If you’ve made a handful of trips around the sun, you might be old enough to remember the likes of Pat Robertson declaring every natural disaster a judgement from God upon our nation for sodomy, abortion, feminism, and whatever else deemed contrary to God’s Word. The Left scoffed, “thinking” Christians winced, and the Religious Right “Amened.” With Hurricane season upon us, and a seemingly severe season at that, the talking heads of the Left have decided to put forward their own versions of Pat Roberston.
Jennifer Lawrence, one of the darlings of modern feminism, put forward the idea that Mother Nature is pouring forth her wrath upon us for electing Trump and ignoring global climate change. There was also Kenneth Storey, a sociology professor down in Florida, who took to Twitter––that wisest of all mediums––to state his opinion that Hurricane Harvey was “karma” for Texans who voted for Trump.
What we see in these two instances, is that mankind is always reaching for an explanation for why the planet seems to rage against us. Gale force winds force us to feel our finitude. Though we have become so very human-centered in our thinking, we cannot escape the reality that some force, cause, or deity is in charge and must be appeased. Our nation has been in a tug of war between worldviews. It must continually be pointed out that the Left’s push to minimize and sideline the Christian worldview is not a zero sum game. It isn’t whether we will serve a god, but which god we will serve.
Despite the Left’s insistence that you can choose your own truth, the human instinct is still to look for Who is behind it all, and what that deity’s purpose is. In the quest to oust the God of the Bible, the Leftists have substituted a capricious Mother Nature. She is clearly out to exact vengeance on carbon emitters, and she will tip the scales of justice against those who have failed to revere her. Lawrence, and the sentiment she expressed, is a potent example of what happens when a culture removes God Almighty as their God. Inevitably, we must find some deity who is responsible, who can serve as arbiter of justice, and who will punish evildoers.
Despite the repeated claims that morality is subjective, truth is relative, and we each should chart our own course, the Left is still faced with the fact that within us, as creatures made in the image of God, we have a sense for justice. If the universe is simply a vast ocean of meaningless molecules incessantly banging against each other, nothing matters. There is no such thing as justice, there’s only perpetually purposeless chaos. Yet, our conscience bears witness that that can’t be the way things actually are. We feel outrage when we hear of some schlub who murdered his family in cold blood. We feel the injustice when a regime uses chemical weapons on its own people. We feel the gnawing sense of “this is wrong” when some jerk drives his Dodge Charger into a group of protesters he disagrees with. We feel the impulse to ask “why,” when a hurricane destroys our city.
The Left, for all its ambiguity about the Judeo-Christian God, still has a very keen sense of divine justice. We see it in statements like J-law’s and Professor Storey’s; we cannot escape a world in which there is a God. You can pretend Him away, but you are still left facing the fact that there is a God who rules the universe, and guides everything to its appointed end.
While the Left points at these hurricanes as signs of Mother Nature’s vengeance upon us, the Bible would have us see in them the truth: unless we repent, we shall all likewise perish (Lk. 13:3) in an eternal hurricane of God’s wrath upon our sin and unbelief. These disasters are a call to return to trust in God, forsake our sin, and ask for His mercy to be upon us. You’ll find that Mother Nature, Karma, and the cold gears of Darwinism are not quite so benevolent, merciful, or kind.