Thought for the Day, 29 December 2004

Elaine Storkey

We're left in a state of global mourning at the terrific disaster from the earthquake and tidal waves around the Indian Ocean. The immediate question is how to respond with most effective emergency relief: a question which my own organisation, Tearfund, faces. But as a Christian organisation, there's another question for us. And that is, what's the relationship of this devastation with the Creator God we believe in. This isn't an academic issue, in a point-scoring debate about theism. It's a burning question affecting millions of people this very hour.

Of course, the question needs to be kept in perspective. Many calamities are clearly the result of human sin. During the twentieth century hundreds of millions of people, about one in every twenty, died through atrocities which human beings inflicted on each other. By comparison these creation calamities are small, perhaps by a factor of ten thousand. We can't hold God accountable for human sin, even though God takes responsibility for its solution.

But who is accountable for natural disasters? Some people have always rushed to see them as signs of God's judgement on sin. Earthquakes, storms and floods come from God's disapproval of human behaviour, specifically punishing wrongdoers. Yet the innocent also perish. The poor and vulnerable suffer. And when Jesus himself faced a question in these terms he dismissed the idea. This is not punishment. God's rain falls, and God's sun shines on the just and unjust, on good and evil alike. God seeks human repentance, not human suffering.

Why then would an all-powerful, all-loving God create a world in which so much suffering is possible? The Christian answer lies in both the freedom which God gives creation and the cosmic nature of human sin. The colossal power which is there in every glass of water, produces untold creative possibilities for our universe, some of them destructive. And the entry of sin into the world also has consequences way beyond human actions. In the biblical narrative it disturbs the very harmony of creation. The New Testament pictures creation as struggling with frustration, in bondage to decay, groaning, as in the pangs of childbirth. The same Bible that speaks of God's love and power also speaks of the inevitability of tempests and earthquakes. There will be movements of tectonic plates, there will be serious earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault and with devastating effects. This is not a limitation on God's power or love but a description of the world we live in: a world not yet fully delivered and longing for cosmic redemption.

This is theology. A shorter answer comes from the millions who are caught up in the depths of such suffering, yet still believe in a loving, powerful God. For they show us where the rubber hits the road; where theory ends and real faith begins.