that tax breaks for the super rich are more important than flood control and food and housing and security for the poor. The world knows that America that exists today is not the America of the dream.

At the time of the tsunami, Rabbi Michael Lerner wrote of the “Downside of this momentary upsurge of caring”:

Nothing is ever just one thing and not something else as well--all of reality is filled with both A and Not A, because the laws of logic are not a satisfactory description of the way the world really is. So, yes, there is tremendous amount of caring. But there is another truth: the powerful only allow this caring to be expressed when there is no conceivable link to changing their global class structure and the elaborate systems of oppression that they've set up.

Let me explain: The powerful have decided to make this the headline story in every newspaper and every news broadcast on television, radio, and webcast. No wonder they are able to get the world's attention, and once there, and with appropriate cues that it is allowed for us to be generous, the generosity that is REALLY ALWAYS THERE pours forth from all humanity.

alternated between detailed personal accounts of families where this devastation was taking place, and side bar features detailing what was happening in advanced industrial countries, like this: "all this suffering was happening while the wealthiest people in the world enjoyed excesses of food, worried about how to lose weight because they eat too much, spent monies trying to convince farmers not to grow too much food for fear that doing so would drive down prices, and were cutting the taxes of their wealthiest rather than seeking to redistribute their excess millions of dollars of personal income." If the story were told that way every day, the goodness of human beings would rebel quickly against these social systems that made all this suffering possible, suffering far far far far far in excess of all the suffering caused by tsunamis and other natural disasters . . .. If we were being told this true story every day, we'd quickly find that the progressive forces seeking a new global reality would come to power in democratic elections . . .

The point [he says] is that we are never encouraged to show caring for the kinds of problems we could actually deal with through collective restructuring of the world's economic and political arrangements--because that would threaten the interests of the powerful. So they are all too glad to divert our attention to the disasters that can't be changed, and to channeling our anger into anger at God instead of anger at our social system. And this, I might add, is the limit on how we are encouraged to respond.

Dear friends, the evidence is before us, and before the world. It is my prayer that we will respond generously to the needs of those who are suffering most egregiously at this natural and political disaster; that we will do everything in our power to assure that the next time a natural disaster strikes, the government which represents us will be ready to respond promptly with compassion to reduce rather than increase the suffering; and that we will continue to do everything we can to see that the world of justice for which our ancestors and we have for so long struggled may yet become a reality.