When I look pictures of the suffering from Hurricane Katrina, I'm struck by the fact that it is mostly the poor who are trapped in New Orleans. People with resources (like cars, credit cards, portable job skills) evacuated the coastline before the hurricane struck. It's only the poor who will be bussed to a refugee camp in the Houston Astrodome.
I'm also struck by the fact that recent issues of National Geographic have talked about the ecological damage to the Louisiana and Mississippi alluvial floodplains caused by all the levies and economic development in the last 30 years. The ground has sunk over the years, and earth scientists have predicted this disaster was only a matter of time.
New Orleans & Mississippi aren't the only areas at risk: Most of southern Florida is expected to sink under the ocean in the next 50 years if nothing is done to reverse current drainage of the wetlands, which in combination with the icecap meltdown, puts major metropolitan areas below sea level.
The science is still out on this, but there is growing evidence that links these mega hurricanes like Katrina (as well as other extreme weather) to global warming.
I do not believe these things are God's judgments, because the poor are the ones who are benefiting the least from the economic development and suffering the most from the environmental damage caused by that development.
The poor people of New Orleans do not deserve to suffer for the sins of the Big Easy. Many of these people are humble Christians who clean the tourists' hotel rooms and serve up hotdogs at Superbowl games. That's their piece of the economic pie that has created fortunes for the land developers and bankers in that part of the world. I seriously doubt any of those developers & bankers are sweating it out in the Superdome right now--they took off for Houston in their private jets last Saturday.
Well, little doubt that fortunes in property have been lost in this disaster, but it's most likely to impact hardest on the middleclass, who tend to sink their life savings in a home or business. That's their piece of the economic pie that's created even larger fortunes for the elites.
How can this be God's judgment? Isn't Gulfport & Biloxi part of the world known as the Bible Belt? Aren't these poor people the ones who oppose abortion and gay marriage and teaching evolution and unwed motherhood and secular humanism? Don't they send their young men and women off to fight patriotic wars for God & country? Care to think about where the better part of the active Mississippi & Louisiana Guard are stationed right now?
People have done this to themselves. Katrina isn't some fluke of nature. Insurance companies call these natural disasters "Acts of God." Maybe we'll find God in this.