By Kathy Berken
On Deck
Does God cause bad things to happen? That depends on your image of God. Does God favor those who view God as benevolent and punish those who view God as vengeful? No. God doesn’t change who God is. We perceive events in our lives relative to how we view God.
Insurance companies still use “acts of God” to describe natural disasters and usually don’t cover earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and other weather phenomena because the implication is that God caused these things.
Do you remember when the evangelist Pat Robertson told America in 2005 that God sent Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans to punish the people for their sins? Or, when former U.S. Representative Michele Bachman said that God sent us a “wake-up call” with Hurricane Irene in 2011? Well-known Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel wrote in his book “Night” that God abandoned the Jews and left them to suffer, punishing them for their sins or the sins of their ancestors: “Where is God? Where is He? This is where, hanging here from this gallows.”
My uncle Fred had his lower leg amputated decades ago due to an illness and his wife told me that Fred must have done something very bad in his life for God to punish him like that. Stories in the Old Testament tell of people blaming God for their troubles. One book in particular is Lamentations, written following the Israelites’ exile from Jerusalem when the Babylonians destroyed the temple in 586 BCE and took most of the Israelites living there back to Babylon.
The Israelites’ image of God is one of retribution. They believed that God broke his covenant with his people and left them for dead with nothing or nobody to rescue them. They are angry with God, whom they believe has shown no mercy, no love and no care.
Although Hebrew Scriptures often tell us of a God who is out to punish people, we can find plenty of stories where God rescues and saves the Israelites. Moses was rescued from the Nile as a baby whom God used later to save the Israelites from the Egyptians by having them drown in the Red Sea. We find other images of God as creator, blessing, fire, eagle, host, mother, parent, rock, savior, redeemer and warrior. God has been pictured as a woman in labor, a mother hen, a bread maker and someone who will hold us in the palm of his hand.
The New Testament overwhelmingly shows us a benevolent God. Jesus is loving, forgiving, just, merciful, kind, healing and compassionate. On the cross, Jesus shares in our suffering and then rises from the dead to show us that life conquers death.
In our pain and suffering, we desperately need God to remain with us. We need an abiding God. We need to imagine and experience God less as causing our problems and more as healing us. We need to rely on God as we walk through our lives sometimes limping, bumping into things in the dark or feeling lost.
I pray to God thinking about Elijah’s story (1Kings 19:11-14), a turning point in the Old Testament that painted God as other than angry and vengeful. Elijah flees for his life after killing the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and hears Yahweh telling him to go up to Mount Horeb: “Go out and stand on the mountain. I want you to be there when I pass by.” Of course, Elijah looks for God in the wind, earthquake, and fire but, instead, “there was a gentle breeze, and when Elijah heard it, he covered his face with his coat.”
May the God of your heart be the gentle breeze of peace, love and healing.
(Kathy Berken is a spiritual director and retreat leader in St. Paul, Minnesota. She lived and worked at L’Arche in Clinton — The Arch from 1999-2009.)
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