By Susan L. Barreto
ust as Job learned much about the Creator’s nature when God spoke from the “whirlwind,” so can we when it comes to examining faith in light of recent natural disasters. Human suffering and natu- ral disasters show a complex but grace-filled relationship between humanity and God, ELCA theologian Terence E. Fretheim said at the April meeting of the Ecumenical Roundtable on Faith, Sci- ence and Technology in Chicago. The roundtable, hosted by the Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology (
www.elca.org/faithandscience), brings together scientists and theologians to talk about the implications of science and technology for Christian faith and life. Fretheim, author of Creation Untamed: The Bible, God and Natural Disasters (Baker Aca- demic, 2010), said recent surveys suggest that more than half of U.S. Christians believe God controls everything in nature. Roughly 29 percent believe God punishes nations through disasters.
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Debunking disaster myths
Theologian explores the nature of God’s power in disasters
On the other hand, in light of increasingly severe weather trends that include Hurricane Katrina in 2005, powerful tornadoes in the Midwest and the 2011 destruction of Joplin, Mo., many are taking seriously global warming and humanity’s culpability in rising temperatures.
So, Fretheim asked, how much of these recent trag- edies has to do with humans, how much with nature and how much of the blame lies with God? He looks for the answer in the book of Job, something he suggested was “natural” for a professor of Old Testament at Luther Semi- nary, St. Paul. Minn.
“By appearing in the whirlwind, God discloses God’s self to Job within the natural order of things—the real- ity that has occasioned Job’s suffering,” Fretheim said. “God thereby depicts creation as both good and wild, both ordered and disorderly.” Job understands that his suffering is related to the nature of God’s creation and also God’s relationship to
DESIGNPICS
it. Fretheim said Job’s issue deals with a certain theol- ogy of nature. Events move Job to fault God for allowing creation to be disorderly and out of God’s control. Justice is skewed, say a righteous Job and his friends, who view natural disasters as a form of punishment for sin.
God’s response to this mindset is that cre-
ation isn’t as rigidly fixed as some believe— nor as chaotic as Job thinks. This, Fretheim said, is where current misinterpretations of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina can be debunked. Human suffering, he added, may occur because of the way God’s world has been created and the way in which God lets the creation be and become. “We might, like Job, wish for a different world, without risk and without suffering and with full protection, but this is the world we have. And we are called to enjoy its remark- able gifts, not just to make the best of it,” he said. This is a world sustained by God, which is both ordered and open-ended because of its continuing creative poten- tial, Fretheim added. This may seem chaotic or a source of unnecessary suffering, but it suggests God has granted freedom to the nonhuman world to develop as it was meant to be. We often miss this reality about nature and how it sug- gests God’s relationship to this world is such that God no longer acts with complete freedom. Fretheim believes the Bible shows us that God is committed to letting creatures be what they are created to be. Suffering then isn’t a mat- ter of divine arbitrariness but because God “makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). While people suffer due to the actions of other humans (i.e., pollution, excessive carbon emissions), Fretheim would have us remember that God has made creation to be as it will be for the sake of the fullest life possible.
Barreto, a member of Luther Memorial Church in Chicago, edits the Covalence newsletter (
www.elca.org/covalence) for the ELCA Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology.
August 2012 27
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