The 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption was like filling a diet Coke bottle with Mentos. The combustion was massive, explosive, and destructive. The blast radius destroyed everything within ten miles and its damage reached some 230 miles away. The North Fork Toutle River, flooded by the melted ice and mudslides, wiped out everything in its path, and I mean everything. Trees were stripped bare and logs that filled the Toutle River looked like toothpicks on the TV screen. While fifty-seven people died, the death toll could have been worse. A lot worse. I remember a respected adult commenting on the event, believing God used the eruption to punish America for its moral sins.
Who could forget the images of the people stranded inside the Superdome in 2005 as residents sheltered to wait-out the Katrina Hurricane. Stories, emerging from their sheltering, were sickening and too gruesome to recount here. The massive hurricane made landfall as a category 5 and caused over 100 billion dollars’ worth of damage, leaving some to believe that New Orleans might never recover. Eighteen hundred people, who were unable to evacuate the city, died in the storm. Religious pundits pounced on the news with some saying that the storm was retribution by God for the city’s sinful behavior, while others believed it was punishment for the United States’ preemptive strike against Iraq.
On the precipice of COVID anxiety levels were rising. No one knew what might happen or how deadly the virus was going to be. We knew China was under lockdown and were building hospitals. What we didn’t know was what America was going to do with the crisis. The answer came soon enough as loose lockdown requirements were coming into play. If businesses were not deemed necessary, they closed. Schools educated students via Zoom. Churches were asked to find alternatives to meeting in person. Some offered services outdoors while other went online. While the death toll is debated – whatever that number was or is – what is true is that far too many people died by COVID. In the early days of the virus, finger pointing emerged as to its cause, including America’s permissive abortion laws, persistent ungodly behavior, and sports along with entertainment being far more important to people than God was. Many, at least by those sharing posts on social media, claimed that the virus was God’s means of punishing America.
The official term for God enlisting punishment on people for their sins is called Retribution Theology. Simply, you sin and God punishes you, and that theme recapitulates throughout Scripture. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, and are expelled from the Garden of Eden. The earth is corrupted, so God hits the reboot button through a flood. Sodom and Gomorrah were wicked cities that God destroys with fire. Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire while Uzzah touches the untouchable Ark of the Covenant; all three are struck down. David commits adultery, and then uses murder to cover up his deed, so the baby’s life is forfeited. Israel is exiled to Babylon for breaking, no obliterating, the Covenant with God. So a clear line exists with Retribution Theology: if you sin, God punishes you.
One of the problems with Retribution Theology, which still has its claws in our perception of God even today, is that it limits God to a box of anger and revenge. We have a “he’s out to get us” mentality, as if we are in the hands of an angry God.
We’re not. God is far more gracious than given credit, and his use of retribution is far more nuanced than we’re willing to admit. A man is born blind, and the disciples ask Jesus who committed the sin that the man be born blind, he or his parents (Jn. 9:1-2). The disciples were working out of a Retribution Theology. “Neither,” was Jesus’ response, as he was not working from such a perspective. The man was born blind so that God may show his grace to him.
Job and his three friends all operated out of Retribution Theology, though from different angles. Job’s friends believed Job had sinned and was being punished by God for his sin. They used guilt to shame him into confession and repentance. Job, on the other hand, argued that he had not sinned and did not deserve this punishment or suffering. While all four’s assessment was wrong, Job’s friends were forced to beg Job’s forgiveness because they felt free to condemn and point their fingers at Job. Job’s suffering had nothing to do with sin, any sin.
Job’s friends demonstrate the biggest flaw in the way Retribution Theology is deployed. Everyone else is blamed for the disaster, disease, or distress but not ourselves. In the end they get what they deserve, and somehow we are more righteous than they. The fifty-seven deserved to die from Mt. St. Helens, but somehow I didn’t deserve to die? The some 1800 casualties deserved to die from Katrina, but I was worthy to escape even the storm itself? The million or more deaths from COVID came to people who deserved such fate, but apparently I was deemed worthy to only have a mild case after the vaccine was in play?
