Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Reader Question- Is Ebola God's punishment? And how do we react to disaster language?

Recently I have heard several people claim that the imminent Ebola outbreak the US is facing is a sign that God is judging our nation for departing from him. Usually they also cite 2 Chronicles as the answer to the problem. So, two questions. First, does God deal with things like national sin today, or was that something he just did with ancient Israel? And second, how should we (Christians, Bible-readers) draw the line between recognizing a generally applicable truth, and "claiming a promise" that isn't ours to claim?

--Sarah


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Thanks for writing in, Sarah. Yeah, I've heard the same claim. And it's full of crap. 

I sat on this one a bit to let that point really drive home... with no new confirmed Ebola cases in the US since September according to the CDC, we can continue to say with pride and confidence that more Americans have been Batman than have had Ebola. More people have been married to Kim Kardashian than have died with it in the US. And more Americans have BEEN Kim Kardashian than have died of it in this outbreak.

Forget Ebola. We need to look into the eschatological significance of Batman and Kim Kardashian. 


So if Ebola was God's punishment for our drifting away from God, does that mean we have gotten back with the program? Yay, holy America? Not sure any of the pastors would say that.

Let's just say what the divine Ebola fear-mongering was, for real, and accept it: it was taking a spectre from pop culture and using it to try to scare people into toeing the line. It had nothing to do with any divine message, Biblical or otherwise. It had to do with exactly one thing... fear is an effective motivator.

You don't prep a nation for war by encouraging thoughtful contemplation of the enemies culture, you demonize the enemy and make them a bogeyman to terrify the populace, until any action is acceptable over allowing the enemy to continue as they have. You don't argue for "family values" by educating positive practices, instead you pick the "destroying our families" du jour and terrify people of what it will do. From fear of disease to fear of immigrant to fear of poverty to fear of change to fear of feminists playing video games to fear of republicans in large groups our society is practically defined, as a whole and in its niches, by what we fear. 

So people got scared of Ebola, and instead of thinking, "Gosh, this kind of panic could actually exacerbate the problem, better calm people down," some Pastors thought, "Gee, I bet I could get an easy sermon out of this! Maybe even TWO!"

Someone asked once why I hate Christianity. I don't think that held water, but you may have a point if you insinuate that I don't trust other pastors much, outside of a few very specific examples.

To the second part of your question, another lazy homiletical device (and another artifact of the emphasis placed on Biblical literalism) is the desire to take a story that has little relevance to a certain audience and try to apply it to them directly.

For instance, I've heard anger at political enemies justified through the use of psalms. Now don't get me wrong, there are some VERY angry Psalms, and they DO teach us that God understands our feelings of anger. But those Psalms were written by people whose nation had been brutally and militarily oppressed by powers whose lack of basic humanity had lead to horrible, horrible acts.

If you have lived most of your life north of the Rio Grande in North America, then odds are you have exactly zero context for the anger being described.

Now, you might be quite angry at those liberals with their unholy ways, or those conservatives with their backward ways, but either way, your anger was not theirs, and claiming it as such is a gross misrepresentation of the text. It would be like sitting down with people who are starving to death and complaining that the pizza place forgot to give you extra pepperoni. Sure, God forgives, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't knock it off.

I feel similarly for people who use revolutionary language in a Twitter Hashtag discussion, or in a Facebook thread.

The inability to recognize that there is a fundamental difference between inconveniences you experience and those experienced by others leads to hugely problematic attempts to co-opt language, biblical or otherwise, that was never meant for you. Can we as affluent North Americans learn lessons from what others go through, absolutely.

But if your instinct is to look at, say, a Holocaust survivor, and say; "Man, I know exactly how you feel," then you have missed pretty much every available point.

1 comment:

  1. I would add: If you have lived most of your life north of the Rio Grande in North America, *especially if you are cis, white, male, middle-class or richer, or a combination of these,* then odds are you have exactly zero context for the anger being described. I think an American poor trans woman of color in Missouri might just have some clue.

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