Hurricane Katrina: The Wrath of God?

The other day, a friend forwarded me an e-mail that has been circulating recently in which some group calling themselves both Christians and prophets claimed that the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Katrina is the hand of God smiting all the sinners and degenerates in New Orleans. Any time there is some sort of national or global tragedy, we can count on some fringe group (and, I am sad to admit, far too many in the mainstream) who will proclaim, as fact, that God's vengeful fist could be seen in the calamity. They said it about AIDS. They said it over 9/11. They said it during last year's Tsunami. And they are saying it again now.

I really wish these people would shut the hell up! They can keep their divinations, hallucinations and delusions. Prophets, indeed! Christians, indeed!

I think it is phenomenally dangerous, borderlining on, if not radically crossing, the line of blasphemy to both think we can presumptuously ascertain the mind, will and hand of God and worse, take tragedy and spin it for our own ignorant spiritual whims. Even if one should think that God's wrath may lie in a natural disaster, disease or some other such misfortune (the Scriptures prove He has used such tragedies to both punish wayward humanity and get its attention), one should hold one's tongue for fear that one not have the first clue of where God's hand lies (without the aforementioned Scriptural illumination).

We obviously see with different eyes, these sadists and I. I see a catastrophic natural disaster, possibly the worst in American history, whose rank waters are washing away all of our denials about how many of our fellow citizens are living in poverty as well as our reluctance to admit the now glaringly obvious connection between race and poverty in America. One look at who has suffered the most, who could not afford to evacuate, who was left behind waiting in vain for help and who will chart the most difficult course on the road to recovery and all sanctimonious illusions fall away. The faces on our news every night are overwhelmingly poor and black—the faces of an invisible and mostly silent poverty that we have willfully chosen not to talk about, let alone take responsibility for in the richest nation on the planet. But this disaster stripped us of our illusions and our walls. We cannot claim ignorance any longer.

Christ called upon all Christians to care for the sick, the needy, the poor, and the destitute among us. Christ told us that when we care for these devastated souls, we are actually caring for Him. And yet, some prefer to ignore the very tenets of their religion, preferring to play God themselves and stand in judgment over His creation. These people who claim to know the mind of God and see His handiwork in carnage should be ashamed of themselves. What right have they to take pleasure in the agony of others and hypocritically cloak it in sanctimonious piety? It is disgusting. It is the sort of faux Christianity I despise and want nothing to do with. I'd sooner have grace for the sinners they loath then these supposed believers who use the name of Jesus Christ as a weapon of hate and revulsion.