Faith-Based Institutions And Their Perspective On Natural Disasters

From strong monsoons in South Asia to a wildfire hitting California, Colorado and Nevada, to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and earthquakes in South, Central and North America, these are just examples of some of the natural disasters that happened this year. In fact, as I write this column, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake has just hit Central Mexico.

The fact that these events happen every year, however, make us think these unproportional disasters are something normal and it’s just nature showing its dark side. What is not expected though is their strong intensity, power and magnitude and, as the years pass by, their tendency to get stronger and destructive.

Nevertheless, after studying all my life in Catholic schools abroad, we get the idea that sometimes God sends some of these natural disasters to certain areas as a way of punishing humanity. To others, such as Nathan A. Jones from the Christian Prophecy Organization, these catastrophes are a sign that the anointed one may be coming back soon. While others, such as Gary Ray, writer for The Charismatic Christian Publication, believes signs from the nature such as the solar eclipse that happened on Aug. 21 may be a warning of rapture, but showing a different sign without any destruction.

However, if we think about all the eclipses that have had happened since 1901, it would be  like 71 signs that the son of God is coming back. In fact, it would probably take me months to register all-natural disasters that happened in the last 10 years.

Following the wrong path can be not going to church often, getting more tattoos, piercings or changing their bodies to ways that would probably make them happier. But, mistreating the planet is also a way of following the wrong path. Though it varies from religion to religion, for example, a research conducted by BBC showed that Catholics are more environmentally friendly than Christians. The research also showed that Christians support the destruction of sacred sites of other religions because they are associated with a traditional faith that they consider evil.

Being religious or not causes the destruction of sacred sites that usually cover gigantic protected forest areas which will probably lead to an increase in natural disasters. How? Let’s take Florida as an example and how it got hotter when thousands of trees that provide us shade went down after Irma’s passage. Now let’s look at it on a bigger scale. Destroying those bigger areas will cause an increase in temperature and with this increase icy areas will melt faster, the ocean level will rise and cause hurricanes and monsoons to be stronger since they feed off of warmer waters. This could all cause the real apocalypse and we should not wait until it happens for us to start changing our attitudes toward the environment.