Tsunami and God’s Grace

This entry is inspired by my uncle who challenged me in my faith more than anyone else I know. It’s easy as Christians to get caught up in all the political mess that the churches have created, and even easier to get caught up in ourselves and our own issues and making everything about ourselves instead of others. My uncle sent me an e-mail this afternoon challenging me on some issues, so I thought I would write this in sort of a response.

After over 155, 000 (my hometown, Sarnia doubled) killed by the deadly tsunami we are left with many questions. I’ve already heard my fair share of answers. Some say that this is just a sign of end times. It does say in the bible that there will be earthquakes, and that this is just the beginning of what the earth will experience. So we think we can pass it off as it just being the ‘end times.’ I don’t know about you, but that seems like a cop-out answer. Maybe this has something to do with it, but there seems to be a lot more behind it. How do you tell all these families that their loved ones are dead because the end times are here and this is when Jesus is coming back, a Jesus they don’t even believe in?

Earthquakes have increased significantly over the last 30 years even. In fact, it has been said that there has been more earthquakes in this century than there has been by all the centuries combined. Of course, this has been the only century that we have really been able to measure them. However, they amount is still on the rise. In 1970 only 4139 earthquakes were recorded, in 2003 there was 31419 earthquakes
(http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0197840.html). Nevertheless, what does that prove but that there are more earthquakes than usual. I’ve heard pastors try to use these facts to prove that the end times are near. It’s a waste of breath; it doesn’t even say in the bible that earthquakes will increase it just says that they will happen.

You could take the Jerry Falwell route and blame the homosexuals, which he did after the Sept 11 attacks. This wouldn’t make much sense either though. If God was into punishing entire communities for the gays, I think He would probably punish the church before he would Phuket (funny story; that I’ll save for some other time). We aren’t left with many ‘popular’ views or easy answers.

You can read through the bible and read tons of stories of God taking out entire cities or nations. You can read about the flood (quite a similar disaster) where He took out every living creature except for those on a boat. You can read of God’s judgment on the human race throughout the pages of scripture. Let us not forget, we are a sinful human race. I don’t care if you are a Christian or not, you can’t deny the fact that this world is messed up. You can’t deny that we ourselves aren’t messed up most of the time. To top it all off, we are all dying; every last one of us. Did you know that ten out of ten people die?

So here we are, all of us dying, and then when an unexpected number of people die we freak out. Why is that? Why is it when those dying of AIDS by the thousands day after day don’t get their need publicized all day long every day on the media?

I don’t know if we should blame this disaster on God, blame it on Satan, blame it on our sinfulness or blame it on the ocean, frankly I think that’s our problem. We always need to point fingers and figure out the why’s to everything. If we can blame someone or something then at least we can be rest assured that everything is in control and we can move on with our lives. To know the answer is exactly what we want, and to be honest I don’t know the answer. I don’t know why 155, 000 people died, I don’t know why it wasn’t me and not them. I don’t know why thousands die a day because of AIDS, or why I didn’t die in my car accident. I think its ok not to know. If I knew why God did or allowed everything he probably wouldn’t be much of a God. A God that I can fully comprehend sounds like something quite boring. Why do we feel the need to offer up answers with everything? Why do we always want to blame the bad things and take the credit for the good things? I’m not trying to say God purposely caused the tsunami or that he didn’t. Really the point of this is to say that I don’t want to speak for God, and try to pretend like I’m inside his head and have the answers.

There are some things that I do know though. Throughout the horror of the entire disaster, there were many amazing survival stories. The fact that there is still 6 billion (give or take a bunch of million) people still alive on this planet is amazing. It’s not like we did anything to deserve life. It’s not like any of us can ever get mad and demand a longer life or demand a better life, we never deserved to live in the first place. The fact that we are breathing is proof of God’s grace. The fact that we can even have thoughts about a God or atheism is proof of grace. Maybe we need to start learning to live with questions and not a life full of answers. A life full of answers is usually proved inconsistent and wrong. A life full of questions acknowledges our incapability of knowing everything and the desire to learn more.

I don’t know why God allowed the tsunami. Maybe it was judgment, and if it was, who are we to get angry, especially because our very lives are expressions of his mercy. I do know that I would rather serve a God that judges and gives mercy than a God that doesn’t judge at all. I do know that I would rather serve a God that disciplines than a God who is impersonal. If we can’t trust God when disaster strikes, even to ourselves, then trusting God at all is kind of a useless idea. To those that don’t believe in God, or at least Christianity’s version of God, there isn’t much to say to you. I’m sorry that we do not share similar hope beyond death, I’m sorry that when disaster strikes hope is diminutive. To those that do believe in the Christian God, may this encourage you to continue on in your faith to serve everyone and make the world a better place without, with or in the midst of disaster.