A Christian Response to the Tsunami disaster.

by Howard Taylor.

Ps 65:7 Thou dost  "still the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations." (NIV)

Many people including Church leaders are agonising about how to respond to the Tsunami disaster in which over 150,000 have died and countless numbers of people are left destitute.

Would they have so agonised, I wonder, if the numbers had been fewer - say just a few hundred or a few thousand?

All human life is sacred to God and even animal life is greatly valued by Him. The large numbers alone should not be the sole cause of heart searching and questioning the goodness of God.

If we believe the Scriptures at all, we must expect that natural disturbances in the skies, on the land and in the seas, will increase as history reaches its dramatic climax. It will be a climax that sees a chaotic world reach it nemesis as a prelude to its final redemption.
For example we read this warning and promise of Jesus:
Luke 21:25-28
25    "There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea.
26    Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.
27    At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
28    When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." (NIV)

If our life in the world as it is now is the only life and this is the only world then there can be no answer to the agonised question: Why does a good God allow suffering?

Alternatively if the Eternal world is totally disconnected from this world then this life and this world can only have vanishingly small values because this life, at most, can only be a  test for a totally different world that is infinitely long.

Neither of these views is the Christian view.

If as the Bible tells us, the Eternal world intersects our world in Christ then this world and this life are given meaning and made sacred even though they are not our final hope.

Because of this no Christian can remain untroubled by what has happened nor unmoved into compassionate giving and/or action.

It is such generosity to the needy that raises our humanity above the sham materialisms that so shape our drab lives.

It is precisely in the context of human need that there is room for kindness, courage and compassion. Mercy and forgiveness too can only be exercised where others have done wrong.
This is what Christians mean when they echo the words of the Apostle Paul that all things (which must include pain and wrongdoing) work together for good for those who love God. (Romans 8: 28)
This whole movement is focussed in the Cross of Christ where God took our humanity to Himself and carried the weight of our sin and sorrow that they might be taken away forever. At the cross too the earth itself is shaken (Matt 27:51) and thus given its hope that its foundations finally will remain intact.
The resurrection and ascension of Christ, which embrace our humanities and reunite earth with heaven, are God's final answer to suffering and evil.
Without them there is no hope.
Jesus's healing miracles were a foretaste of that final healing when: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Rev 21:4 (NIV).
His healing miracles included the healing of nature itself. The disciples went and woke him, saying, "Master, Master, we're going to drown!" He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm." Luke 8:24 (NIV)

But why is the earth subject to natural disasters at all? Did not God see the world He had created and say that it was very good? (Genesis 1:31). It was only later, after humans had turned their back on God, that the ground itself would cause pain and death. (Genesis 3:17-19). We cannot imagine how this could be so. However some interpretations of the extraordinary results of quantum physics see the consciousness (soul?) of the human observer as genuinely related to the behaviour of matter's fundamental constituents. Because our understanding of these concepts is so very limited it would be rash to make anything of this especially as it was the earth's ancient tectonic plates that were the cause of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. However it is my own hunch that there may be a deep interconnectedness between humanity and the material world that we inhabit - an interconnectedness that we have hardly begun to recognise. The Apostle Paul does tell us that the earth itself shares in the final salvation of humanity: The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed ……. the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay  ….. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Rom 8:19-22 (NIV)

The book of Job is probably the oldest book in the Bible dating back to the days of Genesis. It is a poem about Job who, though a good man, suffers unjustly. His so-called 'comforters' hold to the view that only the unrighteous suffer - and they suffer as a result of God's judgement upon them. The message of the book is that these comforters are completely wrong.
Here is our former Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham's comment on the message of the book:
What does shock us, is that the innocent suffer so often as the result of the wrongdoing of the guilty.  But this is not as paradoxical as it sounds.  As the Devil pointed out to the Almighty in the book of Job, if God was always seen to reward the righteous in this world for doing right, it would be seen, and very soon said, that the righteous were only doing right for what they could get out of it.  But God does not desire this kind of obedience.  He is set on creating beings with a free will, in a world in which they themselves are responsible for the consequences of their own choices and desires the free obedience of intelligent and reasoning creatures.  Only when Job begins to suffer unjustly and still will not curse God is it seen that he does not serve God for what he can get out of it.  The suffering of Job, like the Crucifixion and Passion of Christ, is seen to be the consequence, not of Job's own guilt, but of the presence of evil in the world, and the need for it to be seen that good must be pursued for its own sake, even occasionally, at personal sacrifice.
(The Door Wherin I Went' page 70)

I lived for many years in one of the poorest countries of the world and had a very good knowledge of the local language. There I met premature death and sorrow - more than I have ever met in my home country. Yet only once in sixteen years did I ever hear the question that I hear so often in the affluent West: Why does God allow suffering? The people of faith there (who were the majority), like Job of old, refused to curse God.
Howard Taylor. (January 2005)

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