When a Muslim cleric announced the Dec. 26 tsunami that struck the 10 nations around the Indian Ocean was God’s punishment for allowing western tourists into the area, most people in this country just shook their heads in disbelief and went on. After all, other newspaper stories from the same time frame were quoting other Muslim clerics saying Allah sent the raging water as punishment for governments not cooperating with Muslim jihad fighters or for the arrest of certain popular leaders or for numerous other reasons.
There was no agreement about “why” the waters came, but there seemed to be an untold number of clerics certain that Allah sent them as punishment. Somehow it seems innate in mankind to always want to know “why” something happens. It seems equally innate for mankind to blame that with which he differs as the cause of calamity.
Baptist historian Leon McBeth, in his book “The Baptist Heritage,” points out that in colonial America, it was the presence of Baptists that preachers blamed for everything from Indian massacres to outbreaks of disease. McBeth makes the interesting point that in the days when preachers of state-sponsored churches were called to their churches on an annual basis, these sermons blaming the Baptists and other dissenters for all the evils of society frequently occurred just before voting on whether to call the preacher for another year.
Evidently, it has always been popular to rile up folks by blaming what we do not understand on a common enemy. Perhaps it “tickles the ears” of listeners to have their “why” questions answered by having their prejudices affirmed.
Trying to place blame for natural disasters is not limited to those from other cultures or those from past centuries. Baptists, including some Southern Baptists, are in the front lines of claiming God sent the recent tsunami as punishment. One making that claim is Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan. Phelps is an outspoken critic of Southern Baptists who has picketed Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings. He is best known for picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay man beaten to death in Wyoming, with a sign saying “God hates fags.”
This time Phelps’ Web site contends God sent the tsunami to kill Swedes. About 20,000 Swedes were on vacation in the area hit by the tsunami and Phelps declares, “We pray for all 20,000 Swedes in the tsunami’s wake to be declared dead.” He adds, “God hates Sweden and all things Swedish.”
Phelps evidently is angry because of Sweden’s protection of homosexuals as a protected minority group.
Still, it must be wonderful to know the mind of God with such certainty. According to the Bible, God cautioned humanity against such certainty when He declared, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and My ways are not your ways.” It would seem Christians would be more cautious about declaring with certainty the mind of God on issues where the Bible itself is silent.
Noted Southern Baptist author Henry Blackaby has also added his voice to this discussion. After looking at a map prepared by Voice of the Martyrs showing areas of intense persecution of Christians worldwide, Blackaby said he recognized “God’s hand of judgment.” He announced to a conference in Kentucky the tsunami was punishment of areas where Christians have experienced particularly intense persecution.
Later Blackaby went beyond the recent tsunami when he told an interviewer that “each time God sends hurricanes, floods or other calamities, He is speaking to His people.” Apparently, Blackaby believes every natural disaster is sent by God as a judgment or message of some type.
Once you start down this road of understanding, the inevitable destination is the conclusion that God “causes” everything to happen — disasters, diseases, accidents, everything. This is not that God “permits” things to happen but that God “causes” them.
For this writer, such an understanding does not take seriously enough the power of sin to corrupt even creation itself. The Bible teaches that even creation groans because of sin and awaits its redemption at Jesus’ return. Nor does it take into account Jesus’ teaching that “rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.”
All of us know God can send a natural disaster. He sent the flood in Noah’s time and an earthquake to free Paul and Silas from the Philippian jail. It is quite a different thing to say that God sent recent Hurricanes Ivan, Charley, Frances and Jeanne as judgment or messages to His people, especially those living in Florida.
It is also true that in the midst of trying times many people are more open to God than when life is good. However, that is a commentary on us, not on God.
Perhaps we should rejoice that God works in the midst of all things for good for those who love Him.
In the end no explanation is completely satisfactory. There is a sense of mystery about events as well as about life itself, because no one knows the mind of God. Much is simply unexplainable. It becomes a matter of faith, a question of how we will see God.
One commentator put it well when he asked if we will see God in the angry ocean rising up to destroy all life in its wake, or will we see God in the care of millions of strangers rising up to save life and to care for the human hurts?
One thing is certain. God is good. He is good all the time and in all circumstances.
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