Animals Speaking for God

I’m sure I am like a lot of people who are aghast at what has happened on the gulf coast over the last three days.

I was horrified when I realized the true destruction that took place in those cities and towns. I’ve never really been one to sympathize with a camera whore, and I don’t tend to feel the anguish for those who emote on camera as much as I do for the faceless, who choose to suffer and mourn in silence and relative privacy. It doesn’t take a nun or a relief worker to perceive the suffering that is taking place from still pictures of nothing but the environment that is left, sans the commentary of a field reporter who hopes to one day anchor the evening news or the sympathy-starved victim who produces tears and shrieks when the red light turns on. If you have a reasonable amount of room in your heart and a little bit of imagination, you can tell how bad it is. “Horrible” is nothing but a word, and it doesn’t adequately serve the real loss of property, history, direction, hope, and life that anyone with even a tinge of a capacity for sympathy can at least perceive. Comment and drama simply aren’t necessary. It is Hell down there right now.

I became angered, however, as I watched the generous rescuing the able and the opportunistic raping the property and efforts of the productive. I am not referring to those without the ability or the means to evacuate. The bravado of those who would “ride out” a hurricane is well known… in fact, I have often thought until today that I would like to do that some day (though I wouldn’t have stayed around for that one, and I would have told you so before this past weekend). What some once thought brave or stupid has now been proven far worse: selfish. For every person capable of leaving the coast who was rescued today, a person who had no choice other than to remain and hope for the best waited for help, stranded by circumstance… or worse. I don’t know from watching which ones to be angry toward, because I don’t know their backgrounds. But, the history of human nature tells me that some of them are the ones whose rescue is celebrated at the top of the hour on basic cable.

I became angered at the looters. I’m sure several could justify their wading into and stealing items from the Walgreen’s on Canal as “fair.” “After all,” one might say, “that’s a big corporation, with way more stuff than I’ve got. I need it more than Walgreen’s.” What that person either doesn’t know or respect is that that corporation is usually just a front – the namesake of the investment of the enterprising, (yes) the rich, or (yes) the responsible. There is a 75-year old woman in western Tennessee who worked blisters and arthritis into her future at a sewing machine in a shoe plant for forty years, quietly and consistently putting a little bit aside while barely getting by, because she refused to retire on the government dole. Money saved doesn’t simply become more valuable by being saved. When it is coupled with the mental and physical work of human beings, assuming that the money is well managed, it becomes an investment and (hopefully) does become more valuable. Thus, some of her life savings is in Walgreen's stock, because it's safe and pays enough of a dividend to make sure her savings beat inflation by a little bit. Those who looted from that store stole from the retirement account of a rural grandmother who has nothing but her nest egg and her memories. She worked for it the hard way, she still lives in the same shack her late husband built in 1955, and she by God ain’t rich.

I suspect Lord of the Flies disturbs us because we fear that it is true. Actually, we know it is. I am disheartened by our resignation to that without resistance. I lose the faith in humanity that I gained after 9/11 when I hear those who justify our cruelest deeds with the reminder that human beings are animals, and are victims of their own instincts. Some are content to accept that the absence of civilization must result in the absence of civility.

I want and expect a little better than that of myself, and I hope you do too.

I am also struck by the recollection of several people claiming to interpret God’s intentions at disasters of the past. I still laugh in disbelief when I hear someone claim that AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuals. Tell that to Ryan White. I still shake my head when I remember a prominent evangelist’s accusation that those who tolerate abortion in America were complicit in the World Trade Center attacks. I don’t suppose that this hurricane was God’s punishment for a nation that allows its evangelists to call for the assassination of foreign leaders. You don’t think?

Of course not. Even to the most fundamental of fundamentalists, that is bad theology. So are “Death to the infidels” and “Death to Chavez.”

At the end of the day, it all comes back to that glorious tragic imperfection. The facet of our being that allows freckles to make a person singularly beautiful is the same one that allows us to disregard warnings of impending disaster at the expense of the life of someone who was incapable of helping herself. The part of us that yielded Post-It Notes is the same one that stole from that grandmother. The trait that gave us the perfectly imperfect “blue” note (the harmonic necessity of jazz and everything after it) is the same one that foolishly recommends killing in the name of God.

We’re absolutely imperfect. That imperfection results in our greatest quirks, discoveries, and inventions, and also in our most destructive acts of selfishness. The difference in the two is in that humans have the ability to listen to themselves – to think, to self-analyze, to determine the compatibility of the potential result of our flaws with a basic morality that only exists to perpetuate our existence – and then to discipline themselves to honor only the best manifestations of their imperfections.

The way I know to sum it up best comes from one of those silly lists I sometimes make of nothing more than things I believe. And the most fundamental of those is that, yes, we are animals.

But we’re not just animals.

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PS - If you've got a little something to spare and want to help out, you can donate to the Red Cross with your credit or debit card right here.