Monthly Archives: November 2012

Was Hurricane Sandy the Wrath of God? Part two.

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As much as we would like to, I do not think we can read the will of God into every event. Every calamity does not imply God’s wrath. Consider Jesus’ illustration of the falling tower of Siloam. Many were killed, but no one was being punished by an angry God. Sometimes towers just fall, without a divine shove. God sends rain to water the crops of the just and the unjust, so if a monsoon washes out your garden wedding party, don’t spend too much time trying to figure out why God hates you. Sometimes it just rains.

We may not know if God is expressing his displeasure when something terrible happens to us, but we can be sure that He will use all events to His good purpose. I accept that general premise with little doubt. It is the details that leave me wondering.
I have been told that personal growth often comes out of evil circumstances, or the suffering that results from tragic events. If God spared us all of our pain, he would deprive us of much of our pleasure. It’s like when your Dad ran alongside you, holding your bike upright as you learned to ride. You did not want him to turn you loose, because you scraped your knees when you lost your balance and crashed to the sidewalk. But if he did not let go, you would never know the pleasure of finding your balance and pedaling on your own. Maybe God works the same way. Maybe he lets us suffer so we can learn and grow. Perhaps so we can experience more joy and maturity later. As the saying goes: A lump of coal only turns into a diamond when it is put under pressure.

Or so I am told. But it is hard for me to understand why millions of people had to suffer through the destruction of Hurricane Sandy to teach the rest of us a philosophical life lesson. Who was turned into a diamond after dozens of innocent people drowned in the storm surge, and were crushed by falling trees? What joy can God provide that is worth the pain felt by those left to mourn?

I wish I could give easy answers to the questions I raise here. But I cannot. Search the New Testament yourself. How did Jesus describe the purpose of evil? Where did he explain the need for suffering? He did neither, but he made it very clear in John 16:33 that we will have much tribulation in our lives. It is interesting to note what he said to his disciples after giving them this bleak news about our fallen world. “Take heart and be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

Those are powerful words for followers of Christ, but not everyone takes comfort in them. Skeptics–and even some believers–are not sure that hope in Jesus trumps the pain and suffering in the world. It is hard for them to worship a god who allows terrible human tragedies like those in New York and New Jersey.

My personal feelings would probably not make sense to skeptics. They do not always make sense to me. Even so, I am not convinced that we would be better off without suffering. I fight with emotional hardships myself at times, as everyone does, but the fact that I have a hard time dealing with human suffering does not mean there is no reason for it. It just means I do not understand it. Some would insist that I should not believe what I do not fully understand. I do not fully understand microwaves either, but that does not mean I refuse to believe my soup gets hot in less than two minutes.

The classic example of faith after suffering is found in the Old Testament book of Job. God allowed Satan to kill Job’s family, ravage his property, and ruin his health. Even as Job continued to worship God, he screamed out to Him the questions that still resonate today. “Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why? Why?”

You may find comfort in God’s answer, or you may not, but it should humble you either way. God’s power and knowledge are so far above ours that they are beyond our ability to comprehend. I believe that we simply cannot fully grasp the purpose of human suffering. But I believe there is a purpose, and a reward for keeping the faith in dire circumstances. Job kept his faith through unimaginable trials. God rewarded him with riches and a renewed family. Our reward may not come in this life, but it will come.

The news of Hurricane Sandy reminded me of a church service I saw broadcast on television shortly after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Maybe you saw it. The service was at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The great evangelist Billy Graham spoke that day. He knew people would ask “Why?” He knew they would want to know why God would allow such an evil act to occur. Reverend Graham’s answer, as best I can remember it, came down to this: “I don’t know why such evil exists. We may never know until we reach heaven and speak to God. But I know that we have hope in troubled times. We have hope in Jesus.”

It is important to remember that our hope is not in an impersonal god with no empathy. Jesus suffered too. God knows hunger, fatigue, rejection, torture, and excruciatingly painful death. There is no distress we can feel that Jesus did not feel. He really does feel our pain. I take comfort in that.

