Some Thoughts On Natural Disasters And The Mind Of God

“If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is, ‘God is crying,’ And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, ‘Probably because of something you did.’” (Jack Handy, Deep Thoughts, 1992)

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As America recovers from yet another massive natural disaster – or “act of God,” in insurance company lingo - the inevitable question resurfaces in Christian circles: Why is God crying? What is God angry about?  Why does it his some and not others? What did we do or not do right? I've written about this before, but I want to revisit this based on some conversation I know is taking place in Christian circles. 

This is a popular topic  in Christian circles every time a storm hits, especially if it hits where we don't live. Usually, the apparent target of God’s wrath is a particular situation or people group about which the person claiming clarity happens to feel very strongly:

•  It’s the abortion doctors! 
• It’s because of international policies! 
• It’s the Middle East conflict! 
• It’s liberal, feminist Marxists! 
• It’s the greedy Wall Street 1%! 
• It’s evolution in our schools! 
• It's the President! 
• It's megachurches (yes, I saw that one online)
• It's for someone with whom I am displeased!”

There’s quite a list that gets generated in the aftermath of a disaster like hurricanes or tsunamis. Apparently, God has lots of options.

Alien: Covenant

Alien: Covenant, the next installment in Ridley Scott’s Alien universe, provides a passable filler narrative between the disappointing Prometheus and the classic original Alien movie. I say “passable” because my first thoughts when I left the theater were…well, not much, really.

Alien: Covenant is generally getting decent reviews (72% at Rotten Tomatoes), but I didn't think it broke any new ground cinematically or thematically. There just wasn’t much there that initially provoked deep thought. However, if I’m generous, I think the movie may have been trying to offer a story about origins, gods, and the power of creators. Yeah. Let's run with that.

Stephen King's 'Revival: A Novel'

Stephen King has never been one to shy away from wrestling with the most important issues of life. He knows how to use the horror genre effectively as a vehicle for sobering reflections on God, good and evil, human nature, love, hope and despair, and the meaning of life.

King is also disturbingly inventive when it comes to portraying evil in all its gory detail. It's been said that we all have a better handle on evil than good because we understand it better. Maybe King's just more honest than most about following that trajectory to its conclusion.

In Revival: A Novel, King has reminded us once again why he is the master in his genre. By blending a number of significant influences in his life (Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan,"  H.P Lovecraft's  Cthulhu, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) as well as his religious upbringing, he has crafted a tale that I can best describe as bleak. To give you an idea of just how bleak, I offer something  Bertrand Russell wrote in A Free Man's Worship as a means of comparison:

"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."

Is Frankenstorm a Judgment from God?

“If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is, ‘God is crying,’ And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, ‘Probably because of something you did.’” (Jack Handy, Deep Thoughts, 1992)

_________________________________________________________________

As America recovers from yet another massive natural disaster * – or “act of God,” in insurance company lingo - the inevitable question resurfaces in Christian circles: Why is God crying? What is God angry about?  What did we do? 

It’s a popular topic every time a storm hits, especially if it hits where we don't live. Usually, the apparent target of God’s wrath is a particular situation or people group about which the person claiming clarity happens to feel very strongly:

•  It’s the abortion doctors! 
• It’s because of international policies! 
• It’s the Middle East conflict! 
• It’s liberal, feminist Marxists! 
• It’s the greedy Wall Street 1%! 
• It’s evolution in our schools! 
• It's the President! 
• It's megachurches (yes, I saw that one online)
• It's for someone with whom I am displeased!”

There’s quite a list that gets generated in the aftermath of a disaster like Hurricane Sandy. Apparently, God has lots of options.

Christians and Halloween

As a child, I was raised in a Mennonite community that did not observe Halloween. From its roots to its current form, we saw nothing compelling or good about it. We gave treats to oddly arrayed children on our doorstep, but we never dressed up, never went out, and did our best not to support the holiday financially or emotionally. I didn't really care; my mom didn't let us kids eat much candy anyway.

As a young adult, I learned more about the holiday from people who had done more than dabble in the occult. Whatever you might think of the legitimacy of their attempts to connect with the dark side, they were pretty serious about what they hoped to accomplish. Halloween was their Christmas and Easter rolled into one. They approached it with a sense of mission and purpose.

I later moved out of that community and for the first time came in contact with a lot of sincere Christians who viewed Halloween as just another holiday. They experienced it as an exercise of imagination, a sort of exorcism of the spirits of fear from which we Christians have been freed. God had not redeemed us so that we would cringe in the face of evil, so they boldly subverted Halloween with a freedom foreign to my upbringing.

These very different experiences have given me plenty to ponder over the years. Though I have more to understand, I have several observations that I hope contain wisdom.

Deeper Hungers and Darker Games

 I'm a big fan of honesty in fiction. 

 I don't want cookie-cutter personalities, saccharine love, or shallow stereotypes.  I want the author to convince me to cheer for heroes and against villains - and I want to know why the heroes and villains are worthy of the label.  I want grit and beauty, despair and hope, love and loss. If a story tells me what the world is like, I don't mind if it’s happy or grim.  I want actions to have real consequences, and I want to feel like I ought to feel if the same situation were happening in real life.
   
I want to believe that some things are worth fighting for and some things are not, and I want to be reminded that people can be redeemed though not all will be.

This is why I like The Hunger Games series. There have been some really good posts about these books (Holly Ordway's comes to mind, as does J.W Wartick's); since I would be both redundant and boring if I covered the same ground, I will address an issue I have not heard discussed much elsewhere.

 The Hunger Games is entirely a world without God.

