Of Karl Barth and Hurricane Harvey

by

Mid-20th century theologian Karl Barth is credited with a famous quote about reading both newspapers and the Bible. While pondering Barth’s counsel after the past tumultuous month, I came across a more accurate version, attributed to a 1966 Time magazine article:

“Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”

Although giving Barth his due, I wonder how we Christians can interpret accurately the faith significance of 21st century events through the lens of a 1,700-year-old canon of books originally written over the span of 400 years. In the words of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a musical spoof of science fiction movies, “we’re doing the time warp again.”

Trouble is, interpreting current events through a theological lens requires something that today’s instant news cycle doesn’t provide, namely time to think things through. Case in point: Hurricane Harvey. As I write this, after inundating Houston, Harvey isn’t done yet, dumping 30 inches of rainfall on the coastal cities of Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, and moving across Louisiana, where memories of Hurricane Katrina are still sharp.

I’ve seen several news stories over the past five days that referred to the torrential rains of Hurricane Harvey as “flooding of biblical proportions,” or words to that effect. Given that we now have four generations of people living in the United States who have never cracked open a Bible, I wonder how well that time-worn image still communicates.

Do people remember the story of Noah and the great flood from Genesis Chapters 6 through 9? Do they remember that the story says God chose to inundate the world with water to wipe out wicked humans and start over? In other words, the Bible says there was a reason behind the Great Flood: human depravity so grieved God that God regretted having made humans and determined to eradicate the divine creation and start over.

How do we apply this biblical account to the suffering and devastation inflicted on the people of south Texas, especially those in Houston and its environs, where 50 inches of rain – nine trillion gallons of water – fell in the space of four days? Surely there are righteous people among the 30,000 evacuees who have lost everything, and likely will be displaced for months. What evil did little children commit before they were carried out of the flood by parents and other rescuers? Did the elderly nursing home residents who sat in waist-deep water until they were rescued harbor some secret sin that engendered such retribution?

Needless blame and shame

You see where this rationale is leading. A literal, simplistic view of biblical accounts, when applied to what we now know about the world around us, results in needless, erroneous blame and shame. Barth was an advocate that all Christians should be competent theologians – i.e., able to interpret the ways of faith for themselves and their world. Unfortunately, Barth and his theological colleagues from 60 years ago hadn’t reckoned with social contaminants such as fake news on the Internet.

No, to apply our interior faith to our exterior world with integrity, we must test the “spirits” of our age to see whether they pass muster with belief and knowledge, using critical thinking skills. For example, as Harvey’s rains finally slackened over Houston, several media articles addressed the question of whether climate change caused the hurricane. The best of these articles, written by David Roberts of Vox, challenged the question itself. “Climate change” describes what’s happening to the environment, but it doesn’t cause hurricanes and storms, Roberts writes. However, “Climate is not central, but by the same token it is grossly irresponsible to leave climate out of the story, for the simple reason that climate change is, as the US military puts it, a threat multiplier.”

There’s a lot more to Roberts’ story and I encourage you to read it. But for people of faith, the next question must be: How does my faith relate to the climate conditions that science says make such storms more destructive in the future? David Roberts writes that three things made Harvey the intense storm it was:

  • overheated ocean water that put more moisture into the air,
  • higher sea levels that allowed for greater “storm surges,” and
  • near-stationary winds that kept the hurricane in one place, dumping excessive rains.

These facts are a lot different from blaming Hurricane Harvey on the wicked ways of Houston residents. But the facts point to a different kind of “wickedness:” are human lifestyles contributing to the environmental conditions that helped the storm intensify as it did? What is my responsibility, as a follower of Jesus, in assessing and influencing my community about such decisions?

Local decisions

Whatever the debate about climate change, there were other factors in Houston’s suffering, such as a lack of foresight about permitting development in flood plains. Having covered local government extensively early in my career in Florida, I have seen avaricious developers dangle golden carrots – think promises of jobs and tax revenue – in front of planning boards, zoning commissions and city councils to get favorable decisions for building in places that are problematic at best. When low-income housing is built in sensitive places, it entices people of color with limited economic means. Poor government decisions then compound the potential for catastrophe, because people without much money don’t have easy wherewithal to evacuate when storms come.

This argument aims to point out the deep biblical truth behind many human disasters: when we fail to remember our calling to steward God’s creation and care for one another, we make decisions that can have harmful consequences. Even “good” decisions can have unintended consequences, but without a sense of our place in God’s universe, we are far more likely to make choices that betray our charge from God to be faithful caretakers of one another and God’s planet.

If the storm teaches us anything as people of faith, I hope it teaches us that we must look deeper into both faith and knowledge as we decide our future together. To paraphrase Hosea 8:7, if we sow the wind of short-sighted selfishness, we will reap more whirlwinds like Hurricane Harvey.

For more reading:

"It's a fact: climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly" by Michael Mann, The Guardian

”What made the rain in Hurricane Harvey so extreme?” by Russ Schumacher, The Conversation

“Harvey should be the turning point in fighting climate change” by Vernon Loeb, The Washington Post

“Harvey, the Storm That Humans Helped Cause” by David Leonhardt, The New York Times

Psalms 36:5, 57:10 and 108:4. Psalms 24: 1-6. 1 Corinthians 4:1-2.

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.