An Honest Debate/Whoeveristhirsty.com

The series of natural disasters that have occurred over the last few months have caused many to ask the old question, “If there is a God of love how could He allow such things to happen?” While the question is important, I want to point out that it is a relatively recent one. What I mean by this is that throughout most of human history people did not ask how could God have allowed something like this to happen when disaster struck.

In earlier times it was just assumed that God or the gods must be displeased with us, and that the erupting volcanoes, earthquakes, plagues or destructive storms were, as the Weather Channel refers to them, the wrath of God. And so men and women in earlier times responded to disasters such as this by trying to appease the gods (See my article, An Ancient Appeal to an unknown God).

I enjoy old moves. And the traditional way of viewing things is pictured in one of my favorites, the 1932 firm, The Bird of Paradise. The movie is a great love story set in the South Pacific. It is the story of about a man (Joel McCrea), who falls in love with the beautiful daughter (Dolores Del Rio) of the local chief when his the sailing ship he is on visits a tropical Island. The chief’s daughter is smitten too, and so he decides to stay behind with the love of his life. Unfortunately their love breaks a few tribal taboos. As a result, the volcano god becomes restless and the volcano that dominates the main island rumbles alive in response, threatening the destruction of the entire village. The only thing that will satisfy it is for the chief’s daughter to throw herself into the volcano. Naturally, she chooses to do her duty rather than follow her heart (remember, this is a pre-1960s movie), and so she bravely throws herself into the volcano to appease the anger of the volcano god. Amazingly, it works, and everyone lives happily ever after, except of course, for poor Joel McCrea, who leaves paradise with a broken heart and a bitter taste in his mouth.

This old move does a pretty good job of illustrating the way people in most times and places have viewed natural disasters. Even today this way of thinking is so ingrained in the collective consciousness of the human race that most people think this way. I believe it is universal, and probably innate, so I include it in what I have referred to in an earlier series of articles as a part of our “common sense.”

It is interesting to me that even in modern times this “primitive” way of viewing natural disasters is still prevalent. Because in spite of the fact that rationalism, materialism and naturalism dominate the West, most of the world’s peoples still live in traditional cultures and still draw cause and effect relationship between human behavior and the rampages of nature. So the average person living in Myanmar is much more likely to look for a supernatural explanation for the cyclone that wrecked their country than a natural one. While our access to the country is limited, I would almost guarantee that the man on the street in Myanmar links the cyclone in May with their government’s slaughter of Buddhist holy men in September. As far as they are concerned, it is all about Karma.

Let me share another example. I was in India in January 1999, when Australian missionary, Graham Staines, was burned to death while he was sleeping with his two young sons in a village in the North Eastern state of Orrisa by a mob of radical Hindus. In September of the same year a devastating cyclone struck Orissa killing thousands. A friend of mind overheard a group of Orrissian Indian college students discussing the cyclone. Cyclones are very unusual in that part of India, and the storm did indeed take an unusual track , it was almost as though it was designed to hit only Orrisa. So it was not unusual that these students would be discussing it. But what would surprise many in the west was the certainty with which these Hindu students concluded that the cyclone was retribution for the murder of Graham Staines and his sons.

These Indian students were well educated, and today they are probably competing successfully against the West’s best and brightest. They are not stupid. They just think differently than we have been taught to think in the rationalistic west. They think the way everyone used to think in pre-scientific age times. But let me let you in on a little secret, in spite of over two centuries of rationalism, even today, even in this country, people still think the same way.

As earthquakes, hurricanes and tornados rampage around the nation and the world, many are asking if God is trying to tell us something. I know this because so many people ask me this very question, and I am not just referring to church people. It seems that collective consciousness of the human race is hard to repress, even in a culture such as ours where ideas such as divine retribution are scoffed at and regarded as the superstitious relics of a less enlightened age.

But why do we scoff at such things? Are we in the West really wiser than the rest of world? What sort of Chronological Snobbery, what sort of Eurocentric arrogance, says that we are the world’s sole depository of wisdom and knowledge? But in spite of modernist arrogance, there is a variation of the traditional way of thinking that is perfectly acceptable, even in the United States, even among naturalists and skeptics.

