A JEALOUS, ANGRY, VENGEFUL GOD?

It has been an eventful week, an emotional week for anyone with compassion in their heart for the people of Haiti. It has been a heart-wrenching week for those who have family or friends in Haiti that have not yet heard from. The unknowing can be very difficult to bear.

I hope all of you will contribute to Haitian disaster relief through whatever agency you trust.

To add to people's misery, we learn from the mouth of televangelist Pat Robertson that the Haitians brought this on themselves through some pact their ancestors made with the devil over 200 years ago. If so, that is a god with some serious revenge in his heart. I know, "revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord," the bible reminds us, but to extract that revenge on innocent men, women and children -- even on non-Haitians working on the island to further His work -- seems extreme to me.

Oh, and please, don't remind me that I am not supposed to question the ways of the Lord. Surely in his infinite wisdom he knows how to make his actions perfectly clear -- even to someone like me.

The Orlando Sentinel has a section titled 30-word rant where people can write in and express their views on any topic so long as they keep their remarks to 30 words or less. After Pat Robertson's became known, one reader wrote the following: "A jealous, angry, vengeful god? Surely he was made in our image."

(By the way, I know that god should be capitalized when referring to the one god, the living god. But I am unsure whether the reader was referring to THAT god or to one of the several gods we humans worship in our various, sometimes contentious and often contradictory religions. I choose to just use the generic "god.")

One can take the reader's statement two ways, it seems to me. Did the writer mean that god was simply acting in the same way we error-prone, sinful humans would, or did he mean, as I have heard expressed before, that in the beginning man created god and so, of course, we created him in our image? (Maybe that explains why we have so many ministers constantly trying to explain god.) Does god behave like humans at times?

Many people reacted to Robertson’s remarks. Some ministers actually rebuked him on the air or in the press. That’s a good sign. It always bothered me that ministers on TV, charlatans and con-men all, as far as I’m concerned, could make the outrageous statement they did and never be challenged by ministers in our hometown church pulpits.

Just the same, I guess if god can let his chosen people, the Israelites, languish under the whip of slavery in Egypt for decades before setting them free, he can extract vengeance on the people of Haiti for a pact with the devil some group made over 200 years ago. I have to say, however, that seems like one angry god.

But no, that can’t be, writes The Most Rev. Thomas G. Wenski, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Orlando in the Orlando Sentinel. He reminds us that “When faced with our misfortunes or those of others, we can be tempted to ask ourselves: What did we do or what did those people do to deserve this?” He explains later in his op-ed piece: “Jesus warns us not so see these events as somehow the wrath of an angry God. Evil came into the world not by God’s willing it; but through the devil and human sin.” (How are these two, the devil and human sin, not the work of God’s creation?)

Bishop Wenski goes on to clarify with the explanation: “Today -- and indeed, from the beginning of our exile from Eden -- we experience this world as a ‘valley of tears.’ We live in a fallen and, thus imperfect, world. And oftentimes the forces of nature -- earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and other natural disasters -- can suggest that our planet itself is ‘in rebellion’ against the original order of a loving Creator God.” Further, he states, “… we cannot rush to blame victims for the evil visited upon them; neither can we blame God, whom Scripture reveals as all loving and all merciful.”

I am not comforted.

We must take from his remarks that his “loving and all merciful” god is powerless to deal with the forces of nature, i.e, “earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and other natural disasters.” Maybe he can, but he won’t. Why? Well, I must assume that it is because nature is part of the “original order” that he created. For him to interfere would suggest that the laws of nature are not perfect, wouldn’t you think?

If some good comes out of the disaster in Haiti, if some good can be wrestled from the destruction and from the deaths of babies, of small children, or mothers and fathers going about their daily lives, of American teenagers in Haiti on a church mission and from the deaths of the hundreds of others who died there is past week when nature “rebelled against the original order,” it will come from the sympathy and good will of humans around the world who are at this moment rushing to bring food, water and order to the people of this island nation.

Pray, if prayer helps you, and then send money to help the people of Haiti. I won’t ask you to not trust in the lord, but the people of Haiti need something more substantial, some help they can use to feed their babies and rebuild their homes. Act on your conscience and do it today!