Natural phenomena and disease have always been connected with theology. Some evangelicals approach Nature in much the same way as Satan insofar as it can be demonized as a negative force.
Well, the wind can't blow that doesn't help one sailor and kill another.
I mean, I can totally understand why some goofball in 300 BCE saw lightning and figured the gods were pissed off, but the idea that Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment, however, is only a few brain cells removed from believing it rains because God is crying.
Tornadoes, anyone? In this case, God tends to be upset with the Plains states, especially in the spring when there is sufficient wind shear combined with humid lower atmospheric air and cooler higher atmospheric air.
Oh, God. Sometimes your mood swings are statistically predictable.
I am therefore curious to see how evangelicals assign blame to the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill, which was a deadly combination of a natural toxic substance created by God (i.e. oil) when mishandled by human beings (British Petroleum, i.e. Satan).
Deep Water Oil Spill. Maybe God has a case of acid reflux.
Bottom line: every day is the apocalypse for some poor soul. Check it out:
ACCIDENTAL DEATHS: UNITED STATES (1990)
Motor vehicle: 41,300
Falls: 17,000
Poison: 10,500
Drowning: 4,000
Suicide: 17,566
It is sobering to know that driving is statistically far more dangerous than war, considering there were 47,393 battlefield deaths in the Vietnam War over some eight years.
Sure, tuberculosis isn't as sexy or attention-grabbing as earthquakes or tsunamis, but some 15 million people die every year from infectious diseases. The Black Death of the middle ages took some 300 million lives. 50-100 million died during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Smallpox claimed another 300 million.
While we are necessarily bound with the forces of nature, we are also at odds with its chaotic behavior. The human body is highly adaptive but quite fragile in key respects: slipping on the proverbial banana peel can be fatal. It is not due to some satanic conspiracy that the body can be so easily traumatized, rather, the laws of physics are not always advantageous for a body with very little in the way of external shielding.
The most tranquil forest camouflages intricate weapons of mass destruction aimed at whomever fails to appreciate its capacity for destruction. Today, we have discovered innumerable bacteriological, viral, and parasitic life-forms that are not so easily demonized: sometimes they help, sometimes they hurt--often they play for both teams.
Hey Noah, next time you're loading up the ark, could you not bring the parasite Naegleria fowleri aboard? They feed on brain tissue and there is no treatment. Just sayin.'
The forces of nature that sustain us are paradoxically our most formidable adversary: a ferocious antagonist whose potential for malice far surpasses human imagination.
Natural phenomena like weather and disease are closely aligned with the idea of evil insofar as they are often merciless. Rather than attribute nature’s many unpleasant features to God’s wicked imagination, some place the blame on human behavior or satanic influence. “When mankind interferes with God’s climatic laws,” says Eric Anderson, “he suffers the effects—upset weather.”
Upset weather? You mean, like an earthquake is when God has a tummy ache?
Get it together, people.
Truth is, weather need not be freakish to wreak havoc. Thousands die every year from lightning strikes, heat stroke, and skin cancer. While the sun heats the earth and gives rise to life, it at all times destroys life and can kill a person in hours. The suns' radiation is as deadly to humankind as it is necessary--the effects of weather remain relative to one’s location at any given time.
The Sun, AKA "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
Weather presents a great challenge to any honest theology, for it demonstrates the idea that good and evil cannot be disentangled any more than a rainstorm can be labeled “beneficial” or “destructive.”
So by all means enjoy the next gorgeous sunny day.
Too bad someone's gonna die because of it.
That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.
Ecc 1.9-10
(Ecclesiastes spoiling the old "Things have never been worse and God is pissed" argument).
(Ecclesiastes spoiling the old "Things have never been worse and God is pissed" argument).
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