On July 19, AD 64 Rome burned. No one knows exactly who lit the tinder that started the great fire of Rome. Nero blamed the Christians, and in the persecution that followed Peter and Paul were executed. No one knows who lit the tinder, but from the beginning people strongly suspected that one man ordered it lit. They still do. It is almost certain that Nero himself ordered certain ghettos torched to rid his hot July afternoons of their stench.
On October 18, 1871, Chicago burned. Of course the prime cause of that fire has traditionally been identified as Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow. Although the accusation is handed down from generation to generation around countless summer-camp bonfires (“There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight…”), no one really knows who started the great Chicago fire. That same night there was a fire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin that killed three times as many people as the fire in Chicago. I think that if there was anywhere in the world where milk cows would be capable of starting a fire it would be Wisconsin, but no one knows who started that fire either.
On September 2, 1666, London burned. 80% of the city was destroyed. Historians believe they know the identity of the firebug who caused this one.* Thomas Farrinor, a London baker, did not fully smother the embers of his oven before going to bed, and the untended fire that rekindled there during the night is now believed to be the prime cause of the great London fire.
Granted, conditions have to be just right, but it seems that great disasters – fires, typhoid epidemics, plane crashes, can often be traced back to a single source. Even when the prime cause can not, with certainty, be identified, we know that such a source exists.
Of course the one epidemic that affects us all – the one bane of the human condition that is both terminal and chronic is sin (Romans 3.23, 6.23). Although we can not so accurately fix the date of its first transmission, we are absolutely certain about the identity of the culprits. Eve, fully cognizant of God’s specific command chose to defy that command, and encouraged her husband to do the same. He did, willfully. That’s where it started.
From our experience of great disasters we know that humans are sometimes not unlike the mythical Phoenix. Rome was rebuilt with more opulence than before, as was Chicago. The architectural genius of Sir Christopher Wren is still enjoyed by visitors to London. I’m not sure what they did up in Peshtigo. We also know that, sometimes this is not the case. Will New Orleans ever fully recover? Will Biloxi?
We do know that what started with Adam and Eve can be undone. This is accomplished by one Person, one prime cure – Jesus Christ. For if by the transgression of the one, many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many (Romans 5.15).
We know, as well, that when rebuilding takes place it takes time – perhaps decades, before there is a restoration to a pre-disaster state. With Jesus we know the restoration is immediate. When we are baptized, we immediately “raise to walk in newness of life” (Romans 6.4). Who we are after restoration is better than who we were before the disaster. In the garden we humans were the pinnacle of God’s creation, but we were merely creatures. In Jesus, we are God’s children and heirs (I John 3.1ff); we are born, not fashioned (John 3.1ff). We are better than before. Infinitely better.
Anyone who has done disaster relief has had that moment when one looks around at the devastation and thinks, “It will take and army of volunteers a lot of years to even begin to get things back to normal.” As we look at the wreck and litter of sin around us, we know the prime cause, and the prime cure. We know who (and who alone) can immediately, absolutely, and eternally make things better than before.
*from This Month in History, in Smithsonian, September 2006, p. 30
