Interpreting Katrina I got this in an email forward. Normally I wouldn't read it, but I was rather curious and I read it. Please don't disregard or make up your mind until you finished reading the entire email. Doris Ekblad-Olson 9153 Yarrow St. #1211 Westminster, CO 80021 (suburb of Denver) 303 403 2962 dekblad@efcaim.org Interpreting Katrina After hurricane Katrina, I forwarded to many friends an article which attempted to interpret why a good God would permit such disaster and suffering in our land. Though I neither know nor endorse the writer of that article, I thought it significant that he summarized quite well, three current viewpoints on the subject. I included his full article to document the source of the information, hoping to stir some reflection on an important issue to thinking people. So far, not much feedback. I have yet to express my own thoughts on the issue. I shall do so now. It has been helpful to me to sort out and write down my thoughts, prayers and conclusions. Read on, if this subject interests you. Your feedback is welcome. Many Biblical scholars agree that if one could rank Gods attributes, his most outstanding attribute would be his holiness. His holiness supercedes even his love. God is essentially holy. We dont hear so much about that today. Having taught the Old Testament prophets for years in Hong Kong, I see many parallels between Israel and our country today. Israel was chosen by God to be an object lesson to the worldGods outstanding blessings, visible to all when she obeyed His holy principles--righteous judgments, honest weights, humble dependence on Him (rather than on armies and horses), plus compassion for the strangers, widows, orphans and poor among them, all a result of a fear and awe of God. Neglecting these moral and spiritual principles would bring increasing disasters on the nation till the rest of the world would make the connection and shake their heads in awe. Once while I was a student at Trinity Divinity school during the Jewish 6-day war, and I was reviewing my Hebrew vocabulary cards while flying, a Jewish passenger next to me got interested and raised the question, Why should we Jews have to suffer so much? Thereve been over 20 wars fought over the city of Jerusalem! I replied that my opinion was irrelevant but God has answered that question long ago in Deuteronomy 27& 28. I showed him from my Bible and he groaned aloud as he read it. Yes, no wonder. We have forgotten God! In his book Jesus in Beijing, veteran reporter, David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time Magazine, reports on p.5, the words he heard from a scholar from one of Chinas premier academic research institutions, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This scholar said they were asked to research the secret of the success of the West, so they studied everything they could about our country from a historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. They concluded our success wasnt due to our more powerful guns or best political or economic systems. Rather, In the past 20 years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life, was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We dont have any doubt about this! While our country is not a chosen nation in the sense Israel was, our founding fathers had a profound sense of respect for God, reliance on Him and understanding that our rights are derived from Him. Even the atheistic Chinese government has had to realize and admit that our nations spiritual foundation and heritage is what has made our country great! Paradoxically, many of our own present leaders are striving to rid us of that heritage! For years our country has been spared so many disasters and catastrophes that have befallen other nations. While we lost men in the first and 2nd world wars, and the Middle East conflict, those wars were not fought on our soil. God has blessed our land with peace. Since our founders honored God, His arm of protection has singularly blessed us, sparing our land from famine, pestilence, wars and disasters. Much of the world wants to come here, a land of hope and opportunity for anyone willing to work. We have been SO blessed! Weve been a sample to the world of a nation blessed by God. God bless America. Yet within our lifetime, our country has moved farther and farther away from our spiritual heritage till now, God and His commandments and righteous principles are thrown out of public places. Judges and politicians want to strip every vestige of that heritage from our lives and culture. Since our schools give our children a god-less world view, its not surprising they sneak guns into school and shoot each other, for there is no fear of God before their eyes. This is part of the harvest we have sown. When science and technology had nearly become our god, almost worshipped in our schools, and successful space flights were becoming our tower of Babel, the Challenger crashed. I wonder how Gods prophets would have interpreted that had they been here. Did God see our false reliance on our own smarts and technology and allow that tragedy to humble us, to remind us how mortal and limited we are? Since Roe vs. Wade in 1973, over 40 million unborn babies have been brutally murdered in our land. (They are the missing work force that should have been paying into our social security system now!) In the Old Testament, some heathen nations, to appease their gods, would offer their babies as sacrifices, throwing them into the fire. God ordered those nations destroyed! The murder of babies was an affront to His holiness, He couldnt bear. How much longer will He tolerate the ongoing murder of innocent babies in our country? How much longer will His arm of protection hold back the judgment due to our nation for this sin? When will our nation, that has been a sample of one being singularly blessed by God, become a sample of Gods judgment for turning away from Him? God has no favorites. Nine-eleven surely shook every one of us, including our whole nation, not just those directly impacted in New York City. The twin towers symbolized many thingsour greatness, wealth, power, invincibility. Nine-eleven changed our nation. Were no longer invincible. Did God remove His restraining arm of protection to get our attention, to turn us back to Himself? The moral perversion among the Canaanites, was the reason the Israelites were ordered to destroy them. But, first, God mercifully gave them 400 years to repent. The primary responsibility of the prophets was to interpret what was going on and give Gods viewpoint and interpretation of events. Nahum in 1:3 summed it up. