House of Faith or Enchanted Forest?. Charles W. Hedrick, Jr.
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and death left by the *tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 and category-four hurricane Katrina in 2005 beg the question: who controls the weather, God or Mother Nature? The Bible does not portray *Yahweh, God of Jewish and Christian faith, directly administering the day-to-day routine of nature, as ancient nature Gods are portrayed. The regularity of their cult rituals was believed to ensure both the benevolence of the natural processes and the fertility of fields and flocks—though not even they were always able to control the weather (1 Kings 18:17–29). The *Canaanite God *Ba‘al, for example, was portrayed as the God of storms. Ruling over wind and clouds, his power was manifested in thunder and lightening. Yahweh, on the other hand, “earned his spurs” and made his reputation controlling history (Exodus 4:22–23; 15:21) and managing the religious welfare of the Israelites. He was far more interested in their religious obedience than directly maintaining the harmony and rhythm of the natural order. Rather than ensuring annual harvests by day-to-day hands-on (so to speak) management of nature, Yahweh is portrayed managing people by using nature to reward obedience and punish disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:1–46). Thus it seems more proper to say: Yahweh used nature when it served his purpose, but he is not generally portrayed directly juggling the daily routine of the physical elements, which was the nature God’s primary concern.
Whether Yahweh used nature wisely, or morally, however, is an open question. For example, he is portrayed as authorizing the killing of Job’s children (with a great wind, Job 1:19) as part of a bargain with Satan (1:9–12). Because of human “wickedness” (Genesis 6:5), he flooded the earth, obliterating every living thing (Genesis 6:17)—he thought better of it later, however (Genesis 8:21; 9:11). He destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and everyone in them by means of fire and brimstone (Genesis 19:24–25—was it a volcanic eruption?), and he was also known to use hurricanes (Psalm 83:13–15). Hence, it appears that his periodic use of nature in the Bible is consistent with the recent tragedies in Indonesia and the Gulf.
Apparently God can control weather when he chooses, but he seems less inclined to regulate nature directly day by day, preferring to manipulate it from time to time for reasons known only to him. When we do know his reasons for interfering in the natural processes, he seems (from our perspective) to be a bit heavy-handed. The biblical record raises two questions: does God actually govern nature in a hands-on way (so to speak), or has he set an unregulated system in place, leaving to “Mother Nature” its day-to-day operation, which he manipulates from time to time? The more serious question is this: is it moral to use weather to reward and punish? Even we morally-challenged humans know degrees of evil exist in the world, and justice demands that they draw different degrees of punishment appropriate to the crime. But no such discrimination exists in “natural” disasters. The innocent suffer along with the guilty. If God uses storms to punish evildoers—such as using Katrina “to get those damn casinos” (as some suggested)—then in the process he is also taking out hospitals, seminaries, and orphanages! Describing “natural disasters” as “acts of God” makes God look incompetent or immoral; it seems best to chalk up such disasters to Mother Nature and revise your personal theology.
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Of course, maybe God has nothing to do with weather at all and the climate of a given region is a natural phenomenon and as such is simply due to luck, a comment that begs the question, What controls our lives: divine providence or “lady” luck? At some point everyone has said: “What a great stroke of luck,” or “We survived by the providence of God.” As a Baptist, I understand “divine providence” but what is “luck” and how do I reconcile it to the dominant idea in western culture that God somehow regulates the universe?
My brother-in-law had a great game of golf one weekend—even for him. He shot 67 for 18 holes including a hole-in-one. His wife chalked up the hole-in-one to his skill with the clubs. But he insisted “No, anytime you shoot a hole-in-one, it’s luck.” I thought about it for a moment and had to agree. If holes-in-one were due to skill there would be more of them. So I suggested: “Perhaps it was divine providence.” He replied: “No, it’s luck; God doesn’t care about golf.” My brother-in-law is a Baptist deacon, so I had to take him seriously. After all, golf is a game where you play against yourself, so the only plausible reason for God to intervene in his game and “bless” him with a hole-in-one was to lower his golf score and make him feel rather smug. We usually like to think God has bigger issues on his plate, which is what I think he meant by “God couldn’t care less about golf.”
What we seem to mean by “luck” is that sometimes things go in our favor and at other times they do not, including even the most trivial matters. We seem to conceive luck as a pervasive random force in the universe that, for whatever reason, is erratic or whimsical in application. If this is true, we do not live in a universe where everything is micromanaged by God. Hence, people who believe in God’s providence must cope with the disturbing idea that God manages, or micromanages, some things, but allows other things simply to happen, as they will, without his oversight. Or, on the other hand, we live in a world where God micromanages everything and must be given the credit (or the blame) for everything that happens. If God is to get the “credit” for everything that happens, then we humans bear no responsibility for global warming, poverty, the breach in the ozone layer, or the failure of the levees in New Orleans in 2005. Somehow, however, we instinctively know that we cannot make God the “scapegoat” for all the misfortunes of the world. Most of us realize (I hope) that God did not cause the *ENRON debacle, or the incompetent response of the Federal Government to the disaster in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.
Perhaps “luck” is only a more or less natural “force,” in the universe—something like gravity, for example. While the ancient Greeks and Romans personified it into a deity named *Tyche, we moderns have secularized it. Nevertheless, the idea that some things just happen for no apparent reason is a disturbing concept for those who must think there is a master plan to the universe. If things happen for no reason, then we have a universe permeated by a principle of randomness that suggests God may guide matters in the universe in most instances, but leaves others to happen without his guidance. Such a possibility raises the question: how can we tell “benevolent concern” from “random event”? Perhaps we cannot.
The Bible is full of bad things perpetrated by the biblical God on basically decent people, although many believers seem willing to accept that sometimes God does bad things even to good people for reasons we cannot understand. Job thought so: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not evil”? Maybe we invented the idea of “luck” because such apparently capricious behavior on God’s part is simply inconsistent with the idea of a benevolent God. But if we invented “luck,” we could have invented God as well.
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It is surely questionable that God is concerned with the minutiae of individual human lives or even the mega problems that plague whole nations. During the Second World War the belt buckles of German soldiers were etched with the following slogan: “God is with us.” Of course the allied troops thought the same thing, because they too thought their cause was just. And this clash of claims for God’s support in the enterprises of our lives naturally raises the question about the minutiae of our lives. For example, Does God care about baseball?
Are we to suppose that God follows baseball and even decides the outcomes of games? I recently saw a player, after throwing the winning pitch in a baseball game, make the sign of the cross, kiss his fingers, and point upward—thanking God for the win. Some believe God really involves himself in the minutiae of life—even numbering hairs on the human head and deciding the deaths of sparrows (Matthew 10:29–30). But with such a complicated universe to run, surely God has concerns more pressing than sparrows, hairs in the drain—and the Cardinals/Royals game. In terms of universal importance, which team wins the pennant seems rather insignificant. Some events clearly have a more “profound” impact on life than others. True, the outcome of a Cardinals/Royals game is more significant than hairs left in the drain this morning, but totally insignificant when compared to the Iraqi war. Some die-hard fans may disagree, but in terms of significant impact on human life, baseball games fall completely off the radar screen for everyone, except perhaps those involved in the industry.
It comforts us to think there is a master plan to life. Believing that life is “scripted”