'Where Was God?' In Katrina

By Richard Yeakley
Religion News Service

(RNS) When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore six years ago, it brought in its wake untold property damage and emotional distress to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but also something deeper.

"Where," countless people asked, "was God?"

Some conservative religious leaders warned that Katrina was a divine rebuke for abortion or perhaps a warning from God that the U.S. still hadn't taken enough precautions to prepare for a terrorist attack.

For William Mackintosh, a retired Presbyterian pastor who survived the exodus from and returned to New Orleans, God played an active role throughout the disaster, but was not punishing America.

In his recent book, "Katrina: Where Was God?" Mackintosh probes the problem of human suffering in an effort to comfort readers with his family's firsthand account of escape and return.

"I thought this would relate far better than the usual theological discourse when very learned and systematic answers are given by theologians," Mackintosh said. "I am writing to explain the faith, to express it in language that an average person can understand."

The book records the journals of Mackintosh; his wife Ruth; Ruth's mother, Grace; and her brother, Louis Gallo.

The primary focus of the text is the travel narrative of the trip to Virginia and back to New Orleans. "Ruth kept notes everyday," Mackintosh said. As the book was written, those notes were fleshed into journal entries and bound together.

Gallo, Mackintosh's brother-in-law who was originally from New Orleans, provided a temporary landing pad in his cramped house in Virginia for the three refugees from New Orleans.

Mackintosh said he compiled his family's story not only for posterity, but also "to show the frustrations, anxiety and despair that
occur with this type of disaster," Mackintosh said.

"His lessons are as old as evil itself: that from suffering springs joy, from destruction, renewal, from anxiety, brotherhood and
sisterhood," The Times-Picayune newspaper described the book.

While wall-to-wall Katrina coverage highlighted dramatic rooftop helicopter rescues or ominous alligators lurking in flooded streets, Mackintosh said he also wanted to capture the everyday struggles of a failing car engine or sleeping in a car to protect a lifetime of possessions.

"These are illustrations of frustration that work on the nerves," Mackintosh said.

But the most important reason, Mackintosh said, was to try to answer the question in the book's title.

"God doesn't send suffering, he allows it," Mackintosh said, "and God enters into suffering and shows us how to use it."

Mackintosh believes suffering and disaster allow believers to learn and practice trust in God, as well as provide a chance for people to be heroic and to help others.

"How do you know the heroic unless you have heroes that encounter suffering and rise above suffering?" he said. "It enables the person who suffers to find escape and success."

WATCH: IMPACT OF HURRICANE KATRINA ON FOREST LAND OWNERS

Comments

[sallysees]

09:04 AM on 08/31/2011

I won't question the pastor's motives here (gosh, I guess I already did) but just because he happened to be personally in the middle of one of America's great historical disasters, doesn't give him a license to write a book misrepresent the Biblical standards by which any nation can easily tell if its being judged by God or not.
Because you can easily tell if that is the case.

A one-off disaster, ok that's a novelty, some things simply happen by chance, and two disasters following one behind the other, that's a coincidence, and we can allow accept that, but when its three in a row, that's become a pattern; but America has had more than 40 disasters in less than 10 years if you include the 9/11 attacks. And this in unmistakable repeated blows of startling destruction, by flood, fire, and chemical pollution wind and rains, tornados and hurricanes pounding against our shores from sea to shining sea, and this at a cost of well over a trillion dollars in property loss and natural damage to our environment.

So, by Biblical standards of God Judging other nations in history, this is God's judgment on an exponential scale unprecendent in the history of the whole world.

[PatriotPaul]

01:19 PM on 08/30/2011

While stuck in the dank Superdome I often wondered about the human behavior I was seeing. Some people were praying many hours a day. Others were singing religious hymns. Others were angry and going off the deep end. I pondered why some people who were heavily religious would not survive this while some who were agnostic or atheist would if God was truly present and determined our survival based on honoring him/her. I helped maintain my balance simply by observing how others treated each other. To me those who helped others were better prepared mentally to cope with this challenge and came out of this less psychologically injured.

Paul Harris
Author, "Diary From the Dome, Reflections on Fear and Privilege During Katrina"

[flynn444]

10:32 AM on 08/30/2011

Let's see the good pastor explain to a child afflicted with cancer that she is suffering in order to "find escape and success". Perhaps then he will see what's readily apparent to the rest of us: his answer is vacuous and cynical.

[zlohcuc]

08:21 PM on 08/29/2011

God was the same place he always is...nonexistent.

[raegrant5]

07:46 PM on 08/29/2011

"Man created God in Mans Own Image" "God allows suffering." That is an excuse for a God that never was. If there was a god why would he "Allow" over 30,000 people, mostly children, to die of starvation? And once they get to "his house" and they ask him, "God, where were you?" and god says, "I allowed you to suffer. Because I love you and there could never be hero's if someone isn't suffering." Does not sound like a very loveing god to me. He does nothing for his followers. Anything you acomplish you acomplish yourself, with out the help of any god. God is an excuse when people die. I hate what happened during and after Katrina. It was horrible times ten. How can your god justify killing so many people in so many ways during that storm, just to create Heros? That is almost insulting.