Catastrophe and the hidden God/revealed God

Pat Robertson, televangelist, and all-around egghead sought to one up his explanation of why 9/11 happened, and why Katrina happened, today when he declared, "We will serve you if you get us free from the French," paraphrasing/quoting the people of Haiti 200 years ago to Satan himself. Satan's reply was "Okay, you got it." And in striking up that deal with the devil you get why Haiti has been poor and why they experienced yesterday's devastating earthquake.

Now the only reason I bring up Robertson is to highlight how much of a problem his theological framework is. Oh, and also to point out that he pulls this Hatians working a deal out with the devil from the opposite place of reality. The first thing that came to mind when I heard Robertson said this (okay after the initial "again?"), was Luke 13:1-5:

¹There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. ²And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? ³No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. ⁴Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? ⁵No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

Robertson seems to think he is exempt from the seemingly random acts of nature, of which God is Lord over, when Jesus himself told people, "Do you think that these were worse sinners?"

The problem with Pat's theology is he seeks after the hidden aspects of an already revealed God. The interesting thing about Pat's theology is, in that respect, the rest of us aren't all that different from him. We all will try and explain why bad things happen, especially when they happen to good people, in order to satisfy ourselves. We become obsessed with the hidden will of God. We are not satisfied with what God has revealed to us because this world is a maddening place. What kind of a God allows something like a 7.0 earthquake to rock a poverty stricken island? What kind of God allows supposedly one of his own shepherds, Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, to be crushed under the rubble?

This God who allows natural disasters scares us on our backs. We end up looking up at a world, and a God, who we know nothing about and it frightens us to our core. This is what happens when we constantly talk about the things of God that we do not know much about. When Christians are constantly explaining God and never proclaiming Him we get caught up in missing the whole point of why God came. God did not come to reveal some abstract "truth" or to give us some abstract "wisdom" or to give us a seemingly abstract set of rules and moral conduct. When we "preach" about a God who came and gave us a book on good and moral living we miss the point. The constant explaining of God, which never gets around to proclaiming, leaves God on our backs and we cannot shake him.

The late Gerhard Forde in his book Theology Is for Proclamation, once said:

We see that apart from God preached, we are estranged from God. Rather than being the one we are allegedly always seeking, God not preached appears more as the one we can never quite get off our backs. As such, "God," is the name for whomever or whatever is "out there," "up there," "in the depths," "transcendent to us," and messing with us...Outside the proclamation both theistic and atheistic theologians are strangely one. Both are trying to get God off our backs. The theist most often does it by trying to make God "nice," to bring God "to heel," so to speak, and the atheist does it by trying to make God disappear. Both attempts have a similar outcome from the point of view of proclamation: they only subvert it.

Nevertheless, for better or for worse, neither theistic nor atheistic appeals seem to work for long. We may find an argument temporarily convincing, but then something else overtakes us--some tragedy, some joy, some fortune or misfortune, some deed or happening that inflates or deflates our ego--and we are back where we started (p. 14).

Forde goes on to describe how this "God not preached" in the end gets us nowhere. This is not to say that explanation does not have its place, it most certainly does. But the problem with explanation is that most people begin and end with just explanation. Many Christian churches see no reason to proclaim to people once they've been "saved." The Gospel is not something that should cease to be preached once people have been "saved." The Christian life is not to get saved and then find out what the point really is, what God really wants from you. The Christian life begins, is lived, and ends on the very same point: Christ crucified and risen.

So Forde offers up that the only solution for this problem of the hidden God is actually proclaiming the revealed God:

This is the classic illustration of how a theology that understands the place of proclamation will make certain moves and refuse to make others. Luther knew that only the proclamation--only the preached God, the living Word here and now--could save us from the God not preached, the absolute God (p. 28).

In closing I offer up a prayer from Concordia Publishing House's Pastoral Care Companion, with those affected inserted:

Almighty God, merciful Father, Your thoughts are not our thoughts, and Your ways are not our ways. In Your wisdom You have permitted this disastrous earthquake to befall Haiti. Keep the Haitians and all of s from despair and do not let our faith fail us, but sustain and comfort us. Direct all efforts to attend the injured, console the bereaved, and protect the helpless. Deliver any who are still in danger, and bring hope and healing that we may find relief and restoration; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.