Post-hurricane joy
At this point, the overwhelming majority of people in my home of the Upstate of South Carolina have their power restored, and cleanup and repair efforts are well underway in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Western North Carolina, of course, has suffered unspeakable amounts of destruction, and our prayers are with them.
But it’s the response to the destruction that has to be talked about.
Another notch on the Bible Belt
You see, tragedies, natural disasters, and general hard times don’t bring out the best in people. They bring out the core of what’s inside a person and a community. In stressful situations, we’re not sprinkled with magical fairy dust to suddenly start acting nicer to our neighbors; we just start acting out how we really feel about them.
And that’s why when a disaster hit the Bible Belt, even though the Pentecostals think the Baptists are sticks in the mud and the Presbyterians think they have #SuperiorTheology compared to both, the Christians in an area will lock arms to make sure that the people in their own churches are taken care of before making sure everyone in their area gets what they need.
And this is partly why we can expect more conversions and increased church attendance in Western North Carolina in the long run. Christians were the fastest responding and most organized, and it’s not close, and it’s not new. Even the Roman Emperor Julian wrote of Christians:
“For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see our people lack aid from us.”
You see, our boots were already on the ground, because Christians gathered form Christ’s corporate body on earth (1 Cor. 12:12-27). And while those of us with a theonomic bent could use the general equity of Joseph and Egypt as justification for the existence of something like FEMA, the organic Christian response didn’t hinge on a bureaucratic behemoth being awakened from its year-long slumber, this time roused not by the sacrifice of a vestal virgin but of the current sitting President’s dignity.
The campaign of joy
And while the Christians have been out-FEMA-ing the feds, they’ve done it with tremendous amounts of joy, and not just because playing with chainsaws is fun. God’s triune joy is our strength (Neh. 8:10), and that strength enables us to worship on the Lord’s Day, raise God-honoring families, and, yes, joyfully accept the plundering of our refrigerators through power outages (Heb. 10:34). We know that God has orchestrated all of this for our good and His glory, meaning none of it is wasted (Rom. 8:28).
This, unlike what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want you to think, is true joy. True joy doesn’t come from getting stiffed or not on a check from FEMA while national trespassers are put up in hotels, and it sure doesn’t come from legalized prenatal homicide on demand. It comes from being reconciled to God in Jesus Christ to live lives of righteousness.
And so, those of you who haven’t placed your faith in Christ, how have the last two weeks treated you? Because as far as I can tell, the biggest babies in all of this, whether through Internet outages or Duke Energy being a smidge slow on the repairs or people buying gas for their generators, have been those who have either not surrendered to God or have abandoned the local church.
And that should tell you something.