This really is not what we believe, is it? If not, what is another way to understand such a painful crisis?
The prophet Agabus stood before the church in Antioch and foretold that the entire region would suffer a severe famine (Act. 11:27-30). Palestine, like most of the world, was an agricultural based society, and much of their economy was drawn from the crops. A famine could be as economically devastating as our Stock Market crashing today. I can hear the gasps from the crowd as Agabus shared his disturbing and sober vision.
Luke does not tell us why the region faced the drought. Making absolutely no connection between God’s will and the famine, Luke remains silent on the reason. Unlike the days of Elijah, Scripture explicitly says God brought famine to the land as he was going one-on-one with the fertility god, Baal. But in Acts 11 Luke says nothing. Luke is quiet on the reason for the famine. This famine was headed their way, and the reason, if there was one, was almost irrelevant.
What happens next is nothing short of beautiful. Agabus refused to point fingers or lay blame. The church pundits refused to get up before the church and start listing the varied sins that had been committed, either by the church or by the Jews who rejected Jesus. Instead, harkening back to Acts 2:42, “The disciples (in Antioch), each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea” (Act. 11:29). They acted by offering help to those who were going to need help. Instead of finger pointing, they raised their hands to volunteer. And do you know who was among them? Better call Saul, as we know him as the Apostle Paul (11:30).
When Paul went through Asia-Minor and spoke with the churches he had planted, he initiated a relief aid for the saints in Jerusalem and Judea. That region was going to be hit hard and he was hoping that those who could, would step up to aid their brothers and sisters. Paul organized no concert venue or showcased top preachers, charging people an admission to the event. Instead, he challenged the Gentile churches to collect funds out of their own generosity to send to the Jewish churches. Paul trusted their generosity. Paul believed his churches would come through for him.
At least two results emerge from the gift collected for the saints. First, they will help alleviate people’s suffering. As Paul tells the Corinthians, “This service you are providing is . . . supplying the needs to God’s people . . .” (2 Cor. 9:12). Their gift will help bring healing to the hurting, herbage to the hungry, and hope for their homes. They get to have a hand in redeeming something horrific. Maybe one of the most God-like quality we can embrace is to be generous in helping others who are suffering, especially if we forgo any finger pointing. Such thinking harkens the reader back to 1 Corinthians 1:3-4 where God comforts people so that they can share that comfort with others.
Secondly, and one might say, more importantly, God will get praised through their generosity. Paul references God’s glory four times in verses 12-15. While people are hurting, the church comes in to serve, help, and minister to the people, and all the time those same people praise God for the graciousness of others. We help alleviate pain and suffering while God gets praised. Not a bad combination if you ask me.
When we engage our patients, do we resort to Retribution Theology in ministering either as nurses, aids, social workers, volunteers, or spiritual care coordinators? Of course not. Such perspective is cold, callused, uncaring, and is devoid of compassion. Instead we act to bring healing, and a Gilead-like balm for their wounded-ness, not more pain and suffering. Remember that Job’s three friends approach did not fare well at the end of Job’s story.
In the movie Apollo 13 the three astronauts aboard the doomed capsule tried getting their heads wrapped around the failed mission to the moon. Between the moment the system failed and their reentry, no one knew why the spaceship was failing. Fingers were quick to point. Jim Lovell, portrayed by Tom Hanks, put a stop to the blame game saying, “Look, we’re not doing this, gentlemen. We are not gonna do this. We’re not gonna go bouncing off the walls for ten minutes because we’ll just end up right back here with the same problems!” Well said, as Retribution Theology spends too much time finger pointing and laying blame instead of working the problem. Luke never told us why the famine hit, but he told us what the church did. They contributed to the needs of others.
Finally, I’ll leave you with the quote from Fred Rogers who addressed the news’ constant preoccupation with traumatizing stories. Mr. Rogers said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” Good advice. Look for the helpers, or better yet, be one of the helpers and leave the blaming to someone who has a better handle and perspective on the situation. That person is God.
Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)