God does not control the weather

-
This morning I read that Michelle Bachmann is blaming the recent earthquake and hurricane on God. While this is not the only ridiculous thing she said recently, I take particular issue with her suggestion that she knows how God works.

God does not control the weather. I have written before about how hurricanes and earthquakes happen because they are part of nature—not to punish us.

Even if I did believe that God uses nature to punish humanity, how would Senator Bachmann know what we are supposedly being punished for? She seems certain that God is sending a message to politicians.

The antidote to Michelle Bachmann is this article by Rabbi Edward Bernstein. God does not use the weather to punish us, and certainly I can't believe in a God who would kill 35 people in a hurricane to prove a political point.

I do believe that there are consequences for our actions. Although God does not control the weather to reward and punish humanity, we certainly punish ourselves when we ignore science and fail to care for our ecosystem; we can't pretend that we have no impact on the earth.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Keep, Toss, Repair: Yom Kippur as a Day of Spiritual Cleaning

-
Image
"Altar Smoke" by Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik   I have a confession: I am terrible at keeping my car clean. Every so often I pull the car out of the garage and give it a thorough cleaning. Like any good Californian, I keep an emergency kit in my car in case of earthquake or fire — but I am really bad about cleaning and updating it. During my most recent cleaning I discovered that my emergency kit still contained diapers and long-dried-out baby wipes — my children are now 15, 17 and 19 years old. It seems that the only emergency I was equipped for was one that included time travel. I enjoy having a clean car, but I am not a big fan of doing the actual cleaning.  "Altar Flame" by Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik However, cleaning is what today is all about. Yom Kippur does not actually mean “Day of Atonement.” We often translate it that way: “yom” as day and “ki-PUR” as atonement… or if we are trying to be clever as a “Day of At-One-Ment” — but that’s not really wha
Read more

Unstuck – Rosh Hashanah 5779

-
Image
"The Thicket" by Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik In San Jose, California, there is a small museum set in a beautiful garden; the front of the building is guarded by an army of ram-headed lion sphinxes similar to those found in ancient Thebes. It is the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, and inside there is a replica of an Egyptian tomb which you enter down a dimly-lit flight of faux rock stairs, designed to create the illusion that you are climbing down into an ancient pyramid, not a museum basement. Life after death was a paramount concern of the ancient Egyptians, and the tomb is a testament to all the measures they determined one could take to ensure a happy afterlife. The ancient Egyptians believed that whatever you depicted in your tomb would come true after your death, so every luxury imaginable was either placed in the tomb or painted on the walls.  The main room of the tomb was painted with a mural of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and depicted what the afterlife of the
Read more

Shavuot: Our Origin Story

-
Image
Superman is the last son of dead planet, raised by salt-of-the-earth parents who taught him to use his power to help others, in support of “truth, justice, and the American way.” Wonder Woman lived her entire life on an island of peace and prosperity; learning of the injustice and imbalance in the larger world she commits herself to being an ambassador of peace and defender of the weak. Spider-Man is bitten by a radioactive spider and gains the proportional strength and abilities of a spider; he chooses to be a super hero because of the lesson from his uncle that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt and in fear for their lives, the children of Israel escape their bondage and travel to a mysterious desert mountain, where they are gifted with a moral code and a mission: to be a holy people. On Shavuot we celebrate the revelation of the Torah, and our acceptance of our unique destiny. On Passover we reenact our liberation from
Read more