Suzanne Collins does not give even the slightest nod to God or religion. As a result, she has done a stellar job introducing a YA audience to a dystopian, godless future that reveals the horrors of unbridled human nature.  As a Christian, I don't mind that God is absent from the story.  If an author is going to write about a world without God, then show a world without God.  I just want the story to be honest about how awful that world would be - and it is.

•   There is no Higher Power to give objective standard for justice. Neitzsche said that when everybody understands that God is dead, they will know they are beyond such petty labels as "good" and "evil" and will simply exercise power.  In The Hunger Games, what happens when one corrupt regime is replaced?  The next regime moves in with the seeds of corruption already sown. The State kills people without benefit of trial or proof; so does President Snow.  So do the rebels.  Gale might just be the ideal Neitzschean Superman, finally able to move beyond attachments and emotions and wield his power on behalf of a regime that is new, but not that different.

•   There is no Higher Standard for morality.  Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote: “If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.”  Neil Postman noted, "Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."  Collins’ world without God captures both these possibilities. Those in the Capital who are not abusing or being abused by power are consumed with ease and pleasure.  The rebels “fight the system,” but what can they offer to replace it?  They are already intoxicated with the power they have. The distorted pleasure will follow, as we see foreshadowed in the agreement to have yet another Game.  

• There is no Source of Hope outside ourselves.  Where does one find hope in the midst of the brutality and pain?  The only thing the book offers is relationships with others.  While I believe in the meaningfulness of community and companionship, that is the only hope in the story. Justice is either brutal, corrupted, or vigilante, and no ultimate justice will one day make things right.  There are no miracles, no unblemished saviors, no trustworthy authority figures.  There is only others - and even the hope found in them is broken. (The last chapter in the series is simultaneously hopeful and tragic - a measure of peace has been found, but it's a broken hallelujah). 

•  There is no Purpose to history.  In Cormac McCarthy's The Sunset Limited, White, the nihilistic atheist, says: “The darker picture is always the correct one. When you read the history of the world you are reading a saga of bloodshed and greed and folly the import of which is impossible to ignore. And yet we imagine that the future will somehow be different.” What will happen in Katniss’s world?  No way to tell, really, but White appears to be correct.  If there were a Book Four, I suspect we would see the new government looking more and more like the old regime.  Even the best of the rebels seemed to lose their soul by the time the revolution was complete.  The Mockingjay can only repeat what it knows; just like the iconic bird, the individual characters appear to be only echoes of the people and events that have formed them.  Why should governments be exempt?

This list might leave the impression the series is not worth reading, but that is not the case at all. The series has a lot to offer in a world awash in worldview battles. Collins did not shy away from the reality of the world she created. There were no false moments.  If one can learn truth equally well through a story that shows compelling good as well as disgusting evil, The Hunger Games has done a lot in the service of truth, even if the story is disturbing and grim.
 

 Contrast this approach with another recent YA phenomenon: Twilight. The series is full of bizarre distortions of reality - it never does the story, the characters or the reader the honor of allowing something real to happen.
 
Young, impressionable teenage girls absorb the message that putting all one’s self-worth in one boy is okay; that stalking is romantic; that ordinary, boring friends are losers; that a love triangle involving a teenage girl and two really dangerous men (one who is much older than she) is really cool; and that rough sex is okay if he loves you (you only bruise the ones you love!) No, thank you.  I am not entertained.

Let's not kid ourselves; today’s youth know that life is grim. They already know that parents die, friends can turn on them, power can corrupt, and even the best relationships are full of tension and pain.  For many, life looks so overwhelming at times that the only thing they can do is hide for a while and wonder how they can possibly be made whole.  Maybe they are drawn to this story because it does them the honor of giving them truth.

I'd much rather they read a story that takes life seriously than one that insults them with beautiful twilight lies. At least now we are in the realm of truth, and the truth of Christ has the ability to bring hope, life, and light into very dark lives indeed.

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Recommended Reviews of The Hunger Games:
Christian Reflection on the Hunger Games Trilogy - very thorough post from J.W. Wartick
The Hunger Games, Ethics and Christianity - another post about the role of luck
Book Review: The Hunger Games Trilogy - good overview and perspective of the series as literature
Blood-Stained Ink has a three-part series worth reading
From Emily Torres' Dystopia Ministries - a series of short articles on how our culture is intersecting with the Capital.
A series based on The Hunger Games and Philosophy begins here.

Amazing Monsters

“A genius as an artist, [Pablo Picasso] was often a monster in his relationships – especially with women – because of his controlling, devouring personality. ‘When I die,’Picasso predicted years before the filming of Titanic, ‘it will be a shipwreck, and as when a big ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it.’
       

When Picasso died in 1973, at the age of ninety-one, his prediction came true.  Three of those closest to him committed suicide (his second wife, an early mistress, and a grandson), and several others had psychiatric breakdowns.  ‘He amazes me,’ said his friend, sculptor Alberto Giacomett.  ‘He amazes me as a monster would, and I think he knows as well as we do that he’s a monster.’ Indeed, Picasso referred to himself as ‘the Minotaur,’ the mythic Cretan monster that devoured maidens.
       

One mistresss, Marie Therese, described how Picasso set about painting: “He first raped the woman and then he worked.”  Another told him, ‘You’ve never loved anyone in your life.  You don’t know how to love.’  Picasso himself was brutally blunt,, ‘Every time I change wives I should burn the last one.  Then maybe I’d be rid of them.  They wouldn’t be around now to complicate my existence.’
       

Picasso’s destructiveness was rooted in his childhood but was reinforced by his early acquaintance with Nietzsche through friends in Barcelona. ‘Truth cannot exist…truth does not exist,’ he used to mutter. ‘I am God, I am God.’”

 - From Os Guiness, “The Meaning of Truth,” in Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith.