Two very interesting and opposing schools of thought on this. Carrie Tomko has a thought provoking article here as does Mark Shea.
The gist of it is, “Did God cause this destruction of the City of New Orleans because of her sinfulness?” with Carrie and Mark taking opposing ends of that argument.
I’m standing squarely in “I’m not sure.”
Quite a few “bad” things have happened to me particularly over the last 11 years or so. My husband’s business has never quite gotten off the ground giving us the type of income we both envisioned for this point in our lives (which would be somewhere on the other side of the poverty line at least!) A baby died inside of my body at 23 weeks of pregnancy. My mother has had terrible almost unbelievably bad luck with her health. My father in his old age and senility allowed the inheritance he always promised us, to be stolen away. Were those punishments for the sins of my youth? for the sins of my parents? I can honestly say after deep introspection – yes. Yes in terms of the fact that certain choices I made at some times in my life certainly made those things easier to occur. In a way, they were the direct consequence of those choices. So did God cause them or did I? and the answer is yes.
But, as hard as those things are, I learned great things from them and blessings came from them. Living on a small income has required me to strive harder in frugality and simple living. It has turned my heart from coveting material goods because they are simply out of my reach. But even more, I see that my children are very sensible about work and money – perhaps much more so than they would have been if we had been able to buy the biggest, the newest and the best of everything they wanted. Losing the baby made me appreciate our doctrine of the communion of saints so much more, and I embraced and appreciated my other children and my own ability to bear children so much more. Even the problems with my parents have built a stronger bond between me and my only sibling.
I bring this all up as an analogy to the New Orleans disaster. The choice to build a city below sea level in a hurricane zone, between a lake, a river and the ocean has certain consequences. This is one of them. The sin of bad planning, and procrastination yields a poor result. That’s a natural consequence.
But I do think blessings will come from it. I think New Orleans will be rebuilt, smarter, bigger, better than ever before. People will move in and will need houses, appliances, infrastructure, cars etc. and that growth will require more jobs and help spur the local, state, and federal economies. But on a personal level, perhaps people will find inner strength and resources they never knew they had. This is the stuff that heroes and living saints are made of. Maybe for many people, decades from now, they will see Katrina as one of the best things that ever happened to them, because of the way it changed their lives for the better. And wasn’t that really the reason for God’s famous city smiting to begin with? To start over, and to give second chances? In a way I think so. And that idea of getting a second chance to be better is appealing.
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