As I write this message I am sitting on my front porch enjoying an absolutely beautiful afternoon. Just a few minutes ago one of my neighbors came over to talk for a few minutes so I decided to test my theory. I asked her if she ever looked at all of the hurricanes and tornados we have been having and wondered if God is trying to tell us something. She told me that she does not think this, nor does she blame God when these sorts of things happen. But she said she does blame them on the way we treat our planet. She mentioned global warming.

I thought her response was fascinating, and I have heard others, including Al Gore, say the same thing. In fact that was the explanation he offered for the cyclone that struck Myanmar. But when you think about it, this is really just a variation of the traditional response.

The West, having rejected God, is now worshiping nature. And when nature erupts we assume that we must have done something wrong. But we are too sophisticated to throw the chief’s daughter in the volcano (Jena Bush-Hagar, is safe), but we must might throw in the SUV, especially if gas prices keep rising.

It would appear that we have the same archetype in different costumes depending on the culture. So it seems that we all think pretty much the same way. The basic common sense, the collective unconsciousness, whatever you want to call it, is still there and it is hard to kill. Here in the West, due to naturalistic pressures, we have a scientific, politically correct way of viewing natural disasters the same way they are viewed by people living in a traditional culture. But even though the language we use is more compatible with our modernistic construct, we are really saying the same thing; the gods are mad and it is all our fault. Perhaps it is. Something deep inside of us seems to say it is.

Here in the West, we reject the thought that our collective sins have angered God, and that he might be judging us for them, and we also pour scorn on those who dare to suggest such things. But is it not ironic that we seem to have no problem with those who claim that nature’s fury is nothing more than just retribution for the collective ecological sins of the race? Why do we give Nobel Prizes to those who say such things while scorning those who say we are courting the wrath of the God who created nature through humankind’s collective violation of His moral will?

Perhaps the answer to this question reveals more about us and our animus toward our creator than we want to admit.

Let’s change gears now and go back to the question we began with, “”If there is a God of love how could He allow such things to happen?” Those of us who believe in the old God do have a response to this question and it is related to what I have been discussing. The unspoken implication in the question is that we deserve a better world, or if not a better world a better God. But do we really? The common sense, the collective unconsciousness would seem to be telling us something different, and so does the Bible.

The traditional Christian teaching is very well stated in The Book of Common Prayer: “O Lord, who for ours sins are justly displeased.” Our culture has rejected the notion that God has any just reason to be displeased with us. Instead we have declared ourselves ” basically good.” And having acquitted ourselves of all charges, we now have brought an indictment against God for the way he treats good people like us. But is this modern consensus correct? Are we really as good as we claim to be? Does history support our claims to goodness?

The Bible does not deny the greatness or nobility of the human race. After all, we are created in the image of God and thus we have innate value and nobility, but along with all of our nobility the Bible insists that we also are innately depraved. Thus we are at the same time the greatest and worst of creatures.

If we were to only focus on the many noble and wonderful things we do we might well conclude that we are basically good. But how easy is it to ignore the fact that the same person who does some great act of kindness in the morning may turn and commit the most awful act of cruelty in the afternoon? And how many times has that same person been you?

I am convinced that one of the reasons Biblical Christianity is so hated in our time is that it tells us the truth about our condition, and we would prefer to believe a lie. James said that the word of God is like a mirror. Unfortunately when the mirror tells us we are not the fairest of them all we reject it and walk away. More than this, we hate it for what it says about us, and we hate the God who says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

What does this have to do with the God of the Old Testament? Frankly, everything. Because the Bible rejects the assumption hidden in our complaints, that we deserve a better world than the one we have (see article: The Problem of Pain - Part II ), and it rejects the assumption that the judgments of God, as we have them recorded in the Old Testament, are unjust.

God’s defense to the first charge is that we have a better world than we deserves and that we are treated with grace and mercy we could never earn. His answer to the second charge is very simple; the civilizations that were destroyed in the Old Testament were richly deserving of the judgment that befell them, because in the great scheme of things, their collective sins against God’s holiness were far more serious than any ecological sin that the human race has ever committed.