Why, according to Genesis, did God permit a great flood? Because
“the wickedness of man was great”; “the earth was filled with
violence”; “all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth”; “every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually.” God provided men with a means of escape, but feeling
self-sufficient most men didn’t bother with it. Only Noah and his
family, heeding God’s warnings, boarded the Ark and survived.
In this generation’s great flood, the Noahs and arks of
salvations are considerably less sturdy. Bill Clinton is no Noah;
the United Nations is no ark. And as for chroniclers of biblical
catastrophes, the media aren’t up to the task. Frantically trying
to find the proper posture on this catastrophe while making sure to
jack up their ratings with the “most trusted news on TV”-style
promos, the media are engaging in the usual feckless
finger-pointing and compassion-contest baiting. A pantheistic press
corps just doesn’t know what to say about a natural disaster. So it
falls back on Bush-bashing, with the novel and hypocritical twist
of castigating the president for not unilaterally intervening in
the tragic affairs of countries the press normally emphasize as
“sovereign.”
What happened to the media’s hardheaded realism on display
during the days of Saddam Hussein? If human disasters don’t merit
American leadership, why should natural ones? The American media
were chanting, follow, follow. Now they chant, lead, lead. Which is
it? Aid to Iraqis was “patronizing” and presumptuous, but massive
aid to Indonesians is compulsory?
From the coverage one would think the Indonesians and others
from that region are U.S. citizens whom George Bush refuses to
help. But imagine if Bush, a year ago, had told Indonesia and other
countries to set up an early warning system. The multiculturalists
in the press would have scolded him for imposing Western norms on
“native cultures.”
While comfortable tsk-tsking Bush for clearing brush in Texas
after the tidal wave — apparently he should have immediately
jetted off to Sumatra to oversee the collection of corpses — the
nature-worshippers in the press aren’t comfortable grappling with
the meaning of natural disasters. Who can we blame it on? they
wonder. Since we can’t blame it on nature, let’s blame it on human
nature — corrupt presidents didn’t do enough to prepare for the
natural disasters. And while the illuminati’s worship of nature
isn’t lessened, their belief in nature’s creator is. They act as if
God failed to organize the world to their satisfaction, even as
they ooh and aah over the natural works he created and
sustains.
If nature were as blind and unintelligent as they suppose, it
would make more sense to rage against it than revere it. The
unintelligent design theory of the evolutionists, were it true,
would be grounds for hating nature as a series of brutal
transformations. Can you love nature and hate human nature and God?
Many environmentalists think so, but they fail to explain why
nature is lovable in that event. Why not hate nature too?
God is the only reason nature is worth understanding and
appreciating. Nature reflects his intelligence and what appears in
it evil to man isn’t. If a bewildered Job had asked God why he
permits tsunamis, he might have answered, You try and create a
dynamic universe without them. Take away what humans call “natural
evil” and you wouldn’t have a universe at all.
If liberals want to blame human nature for the tsunami, they
can. But that would require a Pauline explanation they’d never
endorse. Regarding man as sinless — with the exception of
conservatives they dislike here and there — liberals wouldn’t
dream of attributing the groanings of nature and man’s inability to
live in harmony with nature to Original Sin. Would tsunamis have
happened before The Fall? Yes, but Adam, possessing intelligence
not weakened by sin, would have had the wit to circumvent it.
Original Sin meant man would no longer control nature, starting
with the inevitable death of his human nature. It meant that he
would need an ark of Salvation which Noah prefigured and Jesus
Christ fulfilled.
But this is all too hopelessly reactionary for the
self-sufficient minds at the United Nations. From their Tower of
Babel in New York, the Kofi Annans will tack away at an ark of
secular salvation before the glare of the cameras, then send it off
to the Indian Ocean where it will sink under their greed and
celebrity compassion.
George Neumayr is executive editor of The American
Spectator.
