Theology and Hurricanes

I am bracing myself, even though I no longer live in Florida. I'm bracing myself not only for sad and scary hurricane stories, but for all the people afterward who will post comments about praying to God that the hurricane would miss us--and lo and behold, the hurricane had missed us.

Some will call it the power of prayer, but I call it crummy theology. Because if I pray that the hurricane misses my house, am I not praying that someone else get hit?

And do I really believe that our God of free will, our God who set the world up with certain laws of geology and physics and chemistry, do I really believe that God would intervene to curve the hurricane away from me? Am I more important than the person who loses everything if the hurricane goes elsewhere?

If my house gets hurt by a hurricane, does that mean that I didn't pray hard enough? Or that I'm spiritually lacking, so that God pays no attention to me? Or that other people prayed better?

Those questions also show us the dangers of a theology that says that if we just pray hard enough and believe enough and behave in certain ways, then we can control the world around us and control God.

We can't. That's the hard truth of the world we live in. No matter how good we are, hard times visit us all.

The Good News of the Bible is that we have a God who loves us so much that our God would come to our difficult planet to hang out with us. The Good News of the New Testament is one of grace: God will love us no matter our behavior.

Hurricanes are not punishment. On some level, hurricanes are the way the planet deals with extra heat and energy. Yet even those who would blame hurricanes on global warming (and thus see them as a fitting punishment for errant humans) would do well to look back to remind themselves of how hurricanes have always swept across the planet, even before it warmed it up so dramatically in the past few decades.

I'm not suggesting that we abandon prayer as a response. In fact, on days like these where most of us can't do much more than watch and hope, prayer seems like a perfectly appropriate response.

Prayer in the Face of a Hurricane

Creator God, who fashioned this astonishing planet of atmospheric swirls, help us remember the abundance that our habitat usually offers us. Be with those who work to protect their homes. Be with those who suffer from fear and anxiety. Be with us in times of both loss and abundance. Remind us that you are with us, and help calm our fears.