Divine intervention

Mark Peters from Newfoundland, Canada blogs about the theories of divine intervention that are being attributed to the Katrina hurricane disaster. He brings St Paul' s Malta shipwreck into the picture and concludes that such blame games are useless:

The latest speculation floating around religious circles is that God may have sent Hurricane Katrina as punishment for US support of the Gaza withdrawal. All manner of parallels are being drawn between the two events by "scholars" and laity alike, with some absolutely convinced Katrina is the finger of God imprinted on southern USA. I, for one, think people need to exhibit more prudence in declaring random acts of nature, such as Hurricanes, to be absolutely the explicit wrath of a vengeful God..

We also do well to look at the whole of Scripture. The Lord did not send the storm that shipwrecked Paul on Malta, nor the one that precipitated Jesus calming the raging seas. In the Old Testament, as in life today, there were famines and hardships that were not always the product of God's divine will, rather just the reality of living in a world that is under the curse of the Fall. Part of that curse is that mankind will struggle to live in this world. It's life, people!..

Attempts at trying to ascribe a Divine element to a horrendous event in order to justify political opinions on a divisive matter are deplorable and utterly useless. That is what I conclude these hypotheses to be. Religious people (and here I speak to myself) would do better to do what we can to help in the recovery. There will be a time for speculation on such matters later, but it ain't today.