I must admit that I struggle with answers to the questions we all ask in the face of tribulation. I wish I could cope with pain and suffering better than I do. I cannot. I wish I knew more about why pain and suffering are necessary. I do not know. But I do know Jesus is with us, and that makes it bearable. He will not leave us alone or forgotten. Jesus is like a friend when you are sick or hurting. He will be there for you.

That is the great hope in New York, or Hoboken, or Atlantic City, or Omaha or Los Angeles. Or your town.

Please read more thoughts about God and suffering and faith and joy and various other topics in God and Other Things by clicking on the Buy the Book tab on the home page.  Thanks.

Was Hurricane Sandy the wrath of God? Part one

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Dozens of people dead. Millions without power or gasoline. Billions of dollars in destroyed homes and businesses. Lives ruined. Memories lost. Hurricane Sandy has done its damage.

The questions that arise from such a tragedy are almost universal. “Why? Why does God allow such devastation? Such intolerable suffering? Why does God inflict such carnage on men and women who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

I will listen to almost any explanation for human suffering, but there is one for which I have very little patience. Let me give you an example. After the 9/11 attacks that tore down the World Trade Center, internationally known religious leaders claimed that this was the righteous judgment of God. The United States was being punished for its growing acceptance of homosexuals. I have heard the same thing about Sandy.

The reasoning goes something like this: All events are manifested by God’s design or God’s permission, so human tragedies are obviously examples of God’s judgment. Such reasoning is in my view, faulty at best, and dangerous at worst, as it leads to the charges of arrogance and intolerance that doubters so often throw at Christians, and has been used to justify everything from the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem witch trials. The value of such pronouncements may not be nonexistent, but it is so close that I cannot tell the difference.

It is not surprising that Christians see God’s hand at work in horrific tragedy. We want to see it. It helps us understand. It adds meaning to the event. Suffering without meaning can be too painful to contemplate, so we see meaning or purpose or God’s judgment. But just because we want to see it does not mean it is there. A picture floated around the internet after 9/11 in which many saw the smiling face of Satan rising in the smoke and ashes. We occasionally see the face of Jesus in an oddly shaped potato.

Interpreters of God’s judgment claim to know the meaning of present events with no knowledge of how they will affect the future, because we are not given to know the future. Even our knowledge of the past is limited, viewed through a glass darkly. We strain to see the future through a window painted black, sealed in a locked door. How do purveyors of God’s intentions draw their conclusions from such incomplete information? It is like walking out of an action movie before the final scene. You may guess at the ending, and you may be right, but you cannot really judge the importance of any particular event in the movie until you know who gets blown up at the end. In this mortal life, at least, we don’t know who gets blown up at the end.

If God chooses to exercise his authority, and pass judgment on an unsuspecting crowd, he is most likely to keep that fact to himself. He passed it along to precious few in the Hebrew scriptures, and fewer still in the New Testament record. I suspect that information is even harder to come by in the noisy and distracted twenty-first century.

Anyone who has actually received a divine revelation of God’s purpose may be excused from this part of the discussion. Their knowledge of God’s intentions certainly surpasses mine, if the revelation is real. I am concerned with the modern day seers who are certain they know the will of God simply because they are certain of what God’s will should be. They never seem to realize that their theological logic may be different than God’s. To put it bluntly, without divine revelation, we cannot know God’s purpose with any degree of certainty, and we delude ourselves if we think we do.

Please understand that I do not mean to discount the ability or authority of God to intervene in human lives. I have personally felt the divine touch in my life more than once. Skeptics may chuckle and shake their heads, but I know the divine presence is real. My skepticism extends mainly to those pious folks who feel compelled to tell the rest of us what God is doing at any given moment. They could be right, of course, but the smart money is against it.

Please read more thoughts about God and suffering and faith and joy and various other topics in God and Other Things by clicking on the Buy the Book tab on the home page.  Thanks.