Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Dust vs. Airplane - Dust Wins

A friend of mine from New Jersey posted a link on her Facebook page to an Associated Press story that reported that “A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes. ‘Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,’ Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.” (by Scheherezade Faramarzi, 04-19-10) Should we be interpreting the recent earthquakes that have made the news (Haiti, Chile, Mexico, China) as God’s voice for women to cover up? Before we laugh off the crazy clerics over there, remember that some preachers in the US interpreted Hurricane Katrina as God’s way of stopping New Orleans’ gay pride parade.

This week the erupting volcano in Iceland brought air travel to and from and in Europe to a complete stop. I heard on Public Radio this morning that this has already had twice the effect as did the emptying of US airspace following September 11, 2001. But this time we can’t blame terrorists (neo-Nazi, Islamist or any other variety). We can’t blame the Wall Street banks, or the Federal regulators or Congress or the President (neither Bush nor Obama). Neither a right-wing nor a left-wing conspiracy could have been so effective at paralyzing global air traffic as one small volcano (yes, that’s what the seismologists and volcanologists call it) and prevailing winds could.

Animists (ancient and modern, even those who call themselves Christians) personify natural phenomena and interpret them as messages from the gods (or God). I hear plenty of Christians today who ask, “What is God trying to tell us?” when these disasters happen. Some even seem to think they know what the message is, which is usually some moral judgment to which they are particularly sensitive. I suggest that the message we should get is humility (not that the volcano thought of that or even that God directed it to blow to teach us that). After all, our big powerful jet airplanes were stopped by tiny dust particles. But I do think that God sent this message in Psalm 8:3-4. “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”

But biblical humility is not what some have called “worm theology” that devalues humans. Psalm 8:5 expresses the great dignity of being human, made in the image of God that permeates the Bible. “You have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.” So the message of the volcano is not that humans are weak and worthless, but that we need to put ourselves and our accomplishments in perspective. For most people in most of human history, the idea that people could fly between Europe and North America in a matter of hours would have been miraculously awesome. The volcano doesn’t diminish that, just puts it in perspective.

This is not the message the volcano or earthquake is sending for God because we have become so prideful. Rather it is the interpretive lens God has given through the revelation of Scripture by which we can understand our place in the universe in which God has placed us.