CANDIDE AND KATRINA

In an earlier blog post, I briefly dealt with the subject of “Theology: The Problem of Evil” from the philosophical view of evil's origin. But now, for one moment, I would like to consider the godly purposes behind the various kinds of trials mankind experiences every day. But first an explanation of the title above.

Kirsten Sanders wrote an interesting article on that disaster in the July/August issue of Christianity Today magazine, and I will be taking much of the information below from that article. The earthquake occurred on November 1, 1755 with no warning and devastated the major European city of Lisbon, one of the wealthiest and most “Christian” centers of the time. It contained 40 churches as well as 240 miscellaneous religious orders accounting for 10% of the total population at the time. The earthquake destroyed almost all of the churches and killed one out of ten residents.

The classic philosophical formulation of a philosophical explanation for the existence of evil had been formulated 45 years earlier by Gottfried Leibnitz. Leibnitz basically demonstrated logically that of all the possible worlds that God could have made, this is the best. But cold philosophy usually gives little comfort in the midst of overwhelming grief, and so people at the time tried to make sense of the occurrence in other ways.

Voltaire lampooned the phrase “the best of all possible worlds” in his novel Candide, prompted by this horrible destruction of Lisbon. The hero of the book tries to make sense out of a whole series of personal disasters he and his friends encounter in their rather bizarre wanderings through South America. But he is unable, as was Voltaire himself, to do so. And thus at the end of the book he contents himself with settling for a simple existence with a rather unsatisfactory wife and a very mediocre occupation tending his own garden. In a way, I am reminded of the solution of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes who describes all the disappointments in human experience and concludes that there is “nothing better for mortals to do than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil.”

But there are other responses that one sees concerning disasters in addition to just giving up in resignation in the face of the inexplicable. And some of these are actually much worse. As Sanders says, “it was easy for Protestant figures to call the disaster a divine judgment on Catholic Lisbon. Almost every important Catholic church in the city had been destroyed by a cataclysmic conflation of earthquake, water, and fire.” And that also included the headquarters of the Portuguese Inquisition.

She quotes the lyrics that Charles Wesley wrote commemorating the event:

    Woe! To the men, on earth who dwell, not dread the Almighty frown.

    When God doth all his wrath reveal, and shower his judgments down!

    Sinners, expect those heaviest showers, to meet your God prepare,

    When lo! The seventh angel pours His vial in the air!

Sanders then states, “For the most part, modern people reject the view that natural disasters are the result of divine judgment on sin. And we certainly are less likely than in some past eras to preach sermons or write hymns about the fittedness of God destroying some portion of the world through an earthquake. We believe we know how to discern a divine act from a natural one, and we generally prefer scientific explanations to supernatural ones.”

“And yet 'natural disasters' do reveal something about the human situation and God's rightful judgment of it.” She cites Hurricane Katrina as an example: “Though we should learn from Jesus and from Job's friends not to call hurricanes God's punishment, Hurricane Katrina did serve as a revelation of how far we had fallen from our call to care for the poor and oppressed (Isa. 1:17) and steward the earth (Gen. 1:28).” In those words she is alluding to, among other things, those who blocked the bridge exiting the city of New Orleans so that their own city would not have to care for any fleeing refugees. She ia also alluding to the caustic and almost unforgivable words of evangelical spokesmen such as James Hagee, Rick Scarborough, Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, and Hal Lindsay who proclaimed that Katrina was the direct result of the sins of New Orleans.

Besides putting themselves in a position of speaking on God's behalf as if they were uniquely cued in to His secrets, these Christians totally ignored the fact that the arguably most “sinful” part of New Orleans, the French Quarter, was not nearly as affected as the area where the poorer residents of the city lived. No one, not even Pat Robertson or Franklin Graham, is given license to disobey Jesus' repeated command not to judge others.

Just a word of caution to those who are quick to rush to judgment on anyone who is perceived to be more sinful that we are. Remember Paul's words in I Timothy 1:15.