Bollocks with a Bible quote

Daniel Thwaites, Contributor

That the rain falls on the houses of the just and unjust alike is something I take for granted. But on a recent trip to San Francisco, I was surprised to learn that every so often the rain discriminates.

I learned that following the devastating Great Earthquake of 1906, preachers pounced on the opportunity to blame the destruction on the wages of sin. The city, not known for piety then or now, was mostly flattened and burned.

Some great pick-up poet noticed that in the quakes and massive fires that followed, a disreputable outfit named Hotaling's Whiskey Warehouse survived untouched and memorialised the great theological nicety:

If, as some say, God spanked the town

For being overfrisky,

Why did He burn the churches down

And save Hotaling's Whiskey?

This is a damned good question. It may be based on the peculiarities of my upbringing, but I find this anecdotal condensation of the refusal to yield to human misfortune wrapped in a philosophical puzzle quite irresistible. But it had been filed away in my brain as being of no practical value until I read 'prophet' Steve Lyston's warning in Monday's Gleaner, 'Repentance is key to avoid an earthquake'.

Saith the prophet: "It is the responsibility of those in leadership to avoid negative earthquakes ... . It is the responsibility of the prime minister to call the nation into a time of atonement, in order to avoid the earthquake."

Rare find

Now, I'm accustomed to arguing with people who feel the Government is to provide cradle-to-grave welfare, hot meals, insurance, health care, education, and satisfactory coffins with a burial stipend. But it's a rarity to find a man - a prophet at that - who believes that Government is also responsible to physically halt earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, flood, volcano, landslide, tornado, drought and wildfire.

Mind you, I enjoy the thought experiment of Sir Patrick, Portia, Andrew, and 'de whole lot a dem', in sackcloth and ashes trudging on their knees through Kingston. In medieval times, princes would sometimes join monks as flagellants, taming and mortifying the flesh by whip. Unquestionably, some leaders could use a few lashes; unsurprisingly, a few might enjoy it. But I'm not sure it would achieve very much by way of policy.

Those many who have bothered to spend a few moments thinking on it distinguish between moral evil and natural evil. When the baby's body in Trelawny was found in a pit latrine, the community reacted with revulsion to the evil action. Moral evil stems from what men do or fail to do.

Natural evil would be things like hurricanes, falling boulders, tsunamis, and earthquakes, but also plague and disease.

In some ways, we are more comfortable with moral evil because we believe people have control over their actions. We can assign responsibility. To take the most extreme example, Hitler could have behaved differently. Natural evil, on the other hand, poses some huge stumbling blocks to our understanding. When the volcano erupts in Montserrat, the sea surges in Indonesia, or the hurricanes devastate Jamaica, these are evils brought about by the operation of nature, and on the face of it, no one is at fault.

"Not so!" says the prophet! "God speaks through natural disasters and occurrences," says he, and "we must make the decision now to avoid the earthquake." Prophet Lyston's disquiet with Jamaica is because "heathen and pagan practices defile a nation (Leviticus 18:26-28)", and Jamaica is defiled.

The beginning of wisdom being what it is, I'm kinda with the prophet so far, but we part ways sharply when he brings in the idea that God uses natural disasters and calamity to punish people. The idea that we are always the authors of our misfortunes is really remarkably twisted. So the young child sickened by cancer is either morally evil, or her parents are, or her society is. And somehow the moral badness, like sludge, flows downhill.

Responsible for fate?

The hundreds of thousands who suffer when the sea overflows and wipes out villages are responsible for their own fate. And my greatgrandfather, killed in the 1907 Jamaican earthquake, whose only major sin seems to have been the very Jamaican propensity to have children he couldn't afford, is somehow guilty?

Mind you, in the Bible there are many instances of natural evil resulting from moral evil. God causes Pharaoh's hardness of heart, then punishes it with the plague. From this puzzling sequence, I have deduced that the Bible, rather like precious equipment, ought not to be handled by amateurs.

By the way, I look forward to reading Prophet Lyston's book, End Time Finance, because the title is certainly intriguing. Let's just say that if it were the 'end times', finance is the last thing that would be on my mind. But fascinating titles should have a space on every shelf. I'd say End Time Finance is a must-have along with Castration: The Advantages and the Disadvantages, by Victor T. Cheney, and The Joy of Uncircumcising, by Jim Bigelow. Number one, of course, is Donald L. Wilson, MD's, book for the ladies: Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Mind Power: How to Use the Other 90% of Your Mind To Increase the Size of Your Breasts.

Anyway, this exact issue of the moral status of natural disasters arose following All Saints' Day in 1755, when a massive earthquake destroyed Lisbon. The Enlightenment response to the disaster triggered interesting responses in theodicy, or the explanation of evil in the world. Philosophers asked themselves anew: if God is good, and God is all-powerful, why do bad things like earthquakes happen? Also, investigations into what we now know are Earth's tectonic plates began, and modern seismology was born.

If Lyston was the only prophet arguing this way it would hardly be worth mentioning. He's just the latest, and in these pages. In these times of moral uncertainty, too often a kooky biblical quotation or two is thrown down as if it settles the argument. But I say unto you, just like how a buttu in a Benz is still a buttu, bollocks with a Bible quote is still bollocks.

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites Law Firm in Jamaica, and Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.