Judgment

I’m going to break one of the cardinal rules of blogging. Generally speaking, when a writer is commenting on something found on the internet, be it another blog, another article, or whatever, a link to what is being discussed should be included. The exceptions I make is when commenting on stuff that so turns my stomach that I don’t feel it right to give the individual in question the satisfaction of the traffic, or of the debate. This is such a post. That’s not set in stone either – I’m open to linking and full-on fisking at some point…but right now I don’t think that’s appropriate.

But I am going to rant, because I’m rather angry. The anger comes from reactions to the monster that flattened the Gulf Coast and put a major city underwater. For those that know me, there are a number of rants I could launch into here. I could go after the crazy moonbats of the left that seem to be willing to use anything, including a national tragedy, to score political points against Bush by blaming him for what happened…but I figure there’s plenty out there that have smacked them around. I could go on about the idiots shooting at the first responders…but that’s a whole different ball of wax. Rather, I want to take on some extremely conservative Christians with some of their reactions to this travesty.

There is a blog out there that I will catch every now and then for no other reason than it’s a complete train wreck – you don’t want to look, but you can’t look away. It’s by an extremely conservative Catholic, so far removed from reality that the author tends to appoint her/himself as the real judge of whether someone is truly following God or not, and normally tends to pass judgment on them. I have to fight myself from commenting there, because frankly, I’d lose my temper and go off on people (especially those that reside in the echo chamber of the comment boxes). Mark Shea, a writer who I greatly respect, has somewhat more patience than I do and tends to call out the mindset quite a bit (although in one instance he did lose it on said individual). Up until today, I saw no particular need to comment – just shake my head and pray for them.

But when you get out there and say that Katrina was simply God’s wrath being poured out on New Orleans because of the sin present in that city, that they basically had it coming and deserved it – that’s just beyond the pale.

And it’s not just one cracked out writer – there’s plenty of others that are starting to make the same sorts of suggestions.

This sort of thing makes me sick to my stomach. As I’ve said to people many times before, it’s one thing to determine if something is a sin. It’s another thing to show no form of mercy whatsoever to those committing the behavior.

But for the sake of argument, let’s dismantle this disturbing bit of commentary a bit, shall we?

First, the very obvious comparison, as made in the article, is Sodom and Gomorrah, whose sin was so great that the Lord destroyed the city. There are also the armies of Israel destroying the civilizations in the lands that God promised to them. In fact, the Old Testament is pretty much riddled with this sort of point – destruction of those whose sin is so incredibly grave.

What comparisons, then, should we draw between New Orleans and the peoples from the Old Testament? I’m going to take a stand here and say, frankly, none.

Here’s an interesting question, and one that I haven’t 100% researched as of yet, so most of this is going off of what I can recall. Biblically, is there any example of this sort of collective divine judgment being dealt out in a naturalistic frame? That is, an event, with no prophetic or prior warning, that just occurred, BAM, with both innocent and guilty being punished?

Here’s the simple facts – the wages of sin is death. We’re all going to die. Every single one of us. Whether we live in New Orleans, or in Iraq, or in China, or anywhere else. HOW we die is irrelevant to the fact that we WILL die. How is death as a result of a hurricane any more or less of a divine judgment than an individual dying of cancer? Than of someone having a heart attack? Than someone who dies peacefully in their sleep? Than someone destroyed by a bomb?

It’s not.

Does God control the weather? Absolutely - it’s His Creation. But I don’t see how anyone in their right mind can justly say that those killed by Katrina received their death via intense divine judgment deservedly any more than I deserve for my heart to stop beating as I write this sentence.

Besides – why New Orleans? Wouldn’t there be far better cities to do demonstrate that sort of judgment on, say Vegas? Or what of NYC? Or are these the same people that are going to back Jerry Fallwell in that 9/11 was divine judgment on that city? And aren’t there far more thorough ways to meet out the judgment? Seriously – only a couple of thousand of the hundreds of thousands that make up the population were killed. Parts of the city are still intact. It strikes me that if God meant this to be seen as His Divine Judgment being meted out on a city of sin, then it was a pretty weak demonstration, all things considered.

Plus, for those that want to make the case for this being God’s wrath delivered upon a city of grave sin, riddle me this:

Why is the French Quarter still standing?