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. He will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm. Ninevehs repentance in Jonahs time stayed the predicted judgment for 100 years till Nahums time when the people had returned to their old ways. God has said, My spirit shall not always strive with man. God does not delight to send judgment, but flagrant affronts to His holiness cause Him to remove his arm of restraint, and our Enemy does the rest. In Genesis 6:5-13 God explains why He was permitted the flood. The Lord saw how great mans wickedness on the earth had become. v.7 So the Lord said, I will wipe mankind whom I have created, from the face of the earth. Moral perversion is implied in Gen. 6. Though God loved the world, He hated their sin. And when judgment came, only righteous Noah and family were preserved to carry on the race. But surely many innocents also drowned with the wickedbabies for example, but the earth needed cleansing and a new start or the children would get contaminated too. In Genesis 18:16 through 19, the angel of the Lord told why Sodom and Gomorrah were to be destroyed, v.20 The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin is so grievous Chapter 19 depicts their unrestrained homosexuality as the sin for which the cities were swept away. Lot and family were spared, thanks to Abrahams intercession, but surely there were many innocent children and babies also destroyed in that judgment. Wed like to think that when judgment falls on our nation, (that is God removing His arm of protection allowing the Enemy to destroy) that WE will be spared. But when the Children of Israel were carried off as prisoners of war into captivity as the prophets had predicted, even innocent ones like righteous Daniel and his friends were also carried off into captivity and made eunuchs. When judgment comes, none of us are immune from suffering. Disaster brings suffering to the just and the unjust. As Jesus explained in Luke 13, not all the ones who suffer in disasters are worse than the rest or suffering for their own personal sins. But unless we repent, we will all likewise perish! How could any one say that those poor folk who suffered from Katrina or Rita are any worse sinners than we! Romans 5 teaches that ultimately, it is sin, not God, that has brought suffering and death to our world and to us all. And certain sins seem to be a greater affront to Gods holiness. Nevertheless, when judgment for sin comes, we will all suffer. I believe our whole nation is ripe for judgment for turning away from the God who has so blessed us. Having been a sample to the world of a nation exceptionally blessed by their God, I fear we could soon become a sample of a nation visibly under Gods judgment. How critical that we be involved where possible to stem the tide of evil in our government, our society and culture, that we strive for personal holiness ourselves and to be a salt and preservative against evil as well as an example of Gods mercy and compassion to help the suffering. I cannot wholly dismiss all connection between, where Katrina first hit and its timing--just a week before 100,000 homosexuals were scheduled to descend on New Orleans to celebrate Southern Decadence there. Flagrantly mocking a holy God! Significant? I wonder what the Old Testament prophets would have said about that? But the problem is far broader than this. It is our nation blessed with a spiritual heritage, turning away from God. Where Katrina hit is not as important as, could this be a wake-up call from God? Could He be trying to get our attention as a nation? One disaster after another! Could these disasters be allowed in order to bring our nation to its knees, to repentance? Jeremiah is a good model. Though he interpreted truthfully the reasons for Gods judgment in his day, and he suffered personally for faithfully doing so, his heart was so broken in love and compassion for his people, he was called the weeping prophet. He really exhibited Gods heart loving the sinner while hating his sin. In Ezras prayer of repentance, chapter 9, we see his awesome identification with the sins of his people. The description is so graphic and gripping, it is worth looking up to make him and his prayer our model, we have disregarded your commands, our sin, our guilt, etc. Ezras heart, his prayer, his burden and attitude led to a great revival in chapter 10. Lets remind each other that we can do the same for our nation as Ezra. Identify with our nations sinfulness, implore God for our land, and, using Ezras prayer as a model, repent of our sin as nation. Repentance begins with My people. With repentance, further disasters can be averted. I believe prayer has already averted much potential disaster Rita was expected to bring. But lets pray that the disasters will further, turn people to prayer and our nation back to God. This is also our opportunity as Gods children, to demonstrate to the world Gods love for all the people who are suffering. We must share His heart and be His hands. This outpouring of love and sacrifice, crossing racial and national lines, refutes the false view of the Islamic world more than words. The challenge and promise is still before us as Gods people: If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:15
The way I was raised and the way I believe are very similar to the above. We are each allowed our own opinions and thoughts. The way this country is going is one reason I do not want to have children. I'm afraid of what they may have to deal with.
