The following is largely re-posted from an article I wrote in the wake of the Victorian Bushfires.
Where was God when the tsunami struck Samoa? Where was God when the earthquake hit Sumatra?
I believe that 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 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?”
God was at the helm of His creation. He was directing wind and determining wave. He was ending life, and sparing it. He was the Sovereign God before the wave and the earthquake began, and continued His sovereign control in the midst of the 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.
Contrast that biblical truth with the following statement by 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 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 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.
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