June 20, 2008 God and Disasters

Dear E-pistle subscriber,

First was the disastrous tropical cyclone Nargis in Burma, in which more than 100,000 are estimated to have died and 110,000 displaced last month.

Less than one week later came the massive earthquake in Sichuan, China, when nearly 70,000 lost their lives, many of them children.

In the last few weeks, we have seen unprecedented devastation in our own country, with a seemingly unending sequence of severe storms, tornado outbreaks and flash floods in the Midwest. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes; in addition to property damage, the floods have affected some the nation’s most fertile cropland.

Why does God let bad things like this happen? Others ask: Doesn’t the fact that bad things happen prove that God doesn’t exist? How could there be a God that allows so much evil to take place?

Many of us have asked these questions and others like it many times before. They might have arisen around a sudden job loss. Perhaps an expected diagnosis. Maybe the death of a family member.

One answer offered by some is that, while God does allow bad things to happen, God does not cause them to happen.

But that so-called explanation falls short. It doesn’t reflect our understanding of the very nature of God.

Most bad things which happen occur not because God is punishing us or testing us, but because he has given us complete freedom in his love for us. We aren’t puppets on a string, but a people freely loving and freely loved. God grieves right alongside us and suffers with us.

A chaplain in a hospital where I once worked told me that faith is not an insurance policy, but a blanket of assurance that God will be with us, no matter what. When our hearts break, God’s heart breaks also.

God does not promise us lives free of pain and tragedy. What he does promise is to be there with us, no matter how great the hurt, how deep the pain.

God is there, amidst all of these disasters as well as our own personal and private tragedies, in the hands and feet of those doing his will. God is there in the people who seek to “bind up the broken-hearted, bring good news to the poor, and comfort those who mourn.”

That is part of the reason our faith cannot be practiced in isolation: there is no such thing as a “private faith” when it comes to Christianity. You and I are the way God acts in this world.

See you Sunday,

Rev. Kate