Not a lot of comment. Such stuff is heavy reading and few would spare sufficient time adequately to digest such a plethora (dare I say mish-mash) of apocryphal support for a theory of byzantine convolution. Having a belief that God is instigator of human-scale catastrophe is not new, nor is it wrong. However quoting chapter and verse in support of one's belief does not make the proposer's argument any more sound it just drives the audience to sleep. Besides ... I am allergic to all instances of begging the question!! What was your opinion, Josh? I can think of any number of excellent, if rather mundanely prosaic, reasons why Katrina was so devastating without blaming a Blameless Deity of Love and Infinite Compassion!
I also recall that after the great flood, God said to Noah, "I do set my bow in the clouds, and may it be a covenent between me and you that I will never again destroy the earth." (quoted verbatim, don't have a Bible with me at work). That said, Katrina didn't destroy the Earth, but it sure was destructive. No matter what the other outcomes in Katrina, I see some strained race relations evident everywhere in the USA. This is from my local newspaper. Our county commissioners are deadlocked 3-3 along racial lines. The only other comment about the matter came at the close of Roanoke Rapids resident Joe P. Moody's comments. "The same storm that came through New Orleans is coming through here," he said. "The good and the bad is going to get caught in it and it's time for all of you to make some changes." http://www.rrdailyherald.com/
I have only the following to say: God did not build coastal cities, that was Man. We put ourselves in Nature's path, and yet we love to hand the ball off to God when we are reminded how great and terrible Nature can get.
I do believe in God and I am trying not to blaspheme here, but perhaps the great flood didn't destroy the whole Earth. I mean, in those days, they wouldn't have such line of communication as we do now. Perhaps it only destroyed where people actually were settled. Let me stress the point that I am not trying to offend anyone, you know if you have been brought up to think of the flood as Earth destroying. Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything - I could be in dangerous waters here. But if you think about, it just shows some more of God's awesome power. So if I did happen to offend you, I'm sorry.
No offense here. Actually Kirkegard, a renowned theological philosopher claimed that doubt was not anathema to faith but an essential part of it. I mean, really, how much of any contemporary religious or spiritual experience can be properly quantified and revisited as proof of its undeniable existance? What does that say about supposed religious history? It's all clouded in mystery and open to interpretation. Kirkegard would say that knowing this and still having faith is essential to the paradox of true faith. Short version: real faith is having faith when nothing supports your belief. The flood could have been exagerated. Jesus's words could have been recorded wrongly. Paul could have been a self-diefying charletan. Any of these things could be, and yet to have faith means having faith not to prove these things wrong, but despite that they might be right. I always shake my head at those that believe their faith makes them right. Faith doesn't make anything; it illumates. What you do with that illumination up to you.
Agrees with Rowan. I love watching shows on the History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery, and others that show archeologists trying to prove or disprove Biblical History. Speaking of Noah, there was one that talked about the "great flood" being a flooding of the Mediteranian area around Turkey, Greece, and parts of Russia. They had done some geological studies and mapped it out. They illustrated the similarities between the Biblical stories of Noah and other "folk stories" from the area. They even found remains of an "ark" on the bottom of the Black Sea that matched up with the geological dates of the flood. So, Babe, you may be 100% right, it wasn't a world-wide flood but maybe a regional flood. Remember, ancient people believed the World was flat, and that their tiny corner of the world was all there was.
