I’ve been waiting to hear this: the hurricanes that have recently struck the Gulf Coast are, apparently, God’s way of punishing us. Unfortunately, no one can agree just what we’ve done that’s so bad. There’s the usual suspects–gambling, drinking, etc–but nearly every religious zealot with a beef is stepping up to the plate on this one.
From Al.com:
Hurricane Katrina and other storms that battered the Gulf Coast were God’s judgment of sin, according to state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo.“New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness,” Erwin wrote this week in a column he distributes to news outlets. “It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God.”
After touring Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., and Bayou La Batre, Erwin said he was awed and humbled by the power of the storm. But he wasn’t surprised.
“Warnings year after year by godly evangelists and preachers went unheeded. So why were we surprised when finally the hand of judgment fell?” Erwin wrote. “Sadly, innocents suffered along with the guilty. Sin always brings suffering to good people as well as the bad.”
Erwin, a former conservative talk-radio host and now a media consultant and senator, is not alone in seeing God’s wrath at work in the storms.
The al-Qaida in Iraq group hailed the hurricane deaths in America as the “wrath of God,” and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan suggested the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for the violence America had inflicted on Iraq.
Televangelist Pat Robertson said Katrina might be linked to God’s judgment concerning legalized abortion, and some rabbis suggested Katrina was a retribution for supporting the Israeli pullout from Gaza.
According to Erwin, those who weren’t in the sin business–like the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and the millions of Americans who were simply minding their own business–were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Collateral damage, if you will, in the divine war against sin.
Later in the article, a theologian speculated that God is probably not as vindictive, surly, and mean-spirited as Erwin suspects.
I’m no theologian myself, but there are several subtle ways that an angry and jealous god could dissuade people from gambling and drinking. For example, by fooling around with slot machine RNGs, every pull of the handle could yield a jackpot–something that would quickly drive every casino out of business and not result in “civilian” casulties. Anyone who read Stranger in a Strange Land knows what I’m talking about.
In a related story, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour is having some trouble within his conservative base, as a group of Baptist pastors have lobbied against his support for ending the farce of “floating” casinos and, in the name of safety and economic development, allowing casinos to be built on dry land.