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A very sobering and thought-provoking (and repentance provoking?) piece by John Piper in the wake of the tornado that ripped through Minneapolis.

The Tornado, the Lutherans, and Homosexuality

(via Desiring God)

I’m still in shock.

On Saturday, in my State of Victoria, in the region in which I spent my first 25 years growing up, all the ingredients needed for a catastrophic disaster conspired against us.

The temperature was an almost unthinkable 46.4 degrees C (115.52 F).
The northerly wind was gusting at incredible speed.
The humidity was at a desert-imitating 5%.

The age-old arch-enemy of the Australian bush was gathered in strength on the horizon, but no-one could have predicted the depth of the tragedy about to unfold…

For 3 days now the bushfires have raged.

At 1am this morning, the death toll had risen to 100, 700+ homes destroyed, 3733 people registered with the Red Cross after evacuating their properties. These figures are expected to rise significantly as emergency services personnel are able to move further into the affected areas.

Entire towns have been literally wiped-out of existence. Nothing but char remains.

My wife, a paramedic, is one of hundreds of emergency services personnel who have been deployed to the affected areas. She tells me that the scene is incomprehensible. “It’s so surreal Jono. It’s just so surreal…”

We personally know 4 people who were killed in the flames. 2 of them were girls who we grew up with at church. Young girls. Late teens, early twenties. Killed before their mother’s eyes.

In the wake of such devestation the question is bound to be asked.
It’s bound to be asked by grief-bearing parents.
It’s bound to be asked by heart-broken landowners.
It’s bound to be asked by terror-stricken survivors
It’s bound to be asked by labour-weary volunteers.
It’s bound to be asked by everyone who watches the TV news.

And it’s bound to be addressed by Pastors from the Pulpit right around the nation…

So then. How should God’s Shepherds answer the burning question: “Where was God?”

“Where was God when my daughters were burned to death?”
“Where was God when my house exploded?”
“Where was God when ‘the scum-of-the-earth’ deliberately lit the fires?”
“Where was God in the midst of that Fiery Hell?”

I believe our answer to that question is one of the most important answers we will ever give to an inquisitor. I believe our answer to that question speaks a thousand volumes about the kind of God it is that we worship. Your answer will expose you. It will reveal the inner substance of your faith.

I believe that the following is the good, glorious, comforting, confronting, hard, bold, biblical response to that heart-wrenching question:

“Where was God when the flames struck?”

God was at the helm of His creation. He was directing wind and determining flame. He was ending life, and sparing it. He was the Sovereign God before the fire began, and continued His sovereign control in the midst of destruction.

I don’t say this flippantly. I say it with tears streaming and hands trembling.
I say it because it’s what God has said. I say it because it’s true.

Consider the following passages of Scripture:

Job 37:5-7 “Out of the south comes the storm. . . . [God] disperses the cloud of His lightning. It changes direction, turning around by His guidance, that it may do whatever He commands it on the face of the inhabited earth. Whether for a rod . . . or for lovingkindness, He causes it to happen. . . . Stand and consider the wonders of God!”

Amos 3:6 “Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?”

Isaiah 45:7 “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things.”

Psalm 135:5-7 “The LORD is great. . . . Whatever the LORD pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth. . . . He makes lightnings for the rain, and brings forth the wind from His treasuries.”

Psalm 148:7 “Praise the LORD from the earth, sea monsters and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and clouds; stormy wind, fulfilling His word”

Mark 4:37-39 “There arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat. . . . And Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Hush, be still.” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm.

The Victoria Bushfires are tragic almost beyond calculation. The loss incurred at the hands of the flames is beyond reckoning. A catastrophe. A disaster. A cataclysm. A holocaust.

However, the tragedy is only compounded when blind-guides and bad shepherds offer something like the following response to the burning question:

Revd Professor William R. G. Loader in response to a similar calamity, the 2004 Tsunami:
Insurance policies would call this “an act of God”. For some this would have to be, since God is “in control”. Like fate, God determines all that is… But even most whose thinking about God rests within such a frame of reference will not, however, draw such conclusions. There is a defiance by common sense and an awareness of mystery which refuses such heartlessness… It makes as little sense to claim that God sends tsunamis as it does to claim that God sends invading cancer.

This, and similar answers will be offered to the grieving parents of dead children and the devastated owners of gutted houses. They will be given by well-meaning pastors who want to offer a compassionate response.
But there’s no compassion in offering empty counsel and false theology. These answers are bad answers to the burning question because they’re not the answers that God gave Himself…

Remember Luke’s account of Jesus’ response to grieving people in Luke 13:1-5?
Some people came to Jesus with heart-wrenching news about the slaughter of worshipers by Pilate.

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

Here is what Jesus said:

“Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Jesus never, not once, attempted to ‘get God off the hook’ by telling the affected people that God wasn’t in control, or that God hadn’t planned for it to happen, or that God couldn’t have stopped the carnage before it happened.
Jesus knew that his Father was Sovereign. He knew that He has a purpose for everything He does. And so his response was:
‘When you see calamity and destruction of life – your response should be repentance and faith – not slippery theological maneuvering in order to get God off the hook. Everyone is going to die, so be sure that when you die, you die in the secure arms of faith in Christ.’

Don’t get me wrong. Jesus had compassion. He had compassion at almost ever turn. But offering bad answers to life’s most gut-wrenching questions is not compassionate. It just makes matters worse.

Divine truth is always the best balm for a wounded soul.

But it’s not the only ointment. In addition to truth, pastors can obviously offer so much more. It would be a grievous thing to behold a pastor preaching answers but not offering anything by way of practical help. As one author puts it, offering answers about the sovereignty of God is never the sum-total of God’s method of bringing healing:
“It’s only a part of the healing that God brings. God is more than grand. He is more than steel. He is more than sovereign. He is sovereign, grand, steel, kind, tender, warm, generous, patient, loving, meek—he is all those things.“

Sharing the truth of the Sovereignty of God in all things – even in calamity – is the duty of every one of God’s shepherds. It’s never easy, rarely without back-lash, often awkward, always beneficial.

The fires are still burning, but the questions will burn longer. I pray for a legion of courageous, God-centred pastors who will sacrificially serve those in need – and after offering hugs, shedding tears, and praying over the broken-hearted – will offer Bible-saturated, God-glorifying answers that testify to a Sovereign God who is